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REVIEWS
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The Kid With A Bike REVIEWED BY JONATHAN ROMNEY
It’s business as usual, more or less, for the Dardenne brothers in The Kid With A Bike (Le Gamin Au Vélo). But that can only be good news for their devoted admirers, who know that a delib- erately restricted thematic palette and rigorously economical methodology allow the Belgian duo to take no-frills realism to emotional places where it does not normally go. After the slightly sub-par Lorna’s Silence
(2008), the brothers are back on peerless form with this story of innocence betrayed and befriended, which must count as one of the best films about childhood since Kes — or for that matter Bicycle Thieves, to which it surely nods. An ending that is, superficially at least, relatively upbeat, plus the increasingly bankable presence of Cécile de France, who recently went trans- Atlantic in Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter, should make this one of the brothers’ most commercially successful films — though the presence of a legit- imate star does not mean they have softened their approach one jot. Told in the Dardennes’ characteristically ellip-
tical but to-the-point manner, the story follows the travails of Cyril (Doret), an 11-year-old boy first seen trying to contact his absentee father, Guy, and retrieve the bike which means every- thing to him. On one of his desperate escapes from the care home where he is living, he has a
n 12 Screen International at the Cannes Film FestivalMay 16, 2011
COMPETITION
Fr-Bel-It. 2011. 87mins Directors/screenplay Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne Production companies Les Films du Fleuve, Archipel 35, Lucky Red International sales Wild Bunch, www.
wildbunch.biz Producers Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Denis Freyd Cinematography Alain Marcoen Editor Marie-Hélene Dozo Production designer Igor Gabriel Main cast Cécile de France, Thomas Doret, Jérémie Renier, Fabrizio Rongione, Egon di Mateo
chance encounter with Samantha (de France), a hairdresser living on his father’s housing estate. And after she brings the bike back to him —
apparently for straightforward Good Samaritan reasons the film never spells out — Cyril asks if she will foster him at weekends. Samantha con- tacts Guy (Renier, playing another of the wastrels he specialises in for the Dardennes), but the boy gets a cold brush-off from his feckless dad. Playing adoptive mother to Cyril proves far
from easy for Samantha, and things take a trou- bling turn when the kid is befriended by teenager Wes (di Mateo), whom you can tell instantly is going to be a very bad influence. Despite the worst happening, things seem to
be panning out for the boy, when matters take a left turn in a genuinely unpredictable coda. The film’s final moments leave you uncertain about what is in store for Cyril, but even so, they bring the film to a satisfying and quietly moving close. This film marks two significant departures for
the Dardennes. One is the prominent but very sparing use of music — the briefest snatches of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, to emotionally suggestive effect. Another is the use of a known star — but de France, far from dominating the film, proves a perfect fit as a character about whom we know little, but whose independence and compassion we sense in every sequence she appears in. It is a terrific performance, level-headed and
no-nonsense, and re-affirms de France’s status as an intelligent and subtle performer to be reckoned with.
The Dardennes, no slouches at finding
unknown talent, have discovered a terrific one in young lead Thomas Doret. As Cyril, he embodies a mixture of blankness — as befits the character of a deeply damaged child — and incredible ferocity and will. Doret’s piping monotone voice should, by rights, seem inexpressive, and yet it speaks volumes about the boy’s isolation, hunger for love and — as so often with the Dardennes’ apparent loser figures — ferocious will to survive. Shooting as usual with cinematographer Alain
Marcoen, and in their familiar stamping ground of Seraing, the brothers this time bring a somewhat different, airier look to their locations, more subur- ban than in the past. Marcoen’s camerawork, also, is rather more free-wheeling than the constrained (and often imitated) tightness of The Son. This is a resonant and engaging Dardennes
story, as ever, but with Dickensian echoes thrown in: this could almost be seen as a modern-day minimalist Oliver Twist, with de France as a more fortunate Nancy. And an extraordinary long take of Cyril racing his bike at night recalls a younger Renier in the brothers’ career-making The Prom- ise, making an implicit connection between two films’ father and son figures. The fleeting pres- ence of Olivier Gourmet makes for further implicit links between the Dardennes’ films, which are slowly but surely building up to a small-scale but masterfully conceived Human Comedy for the unglamorous modern age.
SCREEN SCORE ★★★★
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