The Kid With a Bike Review
By David Kempler
Pedaling at Breakneck Speed
The Dardenne brothers, Luc and Jean-Pierre, are Belgian filmmakers who have an accomplished resume in Europe. They focus primarily on disaffected youth. "The Kid With a Bike" is their latest and it tells the story of an 11-year-old boy who turns to an adult woman after his father has abandoned him.
Cyril (Thomas Doret) is the boy and he lives in a foster home. He has been placed there by his father and is a behavior problem. Being rejected by your sole parent is a justifiable reason for his inability to conform to society's rules, so we accept that as totally believable. However, Cyril is more than a handful. Every chance he gets, he bolts from the home and seeks out his father, to no avail. Either his father is dead or does not want to be found
His life turns when he meets a woman, named Samantha (Cecile de France), a pretty woman who retrieves a bicycle that Cyril craves almost as much as he does his father. Returning the bicycle to him is not a particularly big deal to her, but it certainly is to him. Rather quickly, she ends up having him as a guest on weekends. But, even though Cyril appears to have taken a new and better path, seeking out his father is still his only driving force, and through a series of incidents, we learn that even though he greatly appreciates what Samantha has done for him, she is inconsequential in his big picture.
"The Kid With a Bike" is about Cyril's quest and how it impacts Samantha and their relationship. It takes turns that feels incredibly real and because of that, never falls into a succession of pre-ordained plot twists. By the end, a form of justice is attained but not in any way I can ever remember having seen before. Rather than being wrapped up in a neat little bow, "The Kid With a Bike" finishes in a vein that leaves you oddly satisfied, even if you are not totally convinced that a total finality has been reached. And that's part of the point. No matter how a story ends, there is more that will happen. We will never know what it is, but so what. The joy is in having seen a glimpse of what could easily have taken place just around the corner from where we live.
