Cyril (newcomer Thomas Doret) is determined to reconnect with his father in THE KID WITH A BIKE
THE KID WITH A BIKE (LE GAMIN AU VÉLO) (Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, 2011)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, March 16
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.ifcfilms.com
Cannes favorites Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have been making critically hailed naturalistic films for more than thirty years, including such Palme d’Or winners as Rosetta (1999) and L’Enfant (2005). The Belgian brothers’ latest, the exquisitely told The Kid with a Bike, shared the 2011 Grand Prix with Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. In The Kid with a Bike, thirteen-year-old newcomer Thomas Doret makes a mesmerizing acting debut as Cyril, a young boy who refuses to accept that the father (Jérémie Renier) he worships has abandoned him. While running away from the children’s home he has been sent to, he winds up in the arms of hairdresser Samantha (Cécile de France), who feels an instant connection with Cyril and agrees to take him in on weekends. But Cyril only wants his father and is soon rebelling by hanging out with an older boy known as Dealer (Egon Di Mateo), the leader of a gang of local toughs who recruits Cyril to do a little job for him. Desperate for a father figure, Cyril agrees, with severe consequences. The Dardennes (La promesse, Lorna’s Silence) had the cast rehearse on-set and in costume for a month, which gives the film a deeply realistic feel. Shooting in the summer for the first time, the Dardennes concentrate on three primary locations: the city, where Cyril keeps searching for his father and gets his bike stolen; a forest that threatens physical danger; and a gas station where the plot subtly shifts. Evoking Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 Italian neo-Realist masterpiece The Bicycle Thief and Shane Meadows’s gritty 2006 British drama This Is England, both of which feature extraordinary performances by first-time child actors, The Kid with a Bike is a bittersweet, involving tale of family and belonging in which children and adults are seemingly always at cross-purposes, with Samantha serving as a kind of bridge to heal the fracture. De France is wonderful as Samantha, her muscular, bare arms enveloping Cyril, trying to protect him from a world that has already crushed his hopes and dreams. And Doret is captivating as the troubled Cyril, his eyes filled with heart-wrenching passion and yearning, trying to find a place to fit in and be wanted. The Kid with a Bike is another special film from two brothers who once again share their unique, thoughtful, intelligent view of family.