The Kid With A Bike
Written and Directed
By: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Starring: Thomas
Doret, Cecile de France, Jeremie Renier, and Ego Di Mateo
Director of Photography: Alain Marcoen, Editor: Marie-Helene
Dozo, Set Designer: Igor Gabriel
The first
thing I noticed in The Kid With A Bike
was how far back the camera was. We’re quickly introduced to 10-year-old Cyril,
desperately searching for his father. A phone call results in a disconnected
number. He escapes the foster home, running on foot, and taking a bus to his
father’s old apartment, dodging the guardians after him. But unlike the
extremely memorable opening of a film like Rosetta,
the Dardenne brothers hold the camera further back and less kinetic than usual.
We aren’t given immediate connection with Cyril in this matter, partially
because his conflict is only immediate to him, but more importantly because we
have to learn to love Cyril as the film’s other protagonist, Samantha, must.
And learning to give into such grace and accept with love is many ways the message suggested in The Kid With A Bike.
For those
who don't know the Dardenne brothers, their first narrative film Le Promesse premiered at Cannes in 1996, and since then they’ve (deservingly) won a prize for each of their subsequent films. However, some have outrageously claimed their
similar aesthetic has become tiring and cumbersome.
“Look, another film about suffering in Belgium!” their critics antagonize at
them, as if other auteurs have broken so far from their own comfort zone. But to reduce the Dardennes is to reduce the way they have slowly evolved their style,
especially from something more unyielding at L’Enfant. Lorna’s Silence
took the form of a gangster thriller thrown through the prism of their
unflinching eyes. The Kid With A Bike
takes the form of a fairy tale in many ways, except there’s nothing of
particular miracles on the way, simply moments in which we experience true human empathy.
