Cinema
Kid with a bike / Le Gamin au vélo
dir. Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Belgium/France/Italy 2011
87 min
”Kid With a Bike” is a variation on „Little Red Riding Hood”, as admitted at the press conference following the film’s Cannes premiere by it’s creators – the most famous contemporary Belgian filmmakers, brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.
Cyril (Thomas Doret), a boy from an orphanage is the lonely, lost child. Drug dealers looking to draw the child into their shady dealings are the big bad wolves. An abundance of forest scenes, the boy’s red t-shirt, a good fairy- local hair salon owner Samantha (Cecile de France), who shows up to save Cyril from trouble –are the elements in their picture which turn a very raw, realistic scenery of a Belgian town known from all their films (“The Child”, “Rosetta”) into a fairytale, symbolic space.
”Kid With a Bike” is much more cheerful than the previous works of the Dardennes, even though the Belgians enter the world of the same class of characters they’ve been interested in since the beginning of their career: ordinary people, marginal members of the society.
Cyril is an abandoned child. His father (played by remembered from “The Child” Jérémie Renier) doesn’t feel any responsibility for his son, even though the boy desperately wants to get in touch with him, sneaking out of the orphanage to wait near the apartment where they last saw one another. This doomed situation, which in previous Dardennes’ movies would inevitably lead to tragedy, this time is filled with hope. Even though the brothers make sure the viewers know these things happen … only in fairy tales, not in real life.
Major festivals:
Grand Prix Cannes Film Festival 2011