We
don’t know a whole lot about Cyril Catoul, except for one crucial thing: he is
lost. Well, metaphorically speaking. He spends the entirety of The Kid with a Bike looking for
something, but not even he is always sure what it is. Cyril’s is a situation
that many children face, but I cannot imagine what life must be like for them.
The film doesn’t necessarily defend the actions or attitude of its problematic
main character, but it does an incredible job of bringing you into his world
and making him somewhat sympathetic. Cyril is not a brat; he’s just a
vulnerable child looking for some kind of direction. The Kid with a Bike is admittedly an aimless film, but the Dardennes’
style is perfectly suited to the behavior of their protagonist. The film
follows Cyril’s quest to fill a gaping emotional void, and that it may have to
stay empty is a possibility he wouldn’t dare to acknowledge.
The
first time we see Cyril (Thomas Doret) he is on the phone attempting to make
contact with his father, who is by all accounts a single man who doesn’t seem
all that interested in being a father. No one is on the other end. Cyril’s
father has abandoned him, even if he is not ready to admit it. He then goes on
a short journey away from his boarding school and around town as he discovers
the truth and eventually winds up spending weekends with his father’s old
neighbor Samantha (Cécile De France). The film then follows him as he comes to
terms with his new fatherless situation, and his later attempts to find a
paternal figure in some potentially dangerous places. There isn’t a ton of plot
to The Kid with a Bike; Luc and
Jean-Pierre Dardennes are more interested in the mental state of their
protagonist. And the psychology of such a young child is not an easy thing to
decipher.
There’s
some great filmmaking in The Kid with a
Bike, but the whole thing is almost dangerously reliant on the performance
of Doret at the center. He is called on to be somewhat grating yet sympathetic,
and it’s a tall order to ask a kid to play so complex a character. The result
is one of the most heartbreaking child performances I’ve seen in quite some
time, and the chemistry he develops with his new parental figure De France is staggering.
If their relationship wasn’t convincing, the whole thing would fall apart. This
is probably the result of the Dardennes’ decision to rehearse the film with the
actors on location for a month, and all the characters feel appropriately
lived-in. However, this isn’t just about behavior, but just how fragile the
life of a Cyril-type can be.
The Kid with a Bike could easily
have been the bleakest movie of all time. For a while, that seems to be the
direction it’s going. Even after he settles in with Samantha, Cyril is tempted
by the option of a more exciting, dangerous lifestyle than his current
situation. I don’t want to go into specifics, but it involves someone who knows
a vulnerable soul when he sees one, and Cyril just about succumbs to the
pressure. However, he is not the only one with power, and perhaps the most
important reason the movie ends as optimistically as it does is because of the
decisions Samantha makes. There are countless kids with stories like Cyril’s.
They are cast aside by society and ultimately choose to carry out existences of
a more unseemly sort. The Kid with a Bike
argues that perhaps these stories could have happier endings if only they weren’t
so quickly cast aside.
The
Dardennes brothers have become one of the most acclaimed filmmaking duos on the
planet, though I am ashamed to admit that I am mostly unacquainted with their
work. However, The Kid with a Bike
seems to be an ideal entry point; an accessible yet still complex film about a
protagonist learning to cope in a less-than-ideal situation. The most
conventionally dramatic moment in this movie likely happens before the first
shot, and we never explicitly find out what it was. All we know when we arrive
is that there is no mother in the picture, and the father is trying desperately
to get out of the picture. This leaves the child drifting in the wind, and it
seems all too likely that he’s going to end up drifting down the wrong path. That
is, unless someone catches him on his way down.
Grade: A-
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