– You’re an 11-year-old boy living in a home for orphans.
– You’re insistent on finding a way to ecape at every turn.
– You’d do anything to find your father who abandoned you.
– You stumble on a local hairdresser willing to take you in on weekends.
So begins the latest heartwrenching odyssey from the fabulous Dardenne brothers (La Promesse and the wonderful L’Enfant).
Cyril (Thomas Doret) is the antithesis of the adorable movie kid (I.E. Super 8). Self-centered, resentful, and violent, he has one thing on his mind: finding his Dad (Dardenne regular Jeremie Renier). The hairdresser, Samantha (Cecile De France, Hereafter, Mesrine), enables his wish and we’re off to the races. What ensues is a compassionate tale of abandonment, forgiveness and unconditional love. Cyril, willing to take whatever scrap his penniless and shabby father offers, finds only disillusionment. He soon gets into trouble hanging around with a wrong element of older kids. Samantha, at wit’s end, copes with the most extraordinary of challenges.
The Kid With A Bike’s depicton of character transformation is breathtaking. The directors use an economy of style that borrows heavily from their early years as documentary filmmakers. Able to avoid the mawkish, they parlay a harsh realism with an uncanny empathy for their characters, no matter how frightful their actions. The ferocity of Cyril’s intense focus is nothing short of remarkable especially at the moment, one specific scene where his personality turns 180 degrees. It will floor you. Doret gives the best performance by a child actor in recent memory. Those kids from Super 8 have nothing on him.
9.5 Gears (Out of 10)