The Kid With A Bike

Growing Up is Painful
If you're looking for a real and honest portrayal of what it's like to be a child or an adolescent on film, you really have to step outside of the US. There's something about the typical American portrayal of kids that never really reaches for anything profound. Three benchmark examples come to mind of non-American portrayals or youth. The first is Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows, the second is Luis Bunuel's Los Olvidados, and the third is Edward Yang's Yi Yi. THe Dardennes Brothers The Kid With a Bike isn't quite in the league of those films, it's a worthy successor and a fine film in it's own right.

The film focuses on a child named Cyril, played by Thomas Doret. Cyril has been all but abandoned by his father Guy, who is neither financially or emotionally able to care for Cyril. Cyril is living in what appears to be a group home, and he frequently acts out and tries to contact his father. He's mostly rebuked by his father, but a chance encounter with a...

Belgian directors serve up astute psychological portrait of abandoned 10 year old despite contrived climax
*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Rating: 3.5

'The Kid with a Bike' was directed by the two French-speaking Dardenne brothers from Belgium. The film was shot in Belgium, in the town of Seraing, were the Dardennes held approximately 100 auditions and settled on an outstanding child actor neophyte, Thomas Doret, who plays the 10 year old protagonist, Cyril.

According to Wikipedia, the Dardenne brothers wanted to tell their story much like a fairy tale and chose not to develop many of the adult characters in the film. Hence, the portraits of the adults are quite sketchy. For example, we never find out much about Cyril's father except for the fact that he's broke and emotionally can't cope with the idea of taking care of a child. Similarly, Samantha, the hairdresser who adopts Cyril, doesn't have much of a back story and we mainly learn what she's about, vis-a-vis her relationship with the child.

While not without its problems, the film...

Surprise find!
With nothing but garbage on TV, I thought I'd try something from Amazon. We saw that this film got several Kudos, so we thought we'd give it a go. A boy shuffled into an orphanage want desperately to be reunited with his father fights the system and life in his efforts to find his father. In a chance encounter, a young woman takes an interest in him, recovers his bike for him and ultimately agrees to take him as a foster parent on weekends. The rest of the film deals with the boy struggling with his past and new relationships including that with the young woman. A very powerful story about abandonment, love and compassion.

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