646 The Kid with a Bike

[Gregory]

The Kid with a Bike



Twelve-year-old Cyril (Thomas Doret), all coiled anger and furious motion, is living in a group home but refuses to believe he has been rejected by his single father (Jérémie Renier). He spends his days frantically trying to reach the man, over the phone or on his beloved bicycle. It is only the patience and compassion of Samantha (Cécile de France), the stranger who agrees to care for him, that offers the boy the chance to move on. Spare and unsentimental but deeply imbued with a heart-rending tenderness, The Kid with a Bike is an arresting work from the great Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, masters of the empathetic action film.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• New digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Alain Marcoen, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Conversation between film critic Kent Jones and directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
• Interviews with actors Cécile de France and Thomas Doret
• Return to Seraing, a half-hour documentary in which the Dardennes revisit five locations from the film
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Geoff Andrew

[zedz]

Sadly, the unofficial Dardenne brothers website (dardenne-brothers.com) seems to have gone kaput. It was a great resource.

Anyone know any approximate U.S. release dates for The Kid with a Bike?

Kid with a Bike is more of the same from the Dardennes. Very good, but it does share that frequent Loachian quality of forcing the characters to make bad choices, or fail to understand stuff, simply in order to artificially amp up the drama.

Spoiler

In this film, it's the kid's stubborn refusal to accept that his father doesn't want him any more, despite all of the blatant indications. I know that's a tough thing for a kid to swallow, but the denial seems unrealistically overblown to me. Similarly, the final confrontation seems plausible at first, but gets dramatically over-egged as it runs on and on. Also, don't you think you'd buy a bike chain, or be more careful about where you leave it, after your bike's been stolen a couple of times?

But the sheer furious energy of the lead performance gets us through a few narrative bumps. I admired Lorna's Silence for trying some radically different things, but I didn't think it held together very well. This is the brothers sticking to their knitting, and it works as well as you'd expect.

[knives]

Without having seen the movie I know some people, Adults even, who have done far more than you outlined.

[zedz]

I admit that I do have a very low tolerance for people who fail to act in their own best interests (even in real life!), and it's not as if "plot only works if characters are incredibly stupid" (not that this is really the case here) is exclusively a problem of social realist arthouse dramas.

[swo17]

Kid with a Bike is more of the same from the Dardennes. Very good, but it does share that frequent Loachian quality of forcing the characters to make bad choices, or fail to understand stuff, simply in order to artificially amp up the drama.

Spoiler

In this film, it's the kid's stubborn refusal to accept that his father doesn't want him any more, despite all of the blatant indications. I know that's a tough thing for a kid to swallow, but the denial seems unrealistically overblown to me. Similarly, the final confrontation seems plausible at first, but gets dramatically over-egged as it runs on and on. Also, don't you think you'd buy a bike chain, or be more careful about where you leave it, after your bike's been stolen a couple of times?

Spoiler

I'll grant you the last two points as being perhaps narratively convenient (though only in the sense that it takes the story in directions the Dardennes want it to, not in the cheating sense of resolving a conflict for which they couldn't be bothered to think of something more clever). But I didn't see the kid's actions as a "stubborn refusal" of anything, more like a tragic optimism (after all, shouldn't a kid in that position feel entitled to his father's love?) and this, for instance, makes for an incredible emotional gut punch when the real motivation behind him going through with the robbery is revealed.

Otherwise, I get what you're saying about characters making bad choices solely for the movie to be able to continue (and it is in fact a pet peeve of mine) but I suppose I'm much more forgiving when these actions are taken by a child, who has not lived long enough to learn from these kinds of mistakes before, and who is primarily motivated by a desire to feel accepted or loved by someone, anyone. And the decisions made by adults here are generally fascinating ones in terms of pondering the characters' morality.

Spoiler

Consider the dad, who is of course trying to make a fresh start and go straight (i.e. not accepting the stolen money) but is willing to sacrifice his son in the process. Consider the victim in the robbery, who is willing to forgive the boy but who later is willing to cover up what appears to be his murder. And consider Samantha's extremely generous benevolence throughout the film, despite several moments where it would probably be reasonable for her to give up on the kid.

Anyway, I loved this film. Anything by the Dardennes is like snuggling up in a warm blanket for me, and this is one of their best.

[Matt]

Announced for February

[flyonthewall2983]

I vaguely remember seeing a trailer for this, but I do remember seeing a scene from it on YouTube. Is there even a thread here on it?

[hearthesilence]

It didn't get a big release. It played at the NYFF in the fall of 2011 (as well as a single preview screening a month later at BAM), and then it officially opened in the U.S. at the IFC Center in March of this year. Very few screenings elsewhere, which isn't surprising since the Dardennes films rarely get shown anywhere in the U.S. (hence the low grosses) but still a goddamn f-ing shame because The Kid with a Bike is very close to my favorite film of the year. (Béla Tarr's The Turin Horse gets a slight edge.)

[Brian C]

It played at the Century in Evanston, so it got at least some exposure outside of NY/LA. Box Office Mojo says 86 theaters at its widest release which is actually a pretty strong effort on IFC's part (compared to 23 for Lorna's Silence and 40 for L'enfant).

[hearthesilence]

That's good to hear - I remember telling friends about it back home in Chicago, but it was taking forever to reach theaters. For a while, it had problems playing films at too loud of a volume, but otherwise, I really like that Evanston multiplex, it's pretty much the best you could hope for in a suburb. I was actually there back in December to see Mission Impossible (the only film my high school friends were willing to see, and in the end no one was crazy about it), and I was floored that tickets for a first-run movie on a Saturday night was substantially less than $10 (Last weekend, I paid $14 to see Skyfall at the AMC on the UWS.) For a second, I thought there was a mistake. Damn NYC prices...

[Minkin]

Since everyone forgot about this release already,

Here's the Bluray.com review

So Criterion adds a booklet, a 6 minute interview with Thomas Doret and a 74 minute interview with the Dardennes in comparison to the Artificial Eye Bluray (Criterion keeps all of the AE supplements as well).

[MichaelB]

Artificial Eye all the way for me - it's much cheaper, has the same basic transfer, and with the best will in the world I'm very unlikely to sit through a 74-minute Q&A.

[Matt]

I might have thought the same thing about the interview length, but the interviews with the Dardennes on Criterion's recent pair of releases are each about an hour long and they are fascinating, which is particularly surprising since the questions were asked in English but they responded in French. The filmmakers are very frank and forthcoming and have great senses of humor. I'm normally bored by most supplementary material, but not these interviews.

[zedz]

Yeah, I agree. I wouldn't have thought those guys could be so entertaining and informative talking for so long.

[Matt]

I just caught this on Netflix. I think it's by a wide margin their best film since THE SON. The use of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto as an underscore and the lush cinematography definitely caught me off-guard, but it's very much a Dardennes film (though also very Bressonian with its long-suffering characters).

If I have any criticism it's that the characters sometimes make implausible decisions that seem to serve only to lead them into the next scene, but by the amazing final scene those are easily forgiven.

[zedz]

Further to Matt's comment-before-last, I checked out the Dardennes interview last night, and it's another winner. These guys are some of the most articulate and thoughtful talkers about their own films. An hour and a quarter of talking heads and I'm now eager to rewatch a film I liked well enough but was hardly impatient about seeing again.

[Finch]

The only thing that struck me as unrealistic was the rather lenient punishment Cyril received from the police. I can't remember exactly what it was (have to rewatch) but remember thinking upon seeing the scene in the cinema, they are a bit too forgiving. Other than that, I thought it was a masterpiece, and agree with zedz the 75 min interview makes you want to watch the film again right away.

[knives]

For the first 74 minutes or so of this this was easily the best Dardennes since Rosetta. Yes Cyril makes some dumb and self abusing decisions, but for a little kid in the scenario outlined it makes too much sense especially how brilliantly they place us in his mind. The camera positions fracturing the adult's bodies and always giving a sense of him looking. This isn't Ken Loach style stupidity opposing the natural momentum of the characters. It's the decisions he firmly makes because of course he would. Growing up and now working in fairly similar neighborhoods this might as well be documentary. Even the conclusion with the cops makes a sense with enough bitterness to have that next scene on the bikes not feel entirely like a positive ending. unfortunately the movie continues on finally dipping into Loach territory and even giving a completely unearned ploy at a Dreyer type resurrection and redemption. It's so heavy handed and out of place it makes me a little angry at the movie for wasting itself that way. The last ten minutes seem to exist exclusively so that the Dardennes can get their miserablism and false piety into the film. I can't remember the last time a single scene has so totally ruined a film to this degree.

[Soothsayer]

My issue with this film is the music cues. The cues in this film demonstrate why the other Dardenne Bros. films are so effective without them. The cues almost felt like the viewer's being led by the nose. Granted, I appreciated that it was a repetition of one cue, but still felt it was a flaw.