The Kid With A Bike
27 Mar 2013
Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Belgium
2011
87 min
The Dardenne brothers (Lorna’s Silence, The Child) have created another piece of transcendent and gripping cinema from a grittily mundane story. Eleven-year old Cyril is a troubled boy: abandoned by his father, he searches obsessively for his bicycle, a symbol of their relationship.
Young Thomas Doret as the boy gives a remarkably self-assured and sincere performance, drawing the viewer in to his hopeless world and making us wish for things to work out for him. The whole film almost bursts with compassion for the protagonists, even as it resists cheap sentiment.