Programmer's Note

This moving new work from brothers Jean- Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Belgium’s most celebrated contemporary filmmakers and the authors of so many esteemed works from Festivals past, is among the best of recent films to tackle the ever-fragile subject of child abuse. Though the theme is familiar in the Dardennes’ oeuvre, it has never been given quite the sort of treatment provided here.

The Kid with a Bike is about a feisty eleven year- old who refuses to accept his abandonment by his parents. The film opens at the home of Cyril (Thomas Doret), who is about to take flight after his young and irresponsible father, Guy (Jérémie Renier, star of the Dardennes’ La promesse and L’enfant), fails to answer the phone. What Cyril doesn’t know is that his father has taken a flight of his own — the kind with no forwarding address.

The stark realism traditionally favoured by the Dardennes is momentarily shaken off in these establishing scenes. Instead, they infuse The Kid with a Bike with a new kind of magic in the form of Samantha (Cécile de France), who embodies the closest thing to a fairy godmother you’re likely to find in a Dardennes brothers film. Samantha is a local hairdresser whom Cyril randomly latches on to, and who will eventually manage to recover the bike Cyril’s dad heartlessly sold. Stunned by this act of pure and unexpected kindness, Cyril puts his mounting anger on hold long enough to ask Samantha to be his guardian.

It’s a downward spiral from there, occasionally interrupted by snatches of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, which reminds us that there are pockets of beauty even in the dreariest of universes, and that even a kid as damaged and isolated as Cyril could ultimately be all right.