THE KID WITH A BIKE

THE KID WITH A BIKE
Written and Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Starring Thomas Doret and Cecile de France

When I think kids on bikes, I think of happy little children pedaling their hearts out to get up hills and coasting down them afterward with the wind in their hair and their hands off the handles. I do not think about young boys, abandoned by their fathers and gripping to their bikes desperately as the last and final lifeline between them and the parental comfort they used to know. Fortunately for me, the Dardenne Brothers, do see things this way in their eye-opening and often heartbreaking film, THE KID WITH A BIKE.

Cyril is a 12-year-old boy living in a state run foster home after his father left him there a month earlier. In an impressive performance by unknown actor, Thomas Doret, who was chosen from over 100 auditions, Cyril is not like any child I’ve seen on screen. He is uncontrollable and unconsolable. From the moment we meet him, he is refusing to accept the reality of his situation, understandably so mind you considering the poor guy is all of 12 and is still waiting for his father to come back and get him. He is constantly trying to run away, to the point of needing restraint on a number of occasions. His angst is untamable until a woman he met only one, named Samantha, and played by the lovely, Cecile de France, brings him the bike his father had given him at one point, but had taken with him when he left. This random act of kindness forms a kinship between the two of them that neither expects nor knows how to process.

THE KID WITH A BIKE keeps in step with most of the Dardennes Brothers previous work by not being overly sentimental, but breaks away to some extent by being reasonably more bright in tone and by containing music, something the Dardennes Brothers tend to avoid as a general rule. The result may be more accessible to some extent but the subject matter itself maintains the film’s gravitas. The unlikely relationship that unfolds on screen between Cyril and Samantha, and the difficulty with which it is achieved, reminds me of that uphill pedal from earlier. And with the close of the film, comes that exhilarating downhill freedom.

HEREAFTER

HEREAFTER

Written by Peter Morgan

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Starring Matt Damon, Cecile de France, Bryce Dallas Howard and George McLaren

Billy: A life that is all about death is no life at all.

It’s no secret that Clint Eastwood is getting up there in years. He has been churning out films on an almost yearly basis in the last decade as if he is trying to cram as much work as possible into his legacy before he can no longer do so. It seems then a natural choice for Eastwood to take on the afterlife in his adaptation of Peter Morgan’s screenplay, HEREAFTER. In many ways, it is one of his most organic works but aside from acknowledging that an afterlife exists, Eastwood is nowhere closer to any insight on the subject.

It is also no secret that I am not a big fan of Eastwood’s work as a director. I find he often oversimplifies the problem and renders complicated scenarios into clichéd lessons about what it means to him to be a good human being. The idea of him tackling something as complicated as the passage between life and death was frightening at first, even if the writing was in Morgan's hands, THE QUEEN and FROST/NIXON scribe (click the titles for full reviews). In HEREAFTER, Morgan tells three separate stories about three different people around the world who are dealing with death in different ways. A French reporter (Cecile de France) is recovering from her brush with death; a young twin boy in England (George McLaren) has just lost his brother; and Matt Damon plays a genuine psychic in San Francisco who has retired in hopes of finding a normal life. While all reasonably compelling separately, their plights never come together, which leaves the film feeling cold and detached.

There are moments in HEREAFTER that are genuinely engrossing and memorable, including an opening so intense, I felt I might soon know my own afterlife. Eastwood lets go of his ordinarily tight grasp on the picture to allow its characters to speak for themselves and its often-haunting imagery to be just that. At first, I was pleasantly surprised but then I realized that without Eastwood playing God that there was really no direction in HEREAFTER at all. Subsequently, I wasn’t able to connect with a film about an experience that connects us all.