Europe Endless - Belgium: The Kid with a Bike (Dir Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 1h27m, 2011)

In 2022, Sight and Sound's decade poll named 1975's Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, directed by Chantal Akerman, as the greatest film of all time. It is, at least in part due to this,  the most famous Belgian film. No national cinema is a single film: Belgium is no exception, its history in the medium tied to its surrounding neighbours, and in particular France and Germany. Particularly from the 1980s onwards, where a new generation replaced the likes of Akerman in advancing the status of Belgian cinema, reaching the 1990s as frontrunners of European cinema. 

Examples include as the ultra-violent black comedy Man Bites Dog (C'est arrivé près de chez vous, Dir. Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel and Benoît Poelvoorde, 1992) and the fantastical Toto the Hero (Dir. Jaco Van Dormael). From this came the Dardenne brothers, with the coming of age drama, Rosetta (1999). It, and L'Enfant (2005), would win the brothers the Palme D'or, making them just two (and, to date, the only pair of brothers) to win the prestigious award twice. In many ways, The Kid with the Bike is an extension of the brothers' naturalistic style: their films are glimpses into the lives of the deprived, the homeless, the fringes of society. 

Their early quartet of films, including Rosette, L'Enfant and The Son (2002) consider troubled youth, a heavy handed justice system, and unemployment, many of their young heroes raising - or attempting to raise - themselves from poverty via hard work. I pay the brothers a compliment - their style is reminiscent of the English director Ken Loach and other directors of the 1950s and 1960s "Kitchen Sink Realism" movement; one they're clearly aware of, given their production company, Les Films du Fleuve, has subsequently produced I, Daniel Blake (2016), another Palme D'or winner. Arguably, all three directors are consistent visitors to the cinematic inspiration of Bicycle Thieves (Dir. Vittorio De Sica, 1948). 

At first, The Kid with a Bike, which, incidently, feels like the Dardennes' most obvious tribute to De Sica's film, given its bicycle theft, and naturalistic focus, feels very typically like the brothers' other films. The kid of the title is Cyril, (Thomas Doret) a troubled boy, whose father has abandoned him to the care system that tries to look after him - his introduction is an attempted escape from the care home, biting one member of staff and attempting to climb a fence, only to escape once again in search of his father. Unable to find him, and with the flat they shared now empty, so the young boy befriends a woman, Samantha, (Cécile de France) who takes him in. This is only the beginning of the boy's struggles, for whilst Samantha attempts to help him reconnect with his father (Jérémie Renier, also star of L'Enfant), there is local teen thug Wesker (Egon Di Mateo), who threatens to lead the boy astray.

On surface level, this may seem the Dardennes' typical fare: the depiction of directionless youth, of the need for purpose, of manipulative adults, of poverty. The film certainly does not pull its punches, either in the depiction of its troubled protagonist - Doret's performance is such that comparison to Dai Bradley's Billy in Loach's Kes (1969) is inevitable, but it is a sterling performance nonetheless. Not only does the film revolve around this performance, and how the young boy relates to those around him - this is ultimately a narrative where Cyril loses one parent figure and goes in search to find another - but it is one that hinges around the moments that make Cyril at once vulnerable and volatile. We fear for him when he is in the company of Wesker, who manipulates him into acts of theft and violence, and yet his actions also threaten those around him, including Samantha, who attempts to care for him. It is easy to consider The Kid with a Bike as a depiction of stunted youth.

This is only half the film; what marks out The Kid with a Bike from the rest of the brothers' cinema output is the small differences, the lighter tone, the sense of, for all the grounded verité realism of it, a fairytale atmosphere to the narrative, also written by the brothers. Whilst there is little sentimentality - this is after all a work in which an institutionalised child is abandoned by their father and where he fights against attempts of redemption, but there is undeniably a gentler touch, from the presence of music -in this case ,Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5, something largely absent from the brothers' other films, but via their long-time cinematographer, Alain Marcoen, a far brighter visual sensibility than their other films, whilst losing none of the strength of their social commentary. 

The Kid with a Bike is not just a sterling entry in the Dardenne brothers' filmography, nor simply an extremely well made socially astute cinematic document, whilst homaging one of European cinema's greatest works, but cinema at its most thought provoking and searching

Rating: Highly Recommended

The Kid with a Bike is available on BluRay from Artificial Eye and on streaming from Apple TV

Next week, to France and the greatest outing of one of its greatest cultural figures, Monsieur Hurlot in the dazzling depiction of modern France in Playtime