Review of The Kid with a Bike (2011) by Mike M — 31 Oct 2011

The Dardennes clearly know "Bicycle Thieves", where the loss of a velocipede equated to an absence of social mobility and currency, but de Sica's neo-realist landmark is here filtered through a more contemporary sensibility yet: if the Dardennes are the closest the Continent has to Ken Loach, then "The Kid with a Bike" could be said to be their "Kes".

Tearing around the kids' home car park after the bike has been returned to him, Cyril evidently regards these two wheels as as much a playmate, as much an ally, as the kestrel was for Billy Casper in Loach's film; it's also a rare element over which this disadvantaged soul can exert some kind of control.

.. There's a certain sense, throughout "The Kid with a Bike", that the Dardennes are keen to explain their protagonist's mindset and actions through other, well-known texts (perhaps to avoid the criticism the opaque "Lorna" attracted), where their best works - 1999's "Rosetta", 2005's "The Child" - simply got on with observing their characters, and didn't feel the need to interpolate such footnotes, or indeed the sudden swells of Beethoven used here, to let us know how to respond.

The film functions, all the same, as a kind of Dardennes digest: an entry-level work, laid out in the reds and blues of a nursery-school primer, that you can well imagine playing to both arthouse stalwarts and teenage ethics classics alike.

The compassion and formal economy we've come to expect from the directors is never in question, and still impressive, up to a point - and in Doret, they showcase a young performer who's very nearly the equal, in his resilience and defiance, of his British namesake Thomas Turgoose.

For all the film's many referents and nods backwards, this is Belgium 2011.