Before I offer my final recommendations on films from 2011, I’ve just seen one that will figure high on my list for 2012, the Dardenne brothers’ superb Kid with a Bike (2012, MC-87, NFX), which provided an auspicious debut for Cinema Salon at Images, as some members of the film club convened there to watch and discuss the film. This film may be the most accessible that these Cannes favorites have made yet, true to their neo-neorealist style and themes, but appealing to a wider audience with a fairy tale aspect, shot in summertime, with a beautiful actress, and discrete but effective musical cues.
The Dardennes have built an internationally-acclaimed career by staying close to their roots, making all their films in their hometown of Seraing, a nondescript factory town in French-speaking Belgium, working cheap in semi-documentary style, with a small and familiar crew, and mostly nonprofessional actors, with a focus on the powerless, such as illegal immigrants and abandoned children. For Kid with a Bike, De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves is an obvious point of reference, as is Truffaut’s 400 Blows, but even more so Rossellini and Bresson, for an idiosyncratic but deeply-imbued Catholicism with a social conscience.
Le gamin au velo is the story of an 11-year-old boy who is all about velocity, running away, chasing after, swinging from one desperate attachment to another. Thomas Doret is outstanding as Cyril, the boy abandoned by his father in an institution, who finds a lifeline, indeed a fairy godmother, in the sturdy and understanding arms of Samantha, a hairdresser played to perfection by Cecile de France. With harsh reality turned into rewarding fable, every detail is specific, not symbolic, but dripping with significance. This is cinema of heart and mind, as well as eye and hand, an affirmation of kindness and connection in a tough world.
When Cinema Salon film club screenings resume at the Clark, I intend to program a Dardenne brothers double feature, but that probably won’t happen until September, though I may sneak in a screening in June, before the Clark’s summer season is in full swing.
This blog has evolved from immediate comments on films as I view them to more thematic groupings over a longer period. Aside from a final batch of films derived from the Film Comment list of critical favorites for 2011, I’ve got in the works a mini-essay on campaign films, my François-phile appreciation of Truffaut, and groupings of documentaries, older Hollywood films, and currently-running tv series of note. So please continue to check back on my stop-and-go progress.
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