DVD of the Week: The Best Movie of 2012

The Kid with a Bike is an extraordinary film that tells a riveting story of unconditional love.  It is emotionally powerful without being sentimental and is gripping without stunts and explosions.   The Kid with a Bike topped my list of Best Movies of 2012.  It’s out today on DVD – available from by Criterion Collection, no less.

A 12-year-old boy wants to find the father who dumped him at a children’s home, but meets a woman who becomes his de facto foster mom.  In the face of overwhelming evidence, the boy refuses to acknowledge the possibility that his father doesn’t want him.  He becomes angry, acts out and is poised to make life-ruining choices.  His one chance in life is the woman who is drawn to caring for him, but he could alienate her, too.

The writer-directors, the Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardennes, are two of my favorite film makers (The Son, Rosetta).  Their gift is minimalistic filmmaking that addresses fundamental themes like love, loss, forgiveness and belonging.  To avoid sappiness, they set their stories in gritty industrial towns and employ vividly realistic characters.  As all their work, The Kid with a Bike is an unvarnished and utterly realistic looking film.  This helps them create a fable about absolute goodness and the saving of another human being and present it in a credible, unsentimental and immediate package.

The Dardennes are known for their success with untrained actors, and here Thomas Doret is excellent as the kid – energetic, longing and single-minded.  The Belgian-born French star Cecille De France (Hereafter, The Spanish Apartment) is wonderful as the foster mom – steadfast but unknowable.  The compelling actor Olivier Gourmet (The Son, Rosetta, Mesrine) briefly appears in a bit part.

The Kid with the Bike: a riveting and unsentimental story of unconditional love

The Kid with a Bike is an extraordinary film that tells a riveting story of unconditional love.  It is emotionally powerful without being sentimental and is gripping without stunts and explosions.

A 12-year-old boy wants to find the father who dumped him at a children’s home, but meets a woman who becomes his de facto foster mom.  In the face of overwhelming evidence, the boy refuses to acknowledge the possibility that his father doesn’t want him.  He becomes angry, acts out and is poised to make life-ruining choices.  His one chance in life is the woman who is drawn to caring for him, but he could alienate her, too.

The writer-directors, the Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardennes, are two of my favorite film makers (The Son, Rosetta).  Their gift is minimalistic filmmaking that addresses fundamental themes like love, loss, forgiveness and belonging.  To avoid sappiness, they set their stories in gritty industrial towns and employ vividly realistic characters.  As all their work, The Kid with a Bike is an unvarnished and utterly realistic looking film.  This helps them create a fable about absolute goodness and the saving of another human being and present it in a credible, unsentimental and immediate package.

The Dardennes are known for their success with untrained actors, and here Thomas Doret is excellent as the kid – energetic, longing and single-minded.  The Belgian-born French star Cecille De France (Hereafter, The Spanish Apartment) is wonderful as the foster mom – steadfast but unknowable.  The compelling actor Olivier Gourmet (The Son, Rosetta, Mesrine) briefly appears in a bit part.

It’s one of the best films of the year.

DVD pick of the week: The Girl on the Train

The Girl on the Train (La fille du RER) is an absorbing mother daughter drama set in the Paris suburbs.

The young woman  is  Emilie Dequenne, the Belgian actress who won the best actress award at Canne when she was only 17 in the Dardenne brothers’ Rosetta.  In contrast to Rosetta, she doesn’t play a force of nature, but a slacker bobbing through life on a tide of random influences.  She lives with her single mom (Catherine Deneuve), and they get along, despite the mother’s unwelcome tips on job hunting.

The daughter meets a guy, her life takes some resulting turns and then she makes a really bad choice.  The mom seeks out an old beau, now a celebrity attorney to help fix the situation.

I missed seeing this in the theater because the trailer emphasizes a faked hate crime (and I wasn’t eager to see a topical movie).  But the movie is not about the faked hate crime, which occurs late into the story.  The story is character driven.  The daughter drifts first part of the movie and is controlled by events until she finds herself in a desperate situation; she panics and sees the most stupid option as a solution.  The situation then forces the mother to re-open a chapter in her life that she had chosen to close – how far will she open the old door?

It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2010 So Far.

See the rest of my DVD recommendations.