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Film REVIEWS
DRAMA THE KID WITH A BIKE (12A)87min ●●●●●
The Dardenne Brothers’ latest film is one of their very best – the story of the relationship between a young boy Cyril (Thomas Doret), recently taken into foster care, and local hairdresser Samantha (Cécile de France). The two meet by chance when Samantha generously buys back Cyril's beloved red bike after it’s sold by the father who has just abandoned him. The two get to know one another and Samantha offers to look after the willful Cyril at the weekends.
Following in the footsteps of their Palme D’Or winner L’Enfant (The Child), The Kid with a Bike shows the filmmakers’ deep commitment to realism, shooting in a natural style which, through closely observed details, speak mountains about the lives and situations of the protagonists.
The performances here are key and not for one moment
do they falter. Cécile de France, previously seen in Mesrine and Hereafter, is excellent as Samantha, who is trying to balance compassion for the young boy alongside a level of authority that will stop him going astray. While newcomer Thomas Doret as Cyril is filled with a constant restlessness and angry defiance that is immediately understandable and in turn touching. On the surface The Kid with a Bike seems like an incredibly simple film – something that’s even portrayed by the title – but it’s a testament to the filmmakers that the everyday, shown without hyperbole, can be made into such a captivating story, which never feels stale or predictable. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne show themselves, yet again, to be filmmakers working with great compassion and sensitivity, and it is hard to think of another film in recent months that is filled with such humanity as The Kid With A Bike. (Gail Tolley) ■ Selected release from Fri 23 Mar.
HORROR THE DEVIL INSIDE (15) 83min ●●●●●
DRAMA ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA (15) 150min ●●●●● MUSICAL DRAMA HUNKY DORY (15) 110min ●●●●●
Horror has a new home in the ‘found footage’ genre that spawned The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, with The Devil Inside the latest low-budget effort to conjure up huge box office returns with the aid of heavy studio marketing that’s far more creative than the film itself. Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade) is obsessed
with possession; her own mother Maria (Suzan Crowley) murdered three priests during an exorcism. Isabella travels to find a distressed Maria in a high- security asylum in Rome and befriends two priests, Ben (Simon Quarterman) and David (Evan Helmuth), who believe the Vatican isn’t doing enough to help people like her. So, with film crew in tow, the unholy trio hit the exorcism trail, with bloody results. Covering similar ground to last year’s The Rite, The Devil Inside has a wide-eyed credulity that recalls the faux gravity of The Exorcist, but fails on every other point, notably an ending that makes a shaggy dog story of the entire enterprise. Even the most gullible sensation seekers should avoid this skimpy, poorly shot and incoherent entry in the exorcism stakes. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Fri 16 Mar.
What extraordinary eyes and ears has the Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Eyes that (via cinematographer Gökhan Tiryaki) transform the most workaday vistas into lustrous dreamscapes; ears that find the hidden absurdities and profundities in everyday exchanges. Ceylan’s sixth feature film and the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes is a humane, beguiling and idiosyncratic shaggy dog story that circles its main narrative rather than addressing it directly; as policemen, a doctor and a murder suspect search for a buried body in the Turkish countryside, the facts emerge piecemeal, as do details about the lives, values and relationships of the men we’re watching. Like Cristi Puiu’s The Death of Mr Lazarescu, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia emphasises the multiplicity of stories that cling around any one event; like Fargo, it plays up the incessant bubbling of life and personality even as death lurks nearby, and the absurdities that attend the solemnest events. Playful, elegant, frustrating and beautiful, this film has the moral and imaginative scope of a great novel; it demands and rewards complete absorption. (Hannah McGill) ■ Selected release from Fri 16 Mar.
The turbulent lives of working class teenagers in 1970s Britain have hardly been underrepresented on our cinema screens in recent years, with Cemetery Junction, Soulboy and Neds all recreating the era, each offering varying degrees of grit and golden- hued remembrance.
Director Marc Evans skews to the latter with this funny and gently moving tale of a sun-kissed summer in rural Wales, retreading familiar ground from those films but giving the genre a fresh twist by using period music as much more than just audio set-dressing. Free-spirited drama teacher Vivienne (Minnie Driver) declares the goal to her pupils in the opening scene: ‘to put on a show that William Shakespeare and David Bowie would be proud of’, and not even the standard third-act twists will stop them.
There’s at least one sub-plot too many, but audiences willing to suspend disbelief will be swept up as the greatest high school band in the history of music perform an impeccable selection of hits from The Beach Boys to ELO in preparation for their musical version of The Tempest. (Paul Gallagher) ■ General release from Fri 2 Mar.
1–29 Mar 2012 THE LIST 69