[ErikM]

Thanks for the birthday wishes !
I took a day free to visit a cinema in Gent with my wife. We have chosen a film by two famous Belgian Brothers. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who have won the Palme d'Or twice have now a new film "The Kid With A Bike", a social-realist drama set in the suburban-rural hinterland of the directors' native Belgium, on the theme of parent and child, and father and son. Told in the Dardennes’ characteristically elliptical but to-the-point manner, the story follows the travails of Cyril (Doret), an 11-year-old boy first seen trying to contact his absentee father Guy and retrieve the bike that means everything to him. On one of his desperate escapes from the care home where he is living, he has a chance encounter with Samantha (de France), a hairdresser living on his father’s housing estate.

And after she brings the bike back to him - apparently for straightforward Good Samaritan reasons that the film never spells out - Cyril asks if she’ll foster him at weekends. Samantha contacts Guy (Renier, playing another of the wastrels he specialises in for the Dardennes), but the boy gets a cold brush-off from his feckless dad.

Playing adoptive mother to Cyril proves far from easy for Samantha, and things take a troubling turn when the kid is befriended by teenager Wes (di Mateo) whom you can instantly tell is going to be a very bad influence indeed.

Despite the worst happening, things seem to be panning out for the boy, when matters take a left turn in a genuinely unpredictable coda. The film’s final moments leave you genuinely uncertain about what’s in store for Cyril, but even so, they bring the film to a satisfying and quietly moving
close.
After the film we had a tastefull dinner in "A Food Affair" in the center of Gent. Unusual but lovely dishes to forget that I'm "50" years old now.

Greetings,

ErikM