The Kid With a Bike

This film, by the Dardenne brothers, is about a young boy, Cyril, who has been rejected by his father and who takes the duration of this film to accept that fact. We see him first search for his father, then make contact with him. He is initially living in an institution and is then taken in hand by a hairdresser, Samantha, who wants to care for him. She is played by Cécile de France who, like the film, is Belgian. She is the first star that the Dardenne brothers have used. I admired her in The Singer and in Un Secret and in this film she is excellent.

The film is very moving as Samantha tries to help Cyril to cope with his rejection and when she in turn has to cope with Cyril's bad behaviour, particularly when Cyril falls under the influence of a local hoodlum who wants to use Cyril as a junior partner in crime.

Corpo Celeste

This film has strong similarities to last year's Love Like Poison - both are coming of age films of a young female set in a strongly religious context. Corpo Celeste was made and is set in Italy and, like Love Like Poison, it is a first feature film by a female director, Alice Rohrwacher, who also wrote the screenplay.

The story is of a mother and daughter who move back to a poor town in southern Italy after a period living in Switzerland, and it focuses on the efforts of the daughter, Marta, played by Yio Vianello, to resettle in the community as she takes instruction in the Catholic church for her catechism. We are led through several telling and moving scenes as, in her growing awareness, she starts to question the authority figures around her and the path that she has embarked on.  Her sister is spiteful to her and her mother remained a rather shadowy figure. The film is very subtle as it shows her experiencing her first period and then cutting her hair as a mark of her growing autonomy.