Miami International Film Festival 2012

Beligum’s celebrated filmmakers, brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, are masters at extracting profound emotions from the simplest of scenarios. In their latest film, an 11-year-old boy, Cyril (Thomas Doret), has been abandoned by his deadbeat father, Guy (Jérémie Renier). Angry and headstrong, Cyril runs away from the boys’ home where he has been placed, and a chance encounter with a hairdresser named Samantha (Cécile de France, in a luminous performance) helps change the course of his destiny. Despite her misgivings, Samantha kindly accepts to be Cyril’s guardian, and he moves in with her. But Cyril’s psychic damage is intense and cannot be righted overnight. He fervently insists on finding his father. But when Guy is eventually found, he has no interest in Cyril or any parental responsibility whatsoever. In fact, Guy sells Cyril’s beloved bike.

As in other chronicles by the Dardenne brothers (The Child, Rosetta, Lorna’s Silence), the point is never forced. We are not told what to feel. We simply observe human responses that are all too recognizable, and marvel at the ability to see a lifetime of choices in a single moment or gesture. - Jaie Laplante