Cyril (Thomas Doret) in Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s THE KID WITH A BIKE. Photo credit: Christine Plenus. A Sundance Selects release.

Directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne almost called their new film A Fairytale for our Times, but in the end the uncompromising filmmakers refused to spell it out for audiences. Still, in interviews the Belgian brothers emphasize the archetypal nature behind their slice of life drama: a wayfaring child, a fairy godmother, a forest where bad things happen. It is the stuff of fairy tales, but in The Kid with a Bike, these are the actors and stage of a contemporary fable. It traffics in the childhood anxieties of bedtime stories, but in a naturalistic setting that makes the viewer anxious.

Cyril (Thomas Doret) is the titular kid. Once upon a time his father (Jérémie Renier, who also played a bad father in The Dardennes’ 2005 film L’Enfant) abandoned him and sold his bike. The movie opens with the first of a series of heartbreakers where the kid tries to contact the dad who doesn’t want him. It introduces Cyril as a boy who holds on to things: his bike, a kind woman, a baseball bat, a telephone.

The kid calls from the office at the home where his father left him, listening to a message that he doesn’t believe: his father’s line has been disconnected. A counselor gently suggests the kid stop trying, but Cyril insists that he dial the number himself. Still unconvinced, the kid takes off, running to the woods in one of many escape attempts. When he finally gets out, he heads straight for his father’s apartment building, where the kid takes shelter in a clinic in the same building. When the school counselors come looking for him Cyril clings to a woman who happens to be in the clinic, and who reassures him, “You can hold me, but not so tight.”

Samantha (Cécile de France) and Cyril (Thomas Doret) in Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s THE KID WITH A BIKE. Photo credit: Christine Plenus. A Sundance Selects release.

Samantha (Cécile De France) is the kid’s benefactor, and her kindness doesn’t stop there. She retrieves Cyril’s bike from the neighborhood kid who bought it from Cyril’s father, and lets the kid stay with her on weekends. But escape is in his blood. The kid stays in the back of Samantha’s hairdresser’s shop, not yet ready to thrive by her kindness and still longing for a father or father figure. What he finds is the local gang leader, Wes, who treats Cyril well but only so that he can hire him to do his dirty work.

Cyril is always on the move: on bike, on foot, climbing fences and trees, he‘s restless and agitated, and the camera follows him wherever he goes. But the Dardennes, cinematic descendents of Robert Bresson, never resort to directorial trickery.They simply observe, so unobtrusively that you feel you are simply watching a life unspool in structured scenes, a dramatic arc played out in the streets and forests of Belgium.

Like a good fairy tale, The Kid with a Bike traffics in childhood fears. Like a good movie, it tugs at the heart strings without falling into maudlin sentiment.

The Kid with a Bike (Le Gamin au Vélo)
Written and directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.
Starring Thomas Dorest, Cécile De France, Jérémie Renier, and Egon Di Mateo.
Running time 87 minutes.
Not rated: contains some violence and profanity.
Opens today at E Street and Shirlington.