_The Kid with a Bike_, _Queen to Play_

[septimus_...@q.com]

Two picturesque titles for films that remind me of other films. _Queen to Play_ is about Sandrine Bonnaire's Helene, a housewife, pliant, self-effacing chambermaid at a hotel, transforming herself into a cool, confident chess champion through the mentorship of a disreputable recluse Kroger (Kevin Kline). She gets interested in chess for the first time when she spies on a glamorous hotel guest play with her lover. She asks Kroger to teach him, soon surpassing him on account of her natural talent (a fantasy, obviously -- chess takes years to master). Kroger is old, grumpy, and at times nasty and humiliates people. At its best, the film evokes Hal Hartley's _Henry Fool_, where a garbage man is inspired by an enigmatic mentor to become a Nobel Prize caliber poet. Ultimately _Queen to Play_ doesn't have to courage to go too far, but its has its moments and its share of visual flair; the last image of Bonnaire sailing to Paris, spreading her arms on the railing, not only suggest she finally gets to spread her wings, but recall an image in Bonnaire's cinematic debut _A Nos Amours_. Why do I keep thinking that the film's young director Caroline Bottaro will soon be offered a Hollywood assignment?

The Dardenne Brothers' _The Kid with a Bike_ features their most self-conscious evocation of Bresson yet. The short bursts of solemn music (from Beethoven's emperor concerto) punctures the feral kid Cyril's search for Father -- first his biological one who deserts him, and then the drug-dealer who uses him for crime. The hyperkinetic, sometime violent Cyril is as much a cinematic descendent of Rosetta as Bresson's Mouchette (without the suicides). He is truly touched by grace, and not just in the form of Beethoven. Belgian actress Cecile de France (working with the Belgian Dardennes for the first time) plays a hair-dresser whom he runs over while running from orphanage enforcers. She inexplicably takes him in. Both kind and stern, she is a miracle in the flesh who sticks by him like a real mother even after his violent turn. (Maybe there is a Claude Miller connection here somewhere.) _The Kid with a Bike_ is the kind of glorious humanistic films that used to be the norm in "art house" cinema of the 90s; it makes you want to do great things afterwards, to become a greater human being. _The Kid with a Bike_ dcouments the Dardenne's sure if subtle evolution and growth. We are counting on them to hold the fort until sanity returns to cinematic curation and criticism.