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Dec 31, 2014Nursebob rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Stuck in a foster care home and ignored by his deadbeat father, 12-year-old Cyril is given to moments of manic determination and violent temper tantrums. It’s during one such frenzied outing (he’s searching for dad while being chased by care staff) that he latches, quite literally, onto Samantha, a soft-spoken hairdresser who takes a liking to the bratty tow-headed tyke and, after a disastrous meeting with Cyril’s father, agrees to be his weekend foster family along with her ambivalent boyfriend. Angry with his dad and looking for a sense of belonging it isn’t long before Cyril gravitates towards the wrong crowd, in this case the local neighbourhood tough who introduces him to the lucrative world of delinquency despite Samantha’s impotent warnings. Will her love for Cyril be enough to save him? And will a final showdown in a sunlit woods prove to be his downfall...or salvation? Using one small child on a bike, the Dardenne brothers examine the ways in which morality and accountability (or their opposites) are handed down from father to son whether it’s Cyril’s father slamming the door in his devoted son’s face or another father teaching his errant boy how to fabricate a believable story for the police. It also goes to great lengths to illustrate the effects of anger, neglect and, conversely, unconditional love on the development of the child and, by inference, society at large. Unfortunately, for me at least, it proved to be a colourful parable with a hollow centre. Very little here is wholly believable and the story’s paint-by-number structure is just too neat and tidy. While the character of Cyril does possess a certain off-putting combination of childish belligerence and pained vulnerability (amazing performance) the guardian angel role of Samantha is just a tad too contrived despite a brief scene hinting at some personal issues of her own. Destined to be one of those heart-warming crowd pleasers.