A bicycle!: A big and beautiful film on mourning (critic)
Inspired by a personal tragedy, the second feature film by Mathias Mlekuz upset by avoiding any lacrimal ease
It is a film that should never have existed A bicycle! is born from an intimate tragedy, from the most unbearable of all. The suicide of her child. A drama experienced by Mathias Mlekuz who then decides to undertake the same bicycle trip from La Rochelle to Istanbul – where he killed himself – that his son Youri had undertaken four years earlier. And to embark with him his friend Philippe Rebbot who slips the idea of making it a film … which will be built over the journey, without a pre-written scenario. How to make this intimate mourning a universal work? And how can we not switch to the lacrimal melo when each kilometer of this trip gives the two men the desire to cry all the tears of their bodies? It is this double prodigy that Mlekuz succeeds here for his second long as a director after Cure (2020). There is both dignity, burlesque, depth in A bicycle!. A sensitivity that never pours into sentimentality by always being always on this tenuous thread between documentary and fiction. An ability to make the characters endearing without making angels. Everything is not perfect. Some soft bellies, an achievement that sometimes suffers from this queen improvisation bias … except that these imperfections nourish the film, make it even more endearing. You never feel too much or a voyeur. Always at a good distance. The one that Mathias Mlekuz was able to create at each stage of this journey really not like the others who leaves you with your eyes fogged with tears and a smile on his lips.
By Mathias Mlekuz. With Mathias Mekluz, Philippe Rebbot, Josef Mlekuz… Duration 1h29. Released February 26, 2025
