Filmwell Icons: #2. Samantha

Samantha (Cécile De France) is a hairdresser; she works with her hands, and she knows the art of gentleness. Hairdressers also tend to become listeners… even counselors and confessors. All of these skills will come into play as she finds herself seized by a broken-hearted boy. The central character of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s film The Kid with a Bike is Cyril, a child who has lost his mother and been abandoned by his father. For some reason, he takes hold of Samantha as if he is drowning and she is his life preserver. She has no obligation to help him. And if she does, she is likely to break her boyfriend’s fragile patience. But she does respond, at great cost to herself, becoming the boy’s sole evidence for grace and hope in a world full of dangers and betrayals. Her grace is so bold that some film critics found her to be unbelievable, impossible. What a sad state of affairs, that such love should be hard to believe in.