“On a Bicycle!”: A Grieving Father’s Journey

By bicycle! ***

by Mathias Mlekuz

French film, 1h29

"If there is a possibility of finding Youri, the only hope is in death, not in life." This is what Mathias Mlekuz thinks at the beginning of the journey he undertakes in his son's footsteps. In 2018, Youri went by bike from La Rochelle to Istanbul. From this experience, he made a book, which will serve as a travel guide for his father as well as for the friend who accompanies him on this adventure, the actor Philippe Rebbot. A journey all the more upsetting since Youri took his own life in 2022.

The two men, now aged 58 and 60, one overweight, the other with lungs clogged by cigarettes, saddle up, flanked by the dog Lucky in a basket. The pedaling is hard on the bodies, the breaks frequent and the Turkish metropolis so far away. Along the way, Mathias and Philippe put on clown shows in schools where the young man who disappeared, under the name of Youri Margarine, had given performances.

Like Philippe Rebbot and Romane Bohringer in the formidable L'Amour flou , Mathias Mlekuz grasps reality in his own way. Without worrying about clearly documenting the journey, he shows a few stages (Vienna, Budapest, Romania, etc.) and allows himself slight incursions into fiction based on improvisations, as when an actress plays the fussy owner of a house, a replica of an experience recounted by the young man.

The film rings extraordinarily true with the emotions that run through Mathias Mlekuz and Philippe Rebbot, their exchanges about Yuri, the impossible mourning, the friendship, the life that continues in fits and starts. The father takes up the son's poses on the edge of a lake and near the statue of Yuri Gagarin, trying to smile for the photo in the midst of sobs. Despite the melancholy, the humor and vitality of this formidably endearing duo, even in their arguments, draw tears of sadness and laughter in a cheerful demonstration that life also allows us to find our missing people.