Our review of À Bicyclette!: friendship on the freewheel

They have good cyclist faces, these two! One is rather plump, the other has all the skinny features. They smoke, they drink and they happily feast whenever the opportunity arises. One wears a threadbare yellow cap, the other a faded Panama hat. And so this pair of friends sets themselves a crazy and very touching challenge: to repeat the journey by bicycle , from La Rochelle to Istanbul, in the footsteps of a son, a clown by trade, who committed suicide at the age of 28 four years earlier.

The director says it very well: " My son was 22 when he made this trip. We are 60, we drink, we eat. Going to Turkey by bike was a desperate act to find my son. I had the hope that the more I went looking for him, the more I would find him." As soon as we see the silhouette of the buddies mounted on their machines, we can't help but remember the words of Montand's song: "When we left early in the morning, when we left on the roads, on bicycles, we were a few good friends..."

A moving two-wheeled road movie, À bicyclette! tells in an authentic and sincere way the intimate and fraternal epic of two friends on the paths of mourning and resilience. Having won the Audience Award for almost a year in numerous festivals (from Angoulême to Valenciennes via Albi), Mathias Mlekuz's second film has won everyone's approval.

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Shot haphazardly, without a script or pre-established scenario, this heart-throb film is built along the journey. This is where its great originality comes from. À bicyclette! is based above all on a narrative in motion, continuously connected to improvisation, to the comicality of unfiltered dialogues. A big hat tip to the editing that knew how to subtly order the more than 180 hours of rushes gleaned during filming.

At each stage of this free-wheeling road trip, which travels from the Atlantic to the Black Sea, we witness sequences that are sometimes burlesque, sometimes hilarious or even moving. At each new location, Mathias, Philippe and their dog collect precious memories of Youri. They go at their own pace, revisiting the places where the young clown has been. The father's gaze overlaps that of his son. Emotion is often at the surface of the image. Our two heroes sometimes bicker, but reconcile immediately afterwards. This tender and powerful hymn to camaraderie evokes La Grande Vadrouille as much as the "Goscinnian" odysseys of Asterix and Obelix , all at the heart of an inner journey towards accepting mourning.

We will particularly remember the unquenchable laughter provoked by the shower scene in an Airbnb in Vienna, or the various red-nosed shows performed by our clownish tandem in front of an audience of passing children - who did not all laugh heartily, it must be admitted!

Figaro rating: 3/4