A Bicyclette: A Journey Through Life and Death, By Bike

Just by chance, I saw A Bicyclette, a “docu-fiction” (more on this presently) directed by Mathias Mlekuz, shortly after taking in Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain. The similarities, and differences, are telling. Both deal with a buddy trip in Europe, in the first a bike trip from Paris to Istanbul, in the other a Holocaust-themed excursion in Poland. Mlekuz (who plays the autobiographical protagonist, Mathias), and Philippe Rebbot (Philippe) co-wrote the screenplay. History aside, both have a dark dimension: in A Real Pain, a character had attempted suicide by overdose, in A Bicyclette Mathias’ son did in fact commit suicide. The trip to Istanbul is an homage to Youri, who ironically was a professional clown, and died in that city. Both films are sad-funny, but A Bicyclette is more melancholy, especially because it relates events that really happened.

Both in turn resemble Michael Winterbottom’s Trip films with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon: two men whose trips result in adventures (and misadventures), who bicker, but also commune in a funny, moving way. Mlekuz and Rebbot are more grizzled than the relatively clean-cut Coogan and Brydon, or the youngish Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin. It’s not just age that sets their characters apart but experience. They’ve had marriages, families, careers, ups and downs, and it shows in the wonderfully weather-beaten faces, the belly of one, lanky limbs of the other. Also in their habits: shamelessly eating, smoking, and drinking. At times the only thing that keeps them going during the physical exertion of long-distance biking is their sheer disbelief that they’re actually doing it.

It’s not 100% biking. They pack their bikes onto coaches or trains, in one case strap them onto a camper truck whose owner gives them a lift. Mathias and Philippe speak rather rudimentary English, and some of the other Europeans they interact with aren’t exactly fluent. This makes for hilarious misunderstandings, especially with a young woman managing an Airbnb who communicates via an eccentric translation app. Another slight but cute complication: the men are traveling with Mathias’s little dog. The dog’s sunglasses are a bit much, but like the people they meet, the dog takes the men out of their comfort zone. (A problem with A Real Pain is an airless quality resulting from the characters not interacting with locals).

Along the way we’re treated to travelogue images of French countryside, Vienna, a Romanian village, and eventually Istanbul. For the most part, the visuals aren’t that exceptional. They’re not much more interesting than what any of us might film with a phone camera. But the diversity of settings reminds us that Europe isn’t monolithic, homogenized, Americanized, or even Europeanized. There are remnants of past empires, ancient or recent, and what’s more real people still actually live there.

The lead lining of the happy-go-lucky trip is the memory of Youri’s death. The two friends talk it out over campfires. They ask people who might have met him, usually to no avail. Random incidents may trigger a memory that makes the father break down. This can be, and usually is, poignant. Although it makes me feel like the Grinch to say so, sometimes it borders on mawkish. Yet it always comes across as genuine in a way most mainstream films (recent Oscar winners included) do not.

What keeps A Bicyclette from being a downer? One thing is the element of surprise: there are unexpected things that regularly happen: The strict Airbnb landlady takes the two skinny-dipping. They meet a Frenchman (the “Norman of the Carpathians”) who operates a gallery out of his burnt-out shop in the middle of a Romanian nowhere. Philippe suddenly, inexplicably feels a visceral terror when they camp out in a field in the dead of night. The second thing is one of the saving graces of age: sheer cussedness, or as the British say, bloody-mindedness. That will even take the form of a drag-out argument between the two friends. It’s unseemly, it isn’t existential Xanax, but instead resembles a newborn’s cry of life — and for life.

Mlekuz and Rebbot are outstanding as the shaggy, life-affirming friends — these are not grumpy old men whining their way into the night (though sometimes they verge on it, like when they have to pedal through a muddy slough in the forest). They are Parisian versions of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, or perhaps Bouvard and Pecuchet, except that what they’re in search of is not arcane knowledge but felt experience. They ultimately succeed in finding it, and the audience feels privileged sharing it with them.

A Bicyclette closely follows real events — especially the tragic fate of Mlekuz’s son. (He has another son, who appears in the film.) Mlekuz was led to make the film after seeing that Youri’s last message to his Iranian girlfriend Marzieh (who lives in Istanbul and plays herself) was “I love you”. In a way it’s the cinematic equivalent of autofiction, the self-regarding literary genre first popularized in France, but also more than that. Making this film was the real-life equivalent of the characters’ trek from Paris to Istanbul. Mlekuz’s long career had been mostly in acting in the theater, film (notably in Léos Carax’ Pola X) and television. A Bicyclette is only his second feature (the first came out in 2020). I look forward to the next one.

Production: F comme Film/M.E.S. Productions/Cine Nomine

Distribution: Ad Vitam