Frederic Bonnaud explores the theme of redemption in the work of world-renowned filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne:
Collision, fall, and rescue: this is the Dardenne Brothers’ Holy Trinity. They have long been reluctant to acknowledge the obvious Christian inspiration of their artistic sensibility. But interviewed recently about their new film, they compare the moment when Cyril (Thomas Doret) and Samantha (Cécile De France) run into each other, causing an impassioned bond to form, to a “reverse Pietà.” This isn’t an acknowledgement of their possible Christian faith but an invaluable indication of the principal source of their fictional and formal inspiration: the inexhaustible body of Christian tales and their iconography. Today, the Virgin Mary is a childless young woman who cohabits with her boyfriend. And she adopts a lost child, who has lost his father and who rides around and around on his bicycle. In saving him, she commits herself fully to an act that is irreducible and mysterious.
Jeffrey Overstreet is on the same page:
More than one critic has called The Kid with a Bike “minor Dardennes.” Apparently Samantha seems too good, too forgiving. One calls her “the mom nobody in this world ever had,” and says her actions do not seem very “grounded in the realities of human interaction.” … I don’t share their bewilderment. Have you never been blessed by a gesture of undeserved love? Have you never witnessed grace that confounds you, or felt compelled to reach out and help someone without knowing why?
The Dish 