Tomorrow your mother is coming to pick you up, the foster mother tells 10-year-old Lu, while other children scurry around in the background. Another child asks if she’s not looking forward to it, but Lu leaves the house in silence for the time being, and while she’s walking down the street, her anticipation of the announced visit finally bursts forth.
In the evening, in bed, she is asked by another child in her room if she can remember the last time her mother came to visit. She can’t remember, but she proudly tells that her mother is a famous Hollywood actress and even does her own stunts.
However, two more days pass until her mother shows up. Lu’s reactions to the reunion are correspondingly subdued. When her mother finally tells her to come with her, Lu reacts a bit unsettled, especially since she can’t ask anyone else right now, since everyone else has left for a swim shortly before. But it is her mother and so she leaves a note with the info that she will be back in the evening, takes her backpack and quickly packs her probably most important friend inside, a small snake (snake) which she has baptized Hank.
They could go into town together, Lu suggests as they walk down the street, but they would have to go in the other direction, she adds. But Karina obviously has other plans, which she doesn’t say for the time being, and takes them both to an old, rickety Chevrolet, where not even the passenger door can be opened properly. During the drive, the first calls from her caring foster mother slowly start coming in, which she ignores for the time being because her mother had asked her not to talk to anyone about her special trip. In the end, the battery also dies. Nevertheless, at some point she tells her mother that they should be back by the evening, but Karina has completely different plans. She explains that they will now travel together from the Netherlands to Poland, because Lu’s grandmother lives there and she wants to get hidden money from the apartment, with which the two can make a carefree life. A plan that does not quite coincide with the expectations of Lu, but she agrees in the end, after all, it is her mother.
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So that the two are not recognized by everyone, they have to give themselves new names according to their mother and, best of all, dress up. For this reason, Karina has a selection of wigs in her luggage and suggests that from now on the two call themselves Bonnie and Clyde as in the film, which Lu does not know. For Lu the whole thing seems on the one hand very strange what happens there everything, on the other hand she feels an exciting change from the other everyday life, although one can recognize again and again the fight with her conscience in her acting. So she takes the one or other opportunity to secretly stay in contact with the foster mother to report that everything is ok and takes a little longer.
During their road trip together, Karina always has some quirky ideas in store to keep her daughter in line. For example, from one moment to the next she throws her cell phone out of the moving car with the words that from now on no one can disturb her. “Only you and I” are her words. But as fun as the trip may seem, the journey with the rather volatile mother is not entirely uncomplicated. Lu is well aware of that, but she simply wants to spend more time with her mother and for that reason she gets involved in some other things that she has probably never done before, let alone experienced.
Conclusion:
I noticed Kiddo in a positive way especially because of its quite unusual film style and it can come up with some funny but also thoughtful parts. The combination of dutiful child and birdless mother simply holds a nice potential for a crazy story, because actually it should be the other way around.
The film also offers some nice details. Certain elements are specifically underlined with sounds when they come into the focus of the story, Lu’s thoughts are shown in a 4:3 format on the screen and symbolically show various small clips from the film or TV world, the mother has a great fondness for old black and white films, the chosen screening technique looks like an old 70mm film and there is a running gag with a boy with a wonderful facial expression who always appears exactly where the two of them are settling down and does nothing but constantly light something on fire. The whole thing gives Kiddo as a whole a very special charm and sets it apart from one or two other road movies.
Actors:
Rosa van Leeuwen (Lu)
Frieda Barnhard (Karina)
Lidia Sadowa (Karinas Cousine)
Maksymilian Rudnicki (Grzegorz)
Aisa Winter (Pflegemutter)
Director:
Zara Dwinger
More about the movie:
https://www.berlinale.de/en/2023/programme/202304726.html
Trailer
