Ghislain Lambert's Bicycle

In the seventies there is one name in cycling: Eddy Merckx. Ghislain Lambert is one of the others. He is Belgian, hard working and not good enough. He does not give up all the same. He turns professional, finds a team, is dropped, finds another. He rides the same races as Merckx and never comes near him in any of them. He tries doping, he tries cheating, he breaks an arm and comes back. In his whole career he never wins a major race. The narrative tells this not as a story of failure but as one of persistence. Philippe Harel directs. Benoît Poelvoorde plays Lambert; José Garcia and Daniel Ceccaldi are in the cast. It is a French and Belgian co-production. Ghislain Lambert is a fictional character; the film sets him among the real races, real names and real events of the period. Poelvoorde trained on a bicycle for the part and rode some of the racing scenes himself. The matter it treats is being second; the film never shows Merckx as a hero, only as unreachable. Doping is inside the narrative and the practice of the period is not hidden. Its humour is painful; the comedy comes out of how the character deceives himself. The period design and the racing footage are its strong side. Its limit is structure; the narrative proceeds in pieces and some sections stand like sketches. Who it is for: viewers who like cycling and Belgian humour. Who it is not for: the subject is narrow, the pace uneven, and the character not likeable.