Me and My Moulton
2014 · 13m · Canada
Directed by Torill Kove
Genres: comedy, coming-of-age, family
Tones: humorous, tender, whimsical
A seven-year-old girl and her sisters ask their loving but unconventional parents for a bicycle, expecting to be disappointed.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects the heartwarming family story—bicycle, disappointment, redemption—and Kove just... delivers exactly that, which is precisely why it's maddening; there's no subversion here, just competent execution of a premise that's been done a thousand times.
Kove positions this squarely in the lineage of Scandinavian domestic cinema—the tender observation of childhood ritual, the formal restraint that lets small moments accumulate into genuine emotional weight—and the editing's refusal to rush the children's anticipation becomes the film's philosophical spine.
The decision to let the camera linger on the parents' creative, slightly chaotic problem-solving rather than cut away to the children's reactions transforms what could've been sentimental into something genuinely alive—it's the adults we're actually moved by.