À bicyclette!

" The Way "(aka "la route ensemble" ) (2010)directed by Emilio Estevez starred his own father,Martin Sheen, as Tom Avery , an American doctor , who must travel to France after the death of his son ,Daniel , who had embarked on the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela . Tom decides to transport his son 's ashes and make the pilgrimage himself ...

"A Bicyclette" registers the same desire ;a father wants to do what his son ,Youri,did five years ago : a trip to Istambul by bike (except for the mountains :they use coaches and trains)with his best pal ;Youri committed suicide ,his was a professional clown and clowns are not always happy:no explanation is given.

The proloque,which involves famous faces of the French cinema,is wonderful in its simplicity ; a photo album,and the desire to find traces Youri may have left all along the way to turkey;a road movie,a bit uneven ,but endearing : In front of a chapel ,after cracking -harmless- blue jokes about Mary and Joseph ,they begin to wonder about the meaning of life , the possibility of a life in the great beyond "where I could meet Youri ";later,in a church, the father bursts into tears ; they stop at a fun fair,to find again the childhood pleasures of long ago

Thus, through the pleasure and the pain , our heroes ride their bike across Austria, the Czech Republic ,Romania (Dracula's castle) before reaching their destination; here the movie seems to verge on supernatural ,but it's not so :whereas the girl from Austria had no memories, two people in Turkey remember their good times with the departed son.

Our heroes (one of them is a chain smoker and that he achieves such a feat is a bit implausible ) , novice clowns, perform in the schools ; these grown-up kids may remind you of Yves Robert ,who ended his Pagnol adaptation "le château de ma mère" by this sentence:"life is made of small pleasures and big grieves ;but don't you tell it to the children"

Too bad they did not include Yves Montand's eponymous song , a memorable song about childhood nostalgia.

Based on a true story;the director actually lost his own son .It gives the movie an emotion Estevez's (although very good too) movie did not posess.