Léo and Rémi have been neighbors and best friends since childbirth or almost. They spend most of their weekends together, sleep at each other’s house, hug each other willingly… But at the dawn of adolescence, their relationship begins to be talked about at school. If Rémi seems indifferent to others, Léo feels embarrassment, even panic, welling up inside him. So he begins to reject Rémi. Openly. Publicly. Painful, fine and ultimately enlightening work, Closeby Lukas Dhont, is in the running for the Oscar for best international film.
For memory, Close won the Grand Prix at Cannes, ex aequo with Stars at Noon (stars at noon), by Claire Denis. Already, the Belgian filmmaker’s first film, Girlabout a trans teenager who dreams of dancing, won him the Camera d’or and the Palme queer in 2018.
“In fact, this film was born about eighteen years ago, but without my knowledge”, confides, a bit mysterious, the filmmaker of barely 31 years old met in the fall during his visit to Cinemania, where Close won the Jury Prize.
“After my first film, I had traveled so much and talked about it so much that when I sat down in front of my computer to start working on my next project, it was completely blocked. »
The young director then understood that he needed to recharge his batteries, to return home, to the house of his childhood. “My grandmother, who still lives there, is a retired teacher, and when I arrived she had organized a welcoming committee for me at the school where I had studied; it was very touching. One of my former teachers hugged me really tight and she started crying. She was proud of my journey, but she thought above all about the child I had been, uncomfortable in my body and not at all corresponding to the ideas that we traditionally have of what should and should not be not be a boy. In fact, I had the feeling of belonging neither to the group of boys nor to the group of girls. »
Hence this confidence to the effect that the genesis of Close dates back to eighteen years ago, when Lukas Dhont was himself more or less the age of Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav De Waele).
“It was at this age that I received my first camera, and where my mother became my first actress. I followed her everywhere with my camera…”
Unsurprisingly, apart from Léo and Rémi, the two other key characters in the film are their mothers, Nathalie (Léa Drucker) and Sophie (Émilie Dequenne).
“In the beginning, cinema was entertainment for me, of course, but also a refuge. It was only when I grew up, years later, that I realized that it was also a way for me to talk about the concerns and questions that had been in my mind since childhood. »
The beginning of fear
As he matured the project, Lukas Dhont made a decisive reading: Deep Secrets. Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connectionby American psychologist Niobe Way.
“She followed 150 boys between the ages of 13 and 18. At 13, she asks them about their male friendships, and their testimonies are very beautiful, full of tenderness. They use the word “love” without embarrassment or shame: there is a lot of emotion in their vocabulary. At 18, she asks them the same questions, and there, the vocabulary has changed. They no longer dare to speak with this language full of emotions. As if they had learned or integrated in the meantime that this vocabulary does not belong to them; that as a boy, as a man, you shouldn’t talk like that. »
Lukas Dhont explains that he felt not only challenged, but deeply “connected” with these boys.
“I realized that I too, at a certain age, started to fear this intimacy in my friendships with other boys. »
At this stage of the interview, Lukas Dhont, who shows an openness and a frankness all the more appreciable as they are rare, is silent for a moment, thoughtful. “I felt so alone, but there, reading this book, I understood that these contradictory feelings and this rejection of intimacy between friends, it was not at all unique to me. That maybe, we all went through it, that we all felt this fear about the expectations that fall on us when we are a boy in this world. It’s not necessarily linked to sexuality, but rather to masculinity: with these expectations and these codes, we have built a vocabulary linked to masculinity, and this vocabulary very often of brutality. »
In this corner of the world, how many times have we heard, to designate a child, the expression “he’s a real guy”: “real” in what sense? Ask the question…
While specifying that in our time, efforts are being made to deconstruct this narrow, toxic model, Lukas Dhont believes that there is still a long way to go. Hence the need to Close.
Universal scope
In the film, the beginning of the end of the friendship between Léo and Rémi takes the form of a very simple question formulated by a classmate in the schoolyard: “Are you lovers? The tone is innocent, even benevolent, but the look betrays the underlying pettiness and acute awareness of the effect produced.
At the beginning, the cinema was for me an entertainment, of course, but also a refuge. It was only when I grew up, years later, that I realized that it was also a way for me to talk about the concerns and questions that had been in my mind since childhood.
In this regard, the film maintains a welcome ambiguity as to the exact content of the feelings involved. Is Rémi in love with Leo? Or is it Léo who is basically in love with Rémi, hence the violence of his reaction? Or is it just a very intense friendship? Many readings – and projections – are possible, and it is one of the many qualities of the film not to try to impose a single one.
“It’s a pivotal moment, in film and in life, this confrontation in the playground where you are suddenly in the presence of a microcosm of society. The children are now divided into groups, and each group has its own expectations… Here, for the first time, you have to enter into a relationship with that, with these new divisions and these new expectations. Yet, until recently, there weren’t these divisions and expectations, there was a freedom. Love meant love. I talk about it, and I tell myself that maybe I’m bored of that, and that it’s this freedom that I’m trying to find. »
To conclude Lukas Dhont: “It’s a film which, at first, is very personal to me, but which, I hope, will be universal in its scope. »
He is.