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The film “Close” by Lukas Dhont, Grand Prix at the last Cannes Film Festival, delicately recounts adolescence and the doubts that assail young men at this time. The 19/20 met its two amateur actors, and their director.
Close is the story of two lifelong friends, with the innocence of their 13 years and the intimacy of two brothers. One of them, Leo, seems to have found a second family. But this friendship with Rémi suggests ambiguities, judgments to which the two boys were not ready. “Upon returning to college, [Léo] is going to have to become much more mature and live with these judgments and he doesn’t want that. He will start to distance himself, for fear that these judgments will follow him all his life.”, comments Eden Dambrine, interpreter of Leo.
He then moves away from Rémi, and gets closer to new friends. Leo leaves his old brother sad and incredulous. A suffering that the director of the film Lukas Dhont himself experienced. “I was a young boy who at some point in my adolescence was afraid of a certain intimacy with other boys. I have the impression that with the cinema that I make, I can talk about the things that I, as a child and teenager, could not”, he recalls. How then to overcome the gaze of others? Who can judge friendship, sensuality? So many questions that the film addresses.