Close, second feature film by Lukas Dhont, opens in the light and joy of childhood, still preserved from the darkness of the world by innocence, illusion, the infinity of the possible. In the first scene, Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustave De Waele), two inseparable 13-year-old boys, chase each other through huge fields of flowers bathed in a light worthy of a Monet painting, carried by the grace of their bursts of laughter.
This joy, whose purity the Belgian filmmaker captures with delicacy and sensitivity, is revealed and multiplied in the symbiotic relationship that unites the two kids, as they invent stories and war games, stretch out in the sun , using the other’s body as a pillow, admire each other in their respective talents, share their family, their bed and their warmth. However, when they begin the new school year, the world — its codes, its conventions, its boxes — and the cruelty of adolescence will quickly open a first breach in this beautiful candor.
Because their obvious proximity raises questions, and their classmates are quick to point out that they seem to be a couple. From then on on the defensive, Léo will gradually move away from Rémi, engaging in new hobbies, forming new friendships, keeping him physically apart until pushing him to despair.
Lukas Dhont demonstrates an immense talent as an actor’s director and draws nothing from his performers — Émilie Dequenne, as a bereaved mother, virtuoso of a game all in silence and withdrawn, and the two children, with disarming accuracy — less than a naturalistic perfection that perfectly suits the universe he offers, and his desire to show the imperceptible.
His camera is planted in the eyes of his characters, gently interfering with their souls, capturing the burdens, the doubts, the guilt, the insomnia, the weight of contained pain. Superimposed on these images of great humanity are those of life which continues, despite tragedy and bereavement: flowery fields to be hoeed, watered, weeded; children bickering in the schoolyard; young skaters, short of breath, pushing their bodies to their limits.
This approach is particularly successful in the first half of the film, the director managing to put in image the void, the space that settles between the bodies of the two protagonists, thus reflecting with acuity the experience of a boy who assimilates the expectations of masculinity, and gradually moves away from the fluidity of childhood.
The second part, weighed down by an unnamed drama, culminates in a heartbreaking denouement which, although very fair on the emotional level, gains in intensity what it loses in simplicity and universality. Dazzling in many ways, Close remains the kind of film in which you leave a part of your heart forever.