The Current Cinema - Janice Tong discovers a film with no simple answers - CLOSE (Lukas Dhont, Belgium/Netherlands/France, 2022)

Heartbreak and silence

Eden Dambrine (Leo), Émilie Dequenne (Remi's mother)
Gustav de Waele (Remi) Close

Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont’s follow-up from Girl (2018) took the Grand Prix at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.. At first glance – the film’s tone is joyous: gameplay, running through fields of flowers – pink, orange and red dahlias – in the height of summer, the world is glorious and new. But this is a film about the breaking apart of a friendship and the fragility of growing up.

 

Two best friends, newcomers Eden Dambrine and Gustav de Waele as Léo and Rémi, (they are just brilliant, especially Gustav as Rémi), are at that age where they are completely unbound by the kind of social consciousness that is de rigueur these days. They hang out together, sleep in the same bed together, tell each other the kind of made-up bedtime stories that a mother would to lull their child to sleep without any self-consciousness. Any kind of physical closeness like holding hands is pure delight in their friend’s company. In the film’s context the two boys haven’t really built up a sexual language yet; let alone their identities. The two families adore the boys; they are like one big family unit; Léo’s brother, Charlie, as protective and jovial towards Rémi as he would his own little brother; Emilie Dequenne (I still think about her debut performance in Dardenne brother’s Rosetta (1999)) as Rémi’s mother and Léa Drucker as Léo’s mother, are both wonderful to watch.

 

Eden Dambrine as Leo in the tragedy of Close 

School starts and on the first day the pair was asked if they were ‘a couple’, or if they even realised that from the way they’re acting, their relationship could be perceived as such. A change occurs, immediately, and as one pushes the other away; without ever stating his intention or the reason for his actions – the hurt inflicted on the other cuts deep and with ruinous consequences. 

 

What I found devastating was that despite all the woke activism, the space for friendships that are as intense as the one experienced by these two young boys gets to be scrutinised by others who play no part in knowing their bond. And yet, just like that, this bond is savagely broken. 

 

 Gustav de Waele is sensitive and bright as Remi

My only criticism of the film is that it invested in the aftermath that followed. All the beauty that has gone before is wiped out. And yes, I understand this is true of real life – and perhaps that is how cruel the world that is all too ready to heal behaves: Rémi is remembered in a generic way by his classmates; the mother’s forgiveness; Léo’s confession and guilt. Everything that could be left unsaid was ‘said’ (by this I mean the overplay of the emotional rollercoaster) when you just want silence. The undercutting of a life, and I could only imagine that this has happened to families around the globe – is personal, cruel, unnecessary – and paying for a ticket to see this story seems to be in bad taste. Hard to know how to respond to this film, which to its credit neither preached nor explained anything away. There are simply no answers…