Movies…with a little bit of obscure culture and sports mixed in
Turns out that Close is an outstandingly complex and emotional Belgian drama nominated at the 96th Academy Awards. Belgian director and writer Lukas Dhont orchestrates a devastatingly sad and honest portrayal of youthful angst and sorrow.
“The intense friendship between two thirteen-year old boys Léo and Remi suddenly gets disrupted. Struggling to understand what has happened, Léo approaches Sophie, Rémi’s mother. “Close” is a film about friendship and responsibility.”
Director: Luka Dhont
Writers: Lukas Dhont, Angelo Tijssens
Stars: Eden Dambrine, Gustav De Waele, Émilie Dequenne, Léa Drucker
Release Date: November 1, 2022
IMDB
Even if you don’t know what Close (2023) is about, you should give it a shot. I speak from experience. The reason I pressed play on Close was because it was by A24 and the poster caught my attention. I didn’t even know it was in French.
Turns out that Close is an outstandingly complex and emotional Belgian drama nominated at the 96th Academy Awards. Belgian director and writer Lukas Dhont orchestrates a devastatingly sad and honest portrayal of youthful angst and sorrow.
This is a spoiler review, so be warned.
First time actor Eden Dambrine plays Léo, an adolescent boy who has a deep relationship with a fellow thirteen year old Remi, played by Gustav De Waele. The pair are enjoying every moment of the summer with one another, but things change when school picks back up. Classmates of Léo and Remi take notice of how loving they are to one another, resulting in newly put-up boundaries affecting their relationship in permanent ways.
One day the grade goes on a field trip and Remi is the only one not in attendance. While the kids are frolicking with one another, a horrible truth is discovered. Léo’s mom approaches him on the bus, and Léo already knows what’s happened. Remi has ended his own life.
As the community griefs, Léo is wrought with a silent guilt. He acts out during group counseling sessions, shuts himself off from family, and pushes himself physically to avoid confronting his true emotions. Close shines a bright light on the innocence of youth’s susceptibility to public perception, and the internal struggle one must live with after one poor personal decision.
Close is a movie that breaks your heart. Even if you know what’s about to come, the build up to the reveal and subsequent events leave an imprint of compassion that’s both unique and utterly relatable.
One question I would have for Lukas Dhont is why Léo found out about Remi’s death while still on the bus with his mother. There is a symbolic nature to the choice, but I am grasping at what he is trying to say. With that being said, the setting works perfectly. The bus can be an isolating place, and Léo must have felt like the loneliest person alive while the truth crystallized.
There is also the connection to Léo and Remi’s breakup; Léo and Remi used to bike together all the time, but the distance Léo creates in the friendship is shown physically when he arrives at school by himself. Léo on the bus shows him on a different road of transport, but once he puts the puzzle pieces together, he runs out onto his bike to pedal away.
Perhaps I answered my own question to Lukas Dhont, but I still have a sneaky feeling I am missing a key interpretation somewhere.
One thing I must applaud Dhont for is not something on the camera. Rather, it’s something never shown. The choice to not show Remi’s dead body is a stroke of genius. By not showing us Remi in his final state, the audience is nudged to remember Remi’s last appearance in the movie, which was a heartbreaking scene with Léo. We then transfer our feelings over to Léo and realize the shattering glass explosion of guilt and sadness that he is suddenly sagged with.
If you have not seen the movie, but want to after reading this, you’ll have a whole new appreciation for it knowing that this is Eden Dambrine’s first ever movie role. He was found on a random train ride by Dhont. Eden was with friends and Dhont fell in love with his facial expressions and then asked the young boy if he wanted to be part of casting. The rest is history, and beautiful history it is.
Not everyone can relate to having their best friend commit suicide. That is something extreme that hopefully no one has to endure. An experience many can empathize with, including myself, is the fragility of one’s ego at a young age when public perception is so important. The majority of children have a moment in life where they want to be cool, fit in, and not be the butt of any jokes. Léo gets a dose of this sort of social uprooting when he begins the school year and makes the choice to distance himself. Who among us has not made the conscious choice to step away from something we once cared about because of the way it made people perceive us? Perhaps I am speaking too much from personal experience, but it takes time to be comfortable with one’s self, and often it’s a person who unlocks that internal courage.
The extra-layer of sadness in Close is that Léo lost his best friend, but he also lost the person who gave him the confidence to be himself. Now he has to rediscover himself, and doing that alone is a scary thing for anyone, regardless of age.
The last emotional touchdown of Close worth touching on is the unique relationship shared between Léo and the parents of Remi. When the two were friends, sleepovers at each other’s houses were a normal occurrence. It was an open door policy. When Remi passed away, there was a drop-off in communication, for obvious reasons. As Close progresses through its story, Léo begins working on his sorrow while simultaneously reconnecting with Remi’s parents; most specifically, Remi’s mother, Sophie (Emilie Dequenne)
There is a point in the film when Léo finally explodes from the seams and tells Sophie that it was his fault that Remi ended his life. The reaction from Sophie is visceral. She literally kicks him out of the car that she is driving. Leo is then running through the woods with tears streaming down his face. It is the same sort of act that Remi had after his last spat with Léo.
In an example of maturity and growing up, Sophie is able to sense what her emotional decision does to Léo. She sees how he is acting, connects the dots, and goes back after her son’s best friend in the woods and finds him before he becomes permanently lost. It is a mothering sign to empathize with others while still having a flurry of conflicting emotions.
There is no going back to the way it was, but there is acknowledgement of what has changed. It’s rolling with the punches and not letting yourself be knocked out by mistakes you have made. No matter how grieving they are.
Sheesh, this has really been a therapy session, hasn’t it?
As already mentioned, Close was nominated for Best International Feature at the 2023 Oscars. It lost out to Germany’s All Quiet On The Western Front (2023).
Close was streaming on Paramount+.
STANKO RATING: A-
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