The film that has made Cannes sob
If there was a prize for prompting the most sniffles and sobs at the Cannes Film Festival, the runaway winner would be Close, a devastating Belgian coming-of-age drama co-written and directed by Lukas Dhont. Its heroes, Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav de Waele), could be the dictionary definition of youthful freedom and possibility. First seen racing through the idyllic commercial flower fields owned by Léo’s family, these grinning, glowing, skinny 13-year-olds appear to have inexhaustible energy and boundless joy. Best of all, they have each other. As close as brothers, they’re happy to use one another as pillows as they nap on the ground in the summer sunshine, and at night, they’re happy to sleep side by side in Rémi’s bed, where Léon whispers improvised fables about duckling and lizards. Their affection is tear-jerkingly sweet and tender – and that’s just in the film’s opening minutes. Is there anything more to their relationship than platonic friendship? You might think so when you see Rémi practising the oboe, as Léo gazes at him with wide-eyed adoration, but the question has never bothered either of them.
More like this:
– ‘One of the year’s most delightful films’
– Elvis is a ‘hyperactive sensory overload’
– The Stars at Noon is ‘beguiling and immersive’
The idyll can’t last. The boys enrol in a new school, and Dhont’s shot of them trying to hide their nerves in the middle of a crowded playground is an omen that life will never be as simple again. The next omen comes when Léo casually rests his head on Rémi’s shoulder in class – and a classmate notices. Dhont is too subtle to have Léo and Rémi become the victims of violent homophobic bullying. But some girls ask Léo if he and Rémi are “together”, and a boy shoves him in the playground. That’s all the warning that Léo needs. He doesn’t tell Rémi or his family about his concerns, but within days, he is nodding along to debates about Ronaldhino, he has stopped wearing the white jumper that made him look a baby lamb, and he has demonstrated his macho athleticism by taking up ice hockey, a sport in which his twig-like limbs are bulked up by pads.
Close
Directed by: Lukas Dhont
Starring: Eden Dambrine, Gustav de Waele
Length: 1 hour 45 minutes
Dhont’s first film, Girl, told the story of a young trans woman who yearned to have gender-reassignment operation while training to be a ballerina. Its depiction of adolescent awkwardness was so astute, though, that anyone could recognise its heroine’s discomfort, trans or not. Likewise, Close is superficially about the fear of being thought of as gay, but it’s more generally about what we all to have suffer when we grow up: coping silently with pain, inflicting that pain on others, warping our characters to suit the crowd, and realising that all types of instinctive intimacy now have to be labelled. Léo can still put his arm around his brother, because fraternal love is easy for society to categorise and accept. But to lie with his head on the chest of another boy who happens to be his best friend? That’s a privilege he has to leave behind.
Léo and Rémy’s gradual separation is agonising to watch (in a good way), but the plot leaps elsewhere at the halfway point, when the boys are rocked by a sudden horrific tragedy. It’s a slight shame that Dhont felt the need to make this shift. His microscopic examination of childhood’s withering is unspeakably poignant on its own; the subsequent lurch to more sensational anguish seems coarse and obvious in comparison. But even in the film’s heightened second half, Dhont prefers quiet observations to more conventional outpourings of emotion. He and his co-writer, Angelo Tjissens, haven’t put in any subplots or characters who aren’t central to Léo and Rémi’s situation, and they don’t extend any scenes beyond the time it takes for them to convey the key information. The script is so economical, and the acting so beautifully natural (especially by Dambrine, a remarkable discovery), that Close feels less like a drama than a tapestry of fragments from a candid documentary.
The films that premiered in the main competition strand at Cannes have been unusually divisive this year. Every one of them has been loved by some critics and loathed (or at least dismissed) by others. But there were rumours all along that audiences might agree on Close, and when it was shown, towards the end of the Festival, the sniffles and sobs bore out those rumours. Some people may have reservations about some of Dhont’s choices, as I do, but it’s hard to imagine anyone seeing Close without being rocked by his tremendous empathy and vision. At the age of 31, he is already an exceptional filmmaker, and this is an exceptional film.
★★★★★
Love film and TV? Join BBC Culture Film and TV Club on Facebook, a community for cinephiles all over the world.
If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.
And if you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called The Essential List. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.
