There are movies that, for one reason or another, change your lifeThey reshape your belief system, make you think, reconsider your immovable truths. The transformative power of (good) cinema has two sides: while it offers a window to other realities, it puts a mirror in front of ours.
For me, one of these films was ‘Girl’, which in 2018 showed the drama of a teenager who was born in the wrong body turning its director, Lukas Dhont, into a new voice to be reckoned with in the European film ecosystem. Four years later, the Seville Festival brings his new film: ‘Close’ confirms that we were not facing a mirage, and Dhont is one of the most incisive and important storytellers of recent times.
A little warning: although I have been careful not to be specific about it, it is possible that if you are a little seasoned you can smell, reading the review, one of the most important turns of the film. There are no spoilers per se, but read it at your own risk.
It causes admiration how the heart works
‘Close’ is a small movie, but it doesn’t need more: with very few elements and an exquisite sensitivity manages to leave a mark on the viewer. Leo, a fabulous Eden Dambrine who shows that child actors are more than prepared to carry an entire movie on their shoulders, is the most captivating character of the year who, far from the great scenes of uncontrolled crying and epic drama that we can being used to in teen dramas, surprises with something much more difficult to pull off as a performer: the containment.
After receiving news that breaks his life in two, Leo stops having feelings. He lives, but he doesn’t live: only a few flashes of fury and his fondness for ice hockey mean that, at thirteen years old, he can begin to process an internal pain and guilt unprecedented at his age that blocks anything else that can feel. The emotional asepsis of a preadolescent who feels guilty for laughingwho cannot go on, whose life has been put on eternal pause.
‘Close’ is a film that begins as a teenage friendship (or love) story and ends as a forced rite of passage to maturity that at no time does it feel forced or ill-posed. We may have seen this story before, but not told with this sensitivity, this three-dimensionality, exploring the intricacies of a still childish mind that not ready to accept blame and she doesn’t know how to express her shame and disgust for herself.
Can’t you hear them? They got us surrounded
‘Close’ is so clever in its development that dribbles any initial expectation of the viewer, who has already seen enough movies to guess where the shots are going to go. But when we go, Dhont returns from there, and nothing can prepare us for the twist that the film prepares after the slow breakdown of the friendship (to call it somehow) between Remy and Leo.
The presentation of both tells us, in five minutes, everything we need to know about them: at thirteen years old, they have something that goes far beyond teenage friendship, but they are not able to code if they are best friends, family or partner. Toxic masculinity, internalized homophobia, the search for one’s own identity and the rejection of society’s preconceived ideas make the fairy tale break and the pain gradually makes its way to become part of your new routine.
With his first third alone, Lukas Dhont would have already made a great film. Reminiscent of others, yes, but great after all. But it’s just about the preparation for his coupelevating ‘Close’ to one of the most personal, dramatic, well-structured, sentimental and painful of the yearbetween poppy fields, whispered confessions, ice hockey, bicycles and guilt.
Dhont stop me now
‘Close’ opens melons, breaks taboos and tears wounds triumphing for 105 minutes in which he juggles on a tightrope, refusing to step on sure, with the risk that a slip sends everything built in the film to the land of exaggerated and impossible drama. However, it is so well thought out, directed and acted that it is a small miracle: there are no scenes that do not serve to delve into the psyche of its characters or moments in which it is carried away by a bombastic interpretation out of place. The dramatic tension is just perfectsomething very complicated to achieve in a film in which the slightest slip could doom everything achieved up to that moment.
The new Lukas Dhont confirms that, with only two films, he is already one of the most important storytellers in European (and world) cinema. Far from bowing to controversy or what is expected of him, Dhont revisits adolescent LGBT representation from a diametrically opposite point of view seen, for example, in ‘Heartstopper’: here, crying, pain, doubt, social rejection and guilt take center stage in a heartbreaking film that he has no interest in making friends.
‘Close’ opens in Spain on November 25, and probably It will be one of those movies that are seen and not seen in most theatersbut it is worth making the effort to see it on a big screen and live the collective experience, the impact, the pain, the tears that inevitably flow from the eyes of the public in scenes that do not necessarily seek it. Lukas Dhont may do not fall for grandiloquent scenes or easy tears, but he has managed to create one of the most sentimental works of the year, which is correct in all his decisions on a formal and artistic level. A wonder that you should not miss.