Mark Reviews Movies: CLOSE (2022)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 26, 2023

There's nothing "weird" or "wrong" with the friendship at the heart of Close, but kids have a way of saying what they think and cutting to the core. Social pressure and the desire to appear "normal" do all the rest.

That's the sad nature of the story of co-writer/director Lukas Dhont's film, which details the dissolution of a young friendship on account of what other kids say, only to take those consequences to the next tragic step. It's a difficult tale, because the subject matter is so despairing and Dhont doesn't try to shield us from it in any way. The truths beneath this story—what people do to each other, either intentionally or without meaning to do so, and how desperate people can be in wanting to fit in with the crowd—are not easy ones, though. Dhont and co-screenwriter Angelo Tijssens don't let us believe otherwise.

The two friends are Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav De Waele), who come from neighboring—relatively speaking, since they live out in the country—families. The boys have known each other for an unspecified amount of time, but the quality of that time has been substantial.

They play together at every given opportunity. Each spends time with the other's family, whether that be Rémi helping out his best friend's family with their flower farming or Léo having dinner with his friend's parents. Léo's mother Nathalie (Léa Drucker) rarely expects her son to spend the night in his own bed, and Rémi's mother Sophie (Émilie Dequenne) refers to the neighbors' boy as the "son of her heart," considering how often he's around her and her own son. When Léo spends the night in Rémi's room, the two boys, who have turned 13 recently and are about to go to a new school, sleep in the same bed.

These two are as close as brothers—maybe even closer, because their relationship has not formed and strengthened because of familial obligation. Even as they lie in bed together, with Léo blowing on his pal's face to help calm Rémi's constantly thinking mind and Rémi waking up with his friend's arm around him, Dhont makes it clear that there's nothing else going on in or with this relationship.

Nobody, especially the two boys, thinks anything of it in terms of the bond being "different," "strange," "too much," or anything like that, because it isn't. It is pure and innocent and simply the kind of love between friends that seems so easy to develop as a child, but age, the world, and the influence of other people change one's perspective just as easily and firmly—to the point that we probably can't recall ever feeling such a way again.

All of that growing up happens quickly here. On their first day at the new school, some of the boys' classmates notice Léo and Rémi whispering to and smile at each other, the latter leaning his head on the former's shoulder, and how inseparable the two appear.

Rumors start swirling. Some girls ask Léo if he and Rémi are a couple. Some boys make their disapproval obvious with teasing, taunting, and verbal abuse with derogatory terms.

None of this seems to affect Rémi that much. Léo, on the other hand, becomes instantly aware of being perceived as odd and begins to put unspoken but fully apparent limits on how he and Rémi connect—both publicly and in private. Rémi notices. That affects him.

The narrative takes Léo's perspective—at first because his might be the more common reaction to such peer pressure and outright bullying. Who can blame a kid for not wanting to become an outcast, to spend day after day in worry about what others will say about or do to you, or to possibly resent a friend for what social troubles that friendship could bring? The film doesn't judge Léo, despite how cold and cruel his sudden detachment can be and is. How could it? The filmmakers know how natural and understandable a reaction this boy's is, in just the same way the film presents the friendship itself as something wholly normal and relatable.

That doesn't stop Léo from judging himself and his actions, though. The specifics of what ultimately happens to the relationship between the two boys won't be discussed here. The gradual realization of a certain fact is the film's most harrowing scene, because it arises in the midst of something seemingly ordinary, and stating it outright might raise more questions about the filmmakers' handling of the subject. What's important is that Léo must confront a sense of guilt for what he has done—or, more to the point, what he didn't do, which had come so naturally to him until other people and social expectations put ideas into his head.

This is tricky and thorny material, but Dhont's handing of it is as delicate, thoughtful, and compassionate as everything else in the story. The focus on Léo might keep certain other perspectives and emotions at bay, but such a restriction—from following a character who is struggling to understand the points of view of others and also with emotions that he doesn't fully comprehend—allows the narrative to mirror the thematic purpose of this tough material. Beyond that, the impact of moments of reality coming into Léo's world, such as the scene of a man suddenly crying while listening to Léo's older and considerate brother (played by Igor van Dessel), is stronger because of their rarity from this perspective.

The film might approach a conclusion that's too easy and straightforward for topics as complex and troubling as the ones presented here. Close, though, does get at some unsettling truths about how influential and destructive the words and thoughts of others can be.

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