User Reviews

I cried too throughout this film, but above all I felt angry. Lukas Dhont is an exceptionally good director, and he trod delicately over very sensitive subject matter. Eden Dambrine as Leo the thirteen-year-old has received well deserved praise for his acting, but then so should Gustav de Waele as Remi the youth who depends upon Leo's love, and yes let us call it by its name. Friendship there is as in all true loving but loving it is and due to crass homophobic remarks at school disaster strikes, and things are never the same again. Who was really responsible for the disaster? I think all of us as we are all afraid of this kind of loving and more often than not persecute it. Are we all murderers of the heart that has so many ways of feeling, so many forms that we wish harm upon even unconsciously? There is a stare at us from Leo and I will not spoil it for viewers when it comes. It is harsh, bitter and accusing, and despite its despair defiant. He looks at us the audience and even I winced away. This is a great film, and maybe I have overused this word too often, but from the depths of me I believe it ranks as one of the finest films I have ever seen. I must also mention Remi's mother played to nuanced perfection by Emilie Dequenne. A lot of very fine films come out of Belgium, but this one cuts to the bone of our communal responsibility in seeing love for what it is, and to refuse macho standards as seen by the sport thrusts that intercut various tender scenes. Homophobia in sport is commonplace, and there again it is another murdering ground for the sensitive and different. This is my opinion of this masterpiece, and I hope I have not misinterpreted Lukas Dhont's intentions. To sum up I have not seen a film about the tender birth of loving so delicately portrayed and acted with such burning grief and joy.

As a semi-closeted gay guy having been dealing with alienation and depression my whole life and trying to get close to people without reciprocation, this hit me like a ton of bricks. I've never seen a movie hit the nail on the head in such a way before. I've been crying non-stop because of how real it is.

The acting is out of this world especially from those young boys. But people who can keep it dry during Kevin Janssens' dinner table scene, lack any empathy whatsoever.

I hope this will provide more people with much needed insight. They better give Lukas an Oscar for this. If only to show and tell this story on an even bigger global stage.

This is a beautiful little drama speaking of pure friendship between two young teenagers, a friendship without interest but unfortunately smashed by the other people's glance that slowly but surely erased, deleted this strong relationship. It is beautiful but also sad, bitter. I have seen stories more or less like this but concerning girls instead of boys, and this without the least even suggested homosexuality. Such movie gems exist but you have to be lucky enough not to miss them. It is realistic, believable, you even have the feeling to watch a documentary. The must see here is the slow "destruction" of this beautiful link between those two boys. Poignant and gloomy.

Thang god Colin Farrell didn't kill himself on Banshees!

The first half of the film is quite interesting and reveals the fragility of our pre-adolescence, the social pressures, and the dangers of male toxicity that are passed down from generation to generation. Lack of communication is always bad and the film approaches it from different perspectives as well.

The problem is what it does with its narrative shock. It could have done interesting things but it turns into something worse. With an excessive number of close-ups so distracting to the point of thinking that the title is a tribute to the technique, Close hits the same key over and over again to end exactly where we predicted (at the time of the shocking revelation) that it would end. It's manipulative but much worse than that, it does little with that manipulation except begging for our tears.

Even so, it is a film worth seeing, really well acted, with a great performance by the kid Eden Dambrine.

The movie follows the lives of two 13 year old boys, Léo and Rémi (played by the talented Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele) who are incredibly close but their relationship is put to the test by a world hostile to male intimacy. After graduating to a new High School, their classmates begin to question their relationship which prompts Léo to slowly push his best friend away as he's desperate to fit in. Rémi, who cannot work out why Leo no longer wants to spend time with him is distraught at the gradual loss of his friend. As each day goes by, their friendship crumbles bit by bit and one day when Lèo fails to meet up with Rémi to cycle to school, Rémi confronts him in the schoolyard about his friends behaviour. This results in a scuffle and both boys in tears. The following day, Rémi killed himself and when I say this movie broke me, it absolutely destroyed me.

For the rest of the movie, Léo is forced to come to terms with the death of his friend and the feelings of regret and trauma are perfectly captured by the young Dambrine. How does a 13 year old deal with such a tragedy? A tragedy of which he is solely to blame for? Every single actor put their heart into this movie and you can tell from their incredible performances. The movie perfectly captures the innocence of childhood, the beauty of childhood friendship, the lengths children a prepared to go to be accepted by their peers and their desperation to fit in.

Having seen 'Girl' from the same director, expectations were high, but Lukas Dhont took those expectations, threw them in the trash and topped them in a dazzling way.

We see the story of 2 young boys, living their seemingly perfect life in an environment with loads of love and understanding. They way they interact and bond is almost like twins.

This idealistic setting however takes a turn for the worst once they are dropped in a new environment with different social expectations and patterns.

Their relationship is being looked at from a more hetero normative point of view and although their sexuality is not a topic, their surroundings make it one.

The acting of the 2 young main characters just blows your mind. The emotions you read in their eyes and unspoken words, will bring you to tears and will make you curse the role models society puts on the shoulders of young people. (And this has nothing to do with being 'woke' or 'conservative', just being human).

This is not a great story, this is an essential story, for all the young people out there, to live their lives as it feels right for them, not how society things it should look like.

The director's intentions were quite clear and he didn't even try to hide them in the marketing of his second feature, but the very young age of his actors, I think, did not allow him to make another "typical" movie with LGBTQ label. Hence much wider appeal, bigger success, all the deserved awards and finally an Oscar nomination. You can read the story as you want really regardless of your own sexual orientation - as the story of two queer kids whose still innocent first love is crashed under the hostile pressure of the outside world, as the story of a platonic childhood bromance hunted, bullied and destroyed by homophobia or you may assume that one of them is straight and the other one not. Simply put, you may try to answer the question who was the chicken and who was the lizard at the end... Everybody praises Eden Dambrine, but I must say that the moment when Gustav De Waele disappeared from the screen for good was the moment when the film lost all his magic for me. The second half as already mentioned is really much worse, not only because it's depressive, rainy and less colorful. It's also indeed quite manipulative. I didn't shed a tear at the end, in fact I think the scene in the forest is the reason Eden lost his Best Actor slot at the Oscar Awards. Beautiful performance, though, coming from the heart, completely uncalculated. "Close" will be discussed for years to come, I think.

The story was simple and tragic: the breakup of a beautiful friendship due to toxic masculinity and homophobia. It's a story like this that reminds us of how much work we still have to do to make sure this world is a place where everyone can get to be truly themselves.

The movie is beautifully shot, with great acting. However, the main plot twist felt somewhat sudden and staged, and it's kind of off-paced at some parts. But that's not the reason that I wish I hadn't seen this one.

Out of all the characters, the one that I'm related to the most was Remi's mom. It just tore me apart once I started to think about what's happened from her point of view.

You never would expect your 12 year old (ish) son would kill himself all of a sudden, just like you never would expect that his best friend, the boy who you treated as your own son, would be the one who broke his heart.

But what can you do? They are only kids, they didn't know better, and deep down you knew that this is not really anyone's fault. You are the adult, even though you're hurting like hell inside, you're supposed to be the one who keeps it together and make the rational decisions, otherwise you're going to hurt another innocent little boy. In the end, all you could do was just leaving this place that brings you so many memories and trying to move on with your life, because there is just no other way.

See? I really wish I hadn't seen this movie but I did. I guess I'll just have to continue to be adult and move on with my life, just like Remi's mom.

"Close" is a pretty new movie, a 2022 release, and the production countries here are Belgium, the Netherlands and France, but the one at the center of it all is Belgium if we look at who made this film, who starred in it, where it is set and also which country submitted it to the Oscars. The language you hear in here for the most part is French though, but Flemish and Dutch are also included. The writer and director is Lukas Dhont and you could call him one of the fastest-rising directors now and maybe after the success of this movie, it is not only true for Europe, but worldwide perhaps. He worked on quite a few short films and this movie here is only his second full feature film and, just like with the first, the screenplay is a collaboration between him and Angelo Tijssens. Quite a successful combo. Their first film "Girl" achieved great awards recognition, had success at Cannes and scored a Golden Globe nomination while this film here even achieved an Academy Award nomination and Dhont is still not even 35, so you can imagine how young he was when he shot "Girl" five years earlier. We will 100% see him direct a Hollywood feature or maybe also soon a European film with one or several of the defining European actors right now, mostly likely French actors maybe given Dhont's background. Belgium has never won the Oscar category so far, but I would not be too surprised if it happens this year. The film is not the frontrunner and it will maybe be between Germany and Argentina (again), but a Belgian upset seems a valid possibility. It is definitely more likely to take the crown than the Polish and especially the Irish entry. Anyway, even if it does not work out, then Dhont still has a gigantic amount of awards recognition from other bodies. In Cannes, this one here found some appreciation again too.

The movie runs for minimally under 105 minutes and takes us into the life of a boy (Léo) who goes to school and there he is together with new classmates, but also his best friend (Rémi) that he knew already for a long time before that. The epitome of childhood friends. With the latter I was wondering if he would be lead as well or rather supporting, but with what happens to him then, the categorization is very clear. The two boys at the center of the story (unlike the adults) have never been in other films before this one at all, but it will surely not stay their only movie. I read that with lead actor Eden Dambrine it was quite a coincidence because he was in the same train like the director discovered him. Turned out a good choice overall given the film's success. I myself must say though that I might have enjoyed this film a little more even with another lead and I was not too won over by Dambrine here. Maybe "enjoyed" is the wrong word given the plot. It is a pretty depressing film for the most part. There were some scenes and moments that I liked more than others. The first would be this very first moment when the protagonist is not too happy that the classmates think the two boys could be a couple. I am not talking about the confrontation, but when the two boys are tired and the supporting players puts his head on the protagonist's belly and the protagonist moves away twice to make sure there is no physical contact between them, especially as the other kids were talking again. Another memorable scene is of course the one inside the bus when the protagonist finds out what happened, but everybody will have this one, so I will not go into detail there. Another would be when the father of the deceased boy hears another child's dreams and plans for the future and starts crying as he realizes his own kid will never be able to live these dreams. Another brief scene that stayed in the mind for me was before that when the other boy suggested he could try hockey too, ice hockey that is, and the connection there is that it is a very virile sport, one that includes male aggressions and pretty much a discipline that is barely featured for females at all because of the physicality in contrast to football (soccer), basketball, volleyball and others.

Then there is of course the moment in which the two boys have a physical confrontation even in the school yard after one of them is unhappy about the other distancing himself more and more from him and especially about the fact that he took the bike to school on his own when it was something they did together for a long time until that day that one would always wait for the other. When the teacher separates the dark-haired boy from the protagonist there, she tells the kid something repeatedly that it is over now and she of course does not know that this way she makes things worse because the boy surely understood it that their friendship is over, their close contact and that things have changed and will never be the same again. After this in a way violent escalation, we only see the dark-haired boy on one more occasion when he is talking to two other kids at school and we (and maybe also the protagonist) would think that he made new friends. We basically experience the story through the eyes of the main character. He is in almost every scene and we know what he knows. We also see that the other boy is not there to participate in the school trip and a little later we realize that something bad must have happened, the exact same time when Dambrine's character finds out as well. I would say that the acting is pretty good from everybody involved here. This also includes the boys' parents of course. The protagonist's mother was more present in the first half and then the action moves over to the dead boy's mother and her suffering. In the end, the protagonist confesses to her that he is the reason why her son committed suicide, but while her first reaction was rejection, she immediately realizes that she made things worse this way and that she cannot blame the kid. So she follows him there in this little forest and the final hug implies that there are no hard feelings anymore from her side.

The fact that the mother knows something was wrong between the boys makes it also more difficult for the protagonist to find closure and he needs to sort this out first and of course it is debatable if the path they chose here with him seeking contact to her was the realistic approach or if he had just stayed away from her in reality and not taken the blame this way. I think both options are valid and the way they took with this movie and how they depicted the boy's choice then towards the end and, as a consequence, also the mother's choice felt realistic and made sense overall. I can't criticize much with this film. Maybe the fact that the boy broke his arm or so towards the end during the hockey game could have been left out. It also did not make it a worse film though and you could maybe interpret it in a way that this was his physical punishment indirectly for what he did as this injury was connected closely to his choice for manliness. Then there is the protagonist's job: He helps at the flower fields. Of course, this is a professional branch especially popular in this area, even if people there maybe think of the Netherlands first before Belgium, but they are neighbors anyway. With the story, it did not add too much. Finally, there is this other boy, new boy you can call him who grows closer to the protagonist, especially after the initial friend's death and that one also did not add too much for me, even if I understood there was a crucial solace component in there. In terms of the other boy, it feels relatively safe to say that he had homosexual tendencies. They did get physical at school though or at least it wasn't shown. Not that anybody would have complained anyway again after what happened. But it is also not important I would say because this was really the key area where Dhont made the right choice. He did not turn this into an obviously gay-themed film as we can never say for sure which of the two boys at the center of the story are indeed gay or if they are just dear friends and enjoy being close to each other and touching each other without homosexual tendencies. There is no 100% black-and-white and I liked that a lot. I am sure many others did as well and this explains the film's massive success that it probably turned into an even bigger awards player than Dhont's first full feature film.

It can also be added that with these English-language one-word titles he makes it easy for the most crucial awards bodies to give these films all this recognition. I'm not sure if this one here deserved all this praise and I will also not be cheering for it hard on Oscar night, but it definitely would not be a bad winner. I prefer it over the German entry and I am from Germany, so it means something. Anyway, the subjects of Dhont's first two films are of course also very convenient for liberal Hollywood, so the awards recognition is not a huge surprise at all. The first film focused on a boy who preferred to look and dress like a girl. That's why it was named "Girl" of course to emphasize what the protagonist really should be seen as. Debatable. Now, today we talk about "Close". By the way I thought that the lead actor from "Close" resembled the one from "Girl", but they are not the same person. With this statement, I am almost finished elaborating on "Close". One final moment I have to mention nonetheless before calling it a day is when we see the boys on their bikes and how they choose different directions, which was factually nothing unusual because they did not live in the same house, but this shot made it very obvious that they were taking different directions life as well. It was one of my favorite moments, one of the most telling and meaningful moments for me as we see the distance between them grow. Good job by Dhont with this parallel. In general, thumbs-up for him and the rest of the crew as well as the cast. This is a good film that deserves to be seen. Positively recommended.

Unhappily, this movie banalizes children suicide. I was really intrigued about how easy it was to come up with such a sad and intense story, feeling that some highly important issues weren't discussed:

1. Does this story represent a significantly relatable problem for kids of this age? Is this sample a good picture of the society?

2. What is the actual impact that this movie can have? How will children perceive it?

Regarding the first one, I decided to do some simple research. I will quote studies (can't leave the link, don't know why)

The proportion of students (high school) who reported having attempted suicide remained relatively constant in the 1990s and early 2000s (from 7 to 9 percent) but declined from 8 percent in 2005 to 6 percent in 2009. This trend reversed in 2011, with the proportion increasing to 8 percent that year and 9 percent in 2015, before dropping to 7 percent in 2017.

In a recent study, we looked at 134 suicide deaths of children aged 5 to 11 years between 2013 and 2017. Most of the children were between 10 and 11 years old, and 75% were male. Among the children who died by suicide, we found that: * 31% had a mental health concern or diagnosis, with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and mood disorders such as depression being the most common diagnoses * 24% had a prior psychiatric hospitalization * 78% were receiving mental health treatment before their deaths

And now let's state all the incoherences or gaps of the movie:

* The % of students who thought about committing suicide was 17% in 2017. 7% actually did it. Wouldn't it be better to have explored the 10% who didn't? Wouldn't that be a stronger motivating weapon to beat these suicide rates?

* None of the three main reasons that lead to suicide in children was shown in the movie. The kid was healthy and apparently happy. Some lack of confidence, independence and extrovertedness could be identified, but those are features of personality, not mental problems * The victim never suffered direct bullying from the colleagues. In the world of bullying - which is undoubtedly dangerous and concerning - what actually happened was quite soft and respectable. Both kids were asked if they were a homossexual couple and Leo was once joked inappropriately for supposedly being homossexual

So basically the movie made a child kill himself because his best friend (or eventually lover) started getting distant because he was feeling judgement of his peers for supposedly being gay?

There are 2 fights between the children, one of them public, and no professor or school worker decides to have a conversation with both children?

Two children sleep together almost everyday, their peers think they are in an homossexual relationship, and their parents never noticed that something could be a bit precocious? I mean, is it normal that two 13 year old children who might be sexually attracted for each other sleep together everyday?

And the last question, which marks the moment of the movie where it could turn into something actually horrible to see.

How can the first impulse of a mother be to blame her son's best friend for his death? Even if she wasn't expecting that announcement (which would surprise me, since I would expect a mother in that situation to think deeply about all the possible reasons of the suicide) how wasn't her first impulse to say "The death of my son is obviously not your fault. The responsibility of educating him and guaranteeing that everything was okay with him wasn't yours, but mine and from his father. If responsibles are in this death, definitely you're not the one." How could the plot be so dramatic to put me thinking that would actually turn into an horror movie where the mother would kill that innocent and humble child?

Summary: too dramatic, dangerous with the message, easy screenplay, lack of study.