Close

When I was younger I remem­ber hear­ing that a bro­ken bone heals back stronger than before. When school friends would inevitably turn up in casts after injur­ing them­selves dur­ing sports or climb­ing trees or wrestling with their sib­lings, I would duti­ful­ly sign their cast and think to myself, ​“Bro­ken bones heal stronger.” I know now that’s only true for a few weeks dur­ing the heal­ing process. Bro­ken bones are only stronger for a lit­tle while.

In Lukas Dhont’s sec­ond fea­ture, Close, 13-year-old Léo (Eden Dambrine) breaks his wrist dur­ing a game of ice hock­ey. This inci­dent takes place quite late in the film’s nar­ra­tive, after a tragedy involv­ing his best friend Rémi (Gus­tav De Waele) has already cast a long shad­ow over Léo’s idyl­lic life on a flower farm in rur­al Bel­gium. Over the course of a school year, Léo attempts – in his own rudi­men­ta­ry way – to process his emo­tions about what hap­pened to Rémi. Bro­ken bones might heal back stronger at first, but what about the rest of the human body? How do we process cat­a­stroph­ic loss at a point in life we’ve bare­ly learned to process any oth­er sort of emotion?

The pas­sage of time in Close is marked by the flower har­vest. Léo helps his father and broth­er process the del­i­cate pop­pies they cul­ti­vate, impos­si­bly small against the whirr of heavy machin­ery. Life goes on, like always. But Léo can’t for­get how the tran­si­tion to a new school changed his close bond with Rémi – sud­den­ly he felt self-con­scious about their close­ness as oth­er chil­dren start­ed to com­ment and make fun of them.

Des­per­ate to fit in, he felt the need to push Rémi away, and as a result blames him­self for the cat­a­stro­phe that fol­lowed. Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Frank van den Eeden, who worked with Dhont on his pre­vi­ous film, Girl, cap­tures a child’s eye view of the world, burst­ing with colour and light, typ­i­fied by shaky hand­held cam­er­a­work and the fre­net­ic, fast-pace of an atten­tion span split in myr­i­ad direc­tions at any one time.

Many are right­ful­ly skep­ti­cal about Dhont’s work after the polar­is­ing reac­tion to Girl, which drew both pos­i­tive reviews and sub­stan­tial crit­i­cism for its por­tray­al of a trans teenag­er attempt­ing to fit in with the high-pres­sure, body-obsessed world of bal­let. These respons­es have sparked impor­tant con­ver­sa­tions about who gets to be the stew­ard of oth­er peo­ples’ sto­ries, and the ways in which even well-mean­ing art can have a neg­a­tive impact.

I went into Close with sub­stan­tial reser­va­tions about Dhont – hav­ing dis­liked Girl and been unsat­is­fied with his response to crit­i­cism around the film – but found clear-eyed ten­der­ness in this por­tray­al of play­ground love and grief that comes on like a sud­den sum­mer thunderstorm.

The way we’re taught to process our emo­tions and talk about them has last­ing ram­i­fi­ca­tions. I spent eight years in ther­a­py from the age of 13 to 21 because I want­ed to kill myself and I didn’t know why. If I’m hon­est, I often still want to do that. I am not much clos­er to clo­sure than I was as a child. The best answer I have as to why is a chem­i­cal imbal­ance bare­ly altered by heavy-dose psy­chi­atric med­ica­tion. Dhont’s film reopened old wounds, con­front­ed my own child­hood spent in and out of hos­pi­tal rooms, try­ing to not be so fuck­ing sad anymore.

Close is a film about the peo­ple left behind when that feel­ing becomes unbear­able, and about the gulf between see­ing and under­stand­ing as a child. The expe­ri­ence of feel­ing bone-crush­ing guilt for the first time, the kind of love that we don’t always iden­ti­fy until it slips through our fin­gers, and the banal­i­ty of play­ground cru­el­ty – how chil­dren, even today, are con­di­tioned to recog­nise dif­fer­ence as weak­ness and zero in on it, expose it, for the sake of safe­ty in numbers.

Dhont’s naked­ly evoca­tive approach to film­mak­ing, includ­ing Valentin Hadjadj’s soar­ing orches­tral score, can’t hope to res­onate with every­one, and what I find emo­tion­al­ly hon­est and effect­ing, oth­ers may read as cloy­ing or manip­u­la­tive (though, I think to some extent I often see film­mak­ing as a process of audi­ence manip­u­la­tion, of try­ing to use every tool at your dis­pos­al to cre­ate some­thing that res­onates with the peo­ple star­ing up at the screen).

The script is a lit­tle clum­sy in the direct con­nec­tion it draws between the frac­ture in Léo and Rémi’s friend­ship and the tragedy that ensues, but giv­en that Close is seen from the per­spec­tive of a 13-year-old, this can per­haps be under­stood as a pre-teen’s under­stand­ing of the ulti­mate­ly unthink­able. Chil­dren are, ulti­mate­ly, a lit­tle self-cen­tered, and see their actions as more impact­ful than they real­ly are. When we grieve, we look­ing for mean­ing, and Léo, unable to find any, blames himself.

I sup­pose what I mean to say is that I know Léo and Rémi, played with a sen­si­tiv­i­ty and sweet­ness that feels heart­break­ing­ly authen­tic by Dambrine and De Waele. I’ve been Léo and Rémi, angry and sad and scared and secre­tive and reach­ing for con­nec­tion beyond articulation.

When I think about cin­e­ma, I always come back to that much-cit­ed quote by Roger Ebert – ​“the movies are like a machine that gen­er­ates empa­thy”. Some­times the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing and respond­ing to a film offers us a chance to gain an insight into some­one else’s life or world­view. Some­times, if we’re lucky, we’re able to under­stand some­thing about our­selves and see an expe­ri­ence or an emo­tion we recog­nise reflect­ed in what’s up on the screen.

This is what makes crit­i­cism hard – how do you sep­a­rate your world­view from the film? The truth is you can’t. Every­thing you know and are has led up to the words you will write about some­thing you watch. For me, Close gets to the heart of some­thing I know all too well: bone-deep lone­li­ness, grief, sad­ness and des­per­a­tion that is hard to artic­u­late, much less as a young child. To show this so mas­ter­ful­ly, and with­out an ounce of judge­ment, make Close a small wonder.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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