A light touch for a powerful childhood tale
Close
Cast: Eden Dambrine,
Gustav De Waele
Director: Lukas Dhont
Duration: 1 h 45 m
Available: In theatres in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. Opens Feb. 10 in more cities
There’s a warm breeze blowing through Close, Belgium’s submission to the Oscars for best international feature, and one of the five final nominees. We hear it early, in a scene in which childhood friends Léo (Eden Dambrine), and Rémi (Gustav De Waele) are lolling next to each other during one of their frequent sleepovers. Leo is telling Rémi a strange bedtime story about a duck and a lizard, and at one point creates a believable sound of wind with his breath.
But it’s also present as the boys ride their bicycles together to and from school.
It zephyrs through the fields where Léo’s family grows crops of flowers. It wafts past the boys as they play outside, moving easily from one parental house to the other, more siblings than friends.
Close? They’re practically inseparable, a fact noticed by classmates, several of whom question whether the boys are a couple. (I’ll admit it: I was wondering, too.)
Léo, the more outgoing, answers calmly but firmly in the negative. To the more overt bullying on the subject, he stands his ground.
Belgian director and co-writer Lukas Dhont lets the story play out slowly and easily, taking cues from the rhythms of childhood in which a season, whether the almost-still air of summer or the gusts of autumn school days, seems to last forever. But of course the wind that is time never truly stops.
A traumatic event midway through this story changes everyone’s perceptions.
We watch as their mothers — Émilie Dequenne and Léa Drucker, each matching her onscreen son in looks, both radiating a gentle maternal warmth — offer love and guidance, while at the same time clearly existing as individuals and not just “moms.”
That draft in the cinema while watching Close may be your own sighs, perhaps even sobs. No matter. Close may feature an ill wind, but it ultimately does its viewers good. ΩΩΩΩΩ