‘Close’ to being a great film
Lukas Dhont’s Oscar nominee is artful, if a little too calculated.
“Close” badly wants your tears and, on occasion, it earns them. A flawlessly acted, precision-tooled heartbreaker from 31-yearold Belgian writer-director Lukas Dhont, it tells an Edenic love story, conjuring a rapturous state of intimacy that gives way to a tragic fall from grace. What gives the movie its faint whisper of the taboo — a taboo that it proceeds to dismantle — is that the love story here happens to be between two 13-yearold boys, Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav De Waele). They’re longtime best friends who have grown as close as brothers, with none of the usual hangups about physical affection between boys. Here, even a head resting on a friend’s shoulder expresses a casual but powerful sense of mutual belonging.
Léo and Rémi are inseparable, in part because they’ve both been raised in gorgeous pastoral isolation. Léo’s parents are flower far
In French and Dutch dialogue with English subtitles
Rated: PG-13, for thematic material and brief strong language
Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes
Playing: AMC the Grove 14, Los Angeles; AMC Century City 15