The summer after sixth grade, I made a best friend over the summer. Let’s call her Justine. We hung out constantly, had massive karaoke battles in her basement, and exchanged notes on the dreamiest members of Duran Duran. (Team John 4Eva!)
But when we went back to school (our first time in what is now called middle school—back then we called it junior high), she became one of the popular girls—replete with lip gloss, designer jeans, and the shiniest hair this side of the Atlantic—and pretty much dumped me. (I was less “popular girl” and more “nerd who played cello and was friends with the teachers.”) It hurt. It sucked. And, of course, it was an incredibly normal part of childhood.
Lukas Dhont’s Close, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes and is an Oscar nominee for Best International Feature, is about that kind of friendship breakup—but in extremis. Léo (a heartbreaking Eden Dambrine) and Remi (Gustav De Waele) are best friends living in the Belgian countryside. They don’t seem to ever watch TV or play video games—instead they romp and ride bikes in the fields of flowers that Léo’s parents grow and sell, draw pictures of each other, and listen to music together (Remi plays the oboe and Léo watches him intently, filled with awe and love for his best friend). Out of the gate, I didn’t really buy this friendship: It seemed too idealized and overly aestheticized. The “close” of the film’s title is a reference to the closeness of the boy’s friendship—they have a physical ease with each other that is beyond brothers—but it could also be a reference to Dhont’s reliance on the close-up. Again and again, his camera stays trained on the faces of the boys, or sometimes their skinny bodies, nearly entwined as they sleep next to each other in bed and lie on top of each other in a meadow. Dhont knows how to wield a close-up for maximum devastation.
Are the boys meant to be in love? Dhont is unclear on that—it’s a reasonable interpretation of the film, although it’s equally fair to suggest that their physical comfort comes from a kind of innocence. Both boys come from loving and affectionate families and they don’t think twice about holding each other. This, to me, is a beautiful observation and a worthy subject for a film. Men are taught at a very young age not to be physically demonstrative with their friends. But what if they were shielded from that kind of stigma. How might they behave?
Of course, the stigma comes crashing down hard on the boys when they go to school. “Are you guys together?” one girl asks. It’s an assumption many of their classmates have made—most with mere curiosity, some with an inevitable helping of derision and cruelty.
Both Remi and Léo are surprised by this accusation but it’s Léo who takes it harder. He’s somewhat mortified and he pulls away from Remi. He even joins the ice hockey team as a way of establishing his masculine bonafides. When Remi innocently suggests that he join the team, too, Léo recoils. Remi is so hurt by his friend’s abrupt rejection he lunges for him in the playground. The two boys fight, but it’s mostly a furious Remi and a guilty, confused Léo trying to fend him off.
And then something happens. What follows is a massive spoiler, so if you want to go into the film cold, as it were, stop reading here.
LAST CHANCE TO GO UNSPOILED.
Shortly after the boys’ fight, there’s a class field trip to the beach. Remi is unexpectedly absent. When the kids get back from their trip, they are instructed to meet in the assembly hall. All their parents are there. Léo already knows. We already know.
Léo’s stays behind on the bus, afraid to join his classmates. His mom comes on the bus and the look on her face erodes any possibility of doubt: Remi is dead. He killed himself.
I must say, the film really lost me here. I’d already taken issue with the overly romanticized way Dhote depicted this young friendship, but this was a bridge too far. What happened between Léo and Remi was sad, heartbreaking even, but was it enough for Remi to kill himself? Again, a similar scenario is playing out in schools across the world, all the time. It’s hard. It’s a sobering part of growing up. It almost never leads to suicide.
In fairness, there are tiny (almost imperceptible) hints that Remi was suffering from depression: At one point, earlier in the film, before the friendship unraveled, Remi’s mother (Émilie Dequenne) gets upset when Remi locks himself in the bathroom—she told him not to do that! At another point, Remi gives a recital and, as Léo watches adoringly from the audience, something dark passes over Remi’s face. So…maybe? But I wish the film had spelled it out more clearly.
Either way, Léo certainly thinks he’s the cause of his best friend’s suicide and the second half of the film is about repressed guilt and grief.
There’s a beautiful scene where Remi’s parents come to Léo’s house for dinner a few months after their son’s death. They’re trying to move on with their lives. Do normal things. They ask Léo’s older brother about his plans after high school. The brother innocently goes on about taking a year off to travel and Remi’s father, Peter (Kevin Janssens), dissolves into tears. Because Close often functions as an extremely efficient tear duct release machine, Dhote focuses on the table, where Léo’s brother and parents clutch Peter’s hands, consoling him. Somehow, focusing on those hands and not Peter’s face makes the scene more crushing.
In some ways, Close is smart about grief. Léo is able to live his life—he plays ice hockey, he makes a new best friend, we see him occasionally laugh with his classmates in the school yard. But the sadness and guilt is never far from the surface. (He breaks his arm playing hockey and only then does he allow himself to loudly wail.) We wait for him to “confess” to Remi’s mother. That’s the tension that takes up the second half of the film. I was furious at Léo’s otherwise doting parents for not taking him to therapy. I mean, I get that therapy is probably not big in the Belgian countryside, but can’t they see that their kid is in pain?
Dhote also makes it clear that, in the wake of a suicide, people are always searching for answers or for someone to blame. Of course, knowing the inner workings of someone else’s mind is impossible, but I do resent Close for even suggesting that Remi’s death is a direct result of Léo’s actions. It didn’t sit well with me.
Yes, I cried early and often in Close, loudly sniffling in the theater and even blowing my nose a few times. “It’s not COVID,” I wanted to say. “It’s manipulative filmmaking!”
Close opens this Friday at The Charles.