Lukas Dhont never explicitly identifies the lead characters of his movie Close as queer. It might be easy to make that assumption, especially coming on the heels of Girl, his controversial debut film about a trans girl pursuing a career in ballet. But it’s a distinction never made clear. And the movie is actually better for this, as it doesn’t limit the experiences and emotions highlighted through this film to only the purview of one community. Maybe Léo and Rémi are gay, maybe they’re not -it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that they are close, which they are not socially allowed to be as boys growing up in a rigidly gendered, heteronormative culture.
Extrinsic and internalized toxic masculinity and homophobia are the root of all evil in Close, a very good though heartbreaking movie about a childhood relationship torn apart by social and psychological stigma. Lukas Dhont was inspired by a clinical book called Deep Secrets, about the unique intimacy between boys and the ways such things are socially discouraged as they grow older, as well as his own experience as a queer kid obligated to conform to certain standards of masculine behaviour and interest. There’s a palpable yearning for awareness to this movie, a need to understand that these aspects of boyhood psychology are unhealthy, and could lead to the greatest of harm.
The movie is set in rural Belgium and concerns the intimate friendship of thirteen year old boys Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav De Waele), as they enter high school. They’ve been close for years, spending all their time together, welcome in each other’s families and even sleeping with each other in frequent sleepovers. But once they enter their new school, their bond is apparent to other students who fixate on their relationship with either inappropriate curiosity or outright homophobia. Léo especially is bothered by this, and begins endeavouring to distance himself from Rémi and pursue a more gender-approved character and habit.
The early portions of the movie are charged by a youthful bliss as the kids play in the field near Rémi’s home, his mother Sophie (Émelie Dequenne) sometimes joining in, followed by their whispered giggling conversations at night. Immediately the fact of their gender becomes the point of discrepancy for this behaviour: it seems a touch unusual, but only because they are boys. I found myself thinking about several movies in which similar imagery is applied to the relationship between young girls, without there being any kind of implicit strangeness. I believe the parallel is intentional, as Dhont asks the audience to think about the lopsidedly gendered way our societies perceive childhood intimacy.
It is only with the suddenness of judgement that this sort of thing even becomes irregular to the boys. Rémi doesn’t know what to think, and is content to go on in their relationship as is. Léo though, is put on the defensive, and takes a fight or flight approach. The boys are each really good, as De Waele authentically retreats into himself in the gradual abandonment Rémi feels as Léo in more and more arenas cuts him out of his life. Dambrine is the most impressive though, with a wide-eyed face whose insecurities, pride, and later guilt can be read like a book. Without ever vocalizing his true feelings until the end, he conveys so acutely the need to be accepted and fear that he is too different. It plays out in the way Léo silently joins a new friend group, involves himself intently in the school hockey team -an interest he’d never shown before, and stops socializing with Rémi or his family, even shunning him. Only in the background of Léo’s perspective do we see the emotionally cataclysmic effect this is having on Rémi, and it culminates in an explosive school fight in which Léo is attacked by a sobbing Rémi, the last bitter nail in the coffin of their friendship.
And here is where it is necessary I spoil a major development of the film, as it cannot be discussed honestly if I overlook it. Following this confrontation about halfway through, on the return from a school trip that Rémi was conspicuously absent for, Léo is informed that his former friend has committed suicide. And all of a sudden Léo is consumed by a guilt he won’t dare express openly, suppressing it through the funeral, the psychological exercises he is obliged to take with his classmates, his hockey playing, and especially in his interactions with Sophie, whom he starts seeing again after a time while carefully avoiding ever bringing up her lost son.
It is so extreme and swift a plunge into dark material that it can only really be compared to the likes of Bridge to Terabithia or My Girl -stories that deal openly with the sudden death of a child. And yet it goes a step beyond in identifying the cause so explicitly as suicide and in painting the ramifications in purely psychological terms. It is a bold choice by Dhont to attach this to his film of toxic masculinity and youth, taking on the additional weight of that loaded theme. But he is intent, and likely more than a little accurate in his estimation of so severe a conclusion to these patterns. He does earn the invocation too, as he underplays the fallout from the death in a sobering way. The gravity of this loss is completely buried by Léo, which speaks louder to a warped social conditioning than any amount of tears or open mourning ever could.
Of course, Dhont isn’t so cynical as to deprive Léo of that necessary outpouring of built-up grief, heartbreak and sense of personal responsibility –but it doesn’t come easy. And the movie makes clear that the trauma will stay with Léo for a long time, in part because of how closed off he was to it for so long. Probably the harshest thing is that the film doesn’t entirely absolve him of his role in Rémi’s death, much as he may ultimately reconcile the tragedy itself. It is a haunting indictment, but Léo is understood to be a victim too. And all because of the pressure of arbitrary restraints on young male relationships. The consequences of ill-motivated toxic masculine actions can be dire –that is Dhont’s emphatic message. And it’s one that occurs too rarely in modern discussions of social roles and gender expression –not least in the medium of film.
Close is an apt title –Dhont frequently keeps his camera close to his protagonists, for better articulation of the nuance to their feelings. In some areas it moves with a smooth, almost documentary quality, which I’m sure is Dhont’s way of relating the subject matter with a greater sense of immediacy. And it does work. Though it follows the line of its theme to the utmost extremity, it makes its point sharply, honestly, and humanely. A difficult movie, but one with some real power.
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