In 2018, Girl won three awards at the Croisette. Flemish director Lukas Dhont's new film continues his contemplation of teenage upheavals. This time, through the prism of other people's eyes. Close, the head-on collision of childhood and the world.
Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Remi (Gustav de Waele) are inseparable children. They spend their summer vacations in fields of flowers or in old abandoned shelters, inventing war games for each other. The two boys' complicity is sunny, lightning-fast. But this obvious bond becomes suspect in a school setting. In the canteen, a little girl asks them if they're in love. The reaction is one of rumor. How will this friendship stand up to the judgments of others?
A few months ago, another Belgian mentioned it: schools are scary. In Un Monde, Laura Wendel explored, from a child's point of view, the labyrinth of classrooms and the codified spaces we have to get used to. Dhont opts for a similar approach, but it's adolescence and the start of high school that act as the fissure.
Close to the subject
Léo is present in every frame: close up or at a distance, the camera follows the emotions of a teenager who becomes aware of the end of a form of innocence. In physical contact with the ice at field hockey, in the playground where he has to fit in, in the face of adult incomprehension. Anger gives way to guilt and regret at a tragic event that disrupts the course of an already worrying period.
With Close, Dhont follows in the footsteps of his compatriots, the Dardenne brothers. This is evidenced by the languid, tremulous quality of the sequence shots, in which nothing seems to happen except the oscillations of an adolescent. The imperceptible movements of consciousness remain opaque. What remains is the slight sensation of going back and forth, suggested by the double meaning of the title: from a rapprochement to an occlusion.
Write to the author: fanny.agostino@leregardlibre.com
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Cover illustration: Scene from Close Menuet Diaphana Films Topkapi Films Versus Production
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