FILM: CLOSE UP ON LUKAS DHONT’S OSCAR-NOMINATED FILM ‘CLOSE’

BY LOUISE BARRETTO

Leo (Eden Dambrine) and Remi (Gustav De Waele) are best friends who share intimate moments, innocently spending countless nights together as thirteen-year-old playmates usually do. They have an unspoken closeness that can’t be labeled and they’re probably too young to even articulate and understand their close friendship that vaguely hints at romance. Leo and Remi’s schoolmates take notice of this closeness and ask them if they’re a couple causing Leo to pull away from Remi, setting up a tragic turn of events.

Eden Dambrine as Leo and Gustav De Waele as Remi

CLOSE is Lukas Dhont’s second feature, a follow-up to GIRL, about a trans girl who pursues a career as a ballerina. Both films showcase similar themes that Dhont is interested in: grappling with gender identity in relation to the outside world. His lead characters are always somehow searching for answers, while still discovering who they are. When you’re in that frame of mind, it’s definitely hard to articulate your feelings. Dhont’s filmmaking style forces audiences to just be present and to experience the confusion his characters are going through.

Dhont mainly focuses on Leo’s point of view and I’m keenly intrigued about what Remi thinks about their friendship too. And we’ll never know for sure, but like all great films, the audience will have to decide on their own and make their own assumptions without having literal confirmation from the filmmaker.

That’s what art does, it forces you to think and make your own conclusions about what is seen and mostly what is unseen. Dhont shines in making the unseen felt and is able to highlight superb performances from his cast.

CLOSE won the Cannes Grand Prix and is nominated for an Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.