Foreign Film Series: Close
In rural Belgium, two thirteen-year-old boys, Léo and Rémi, are best friends who exhibit a deeply intimate affection for one another. After a carefree summer together, the two boys start middle school and find themselves in the same class and with a whole new set of social challenges to their friendship. Close is a miraculously subtle Belgian drama packing a formidable emotional wallop, so cumulatively affecting because it is carried off with no affect whatsoever--even the gorgeous, string-led score is understated. The disintegration of a friendship between two boys on the cusp of adolescence in rural Belgium triggers a tragedy. A study of children confronted with the kind of grief that they have neither the maturity nor the temperamental framework to fully understand is always going to be a powerful proposition, but the combination of knock-out performances and direction of uncommon sensitivity from Dhont makes for a picture which is intimate in scope but packs a considerable punch.