The 13-year-old boys Léo and Rémis have a close friendship at school and in the flower fields where they and their parents pick the harvest for home. When schoolmates shoot a wedge into the relationship, the consequences are fatal.

13-year-old boys Léo and Rémi have a close friendship at school and in the flower fields where they and their parents pick the harvest for home. When schoolmates shoot a wedge into the relationship, the consequences are fatal.

The Oscar nominated Close is a narrative of two quite distinct but equally powerful parts. The first is an idyllic Pixar-esque portrayal of childhood friendship which is filled with sleepovers, sunlit bike rides and boyhood adventures. But at school Leo and Remi begin to face a challenge to that friendship in the form of new and quite fierce social pressures, on a number of fronts. 

This is where the film takes a sharp and twisting turn leading into an anguished ode to grief, despair, and deep regret. While this part of the narrative isn’t quite as distinct in that it follows a well trodden path of narrative norms, it doesn’t make it any less powerful.

Close is a quiet, considered film that is many things: a stark display of social pressures, casual homophobia, and the struggle with societal caricatures of what being male really is.  

The two leads, Dambrine and De Waele are sublime, managing to convey in the most natural way possible, a beauty and fragility not only in their friendship but also in their own individual lives. 

Close is an achingly considered film with two distinct but equally powerful parts punctuated by sublime performances from its two young leads.

★★★★