Directed by : Lukas Dhont 

We are close because we are best friends.

Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele in a still from 'Close'

Spoilers ahead... 


Leo (Eden Dambrine) and Remi (Gustav De Waele), two thirteen year old boys, are very close friends who are hard to separate - eating together, games together and sleepovers. They even manage to be in same class at the 1st year of school. But that closeness leads to questions by other boys and girls, eventually leading to Leo doubt himself to an extent he begins to distance himself from Remi. All of that brings about an unfortunate incident leaving Leo and others to grieve and attempt to heal. 

Looks like a year full of movies based on mental illness, suicide and broken friendships. This movie almost feels identical to The Banshees of Inisherin because the 1st act is so enjoyable and also the starting portions of the 2nd act. The initial friendship is well established, and also the subtle hints given as to how this maybe more than just 'close friends'. 

I like how the growing distance is shown with Leo developing new taste that includes ice-skating and also making new friends/companies to hang with. The themes of male toxicity and homophobia is handled in a subtle manner.

What brings the movie down for me was the sudden change (again like Banshees) with that suicide moment, after which the plot revolves on grief and healing making it very mediocre. There's way too much time spent on the ice-hockey scenes and its a long wait for the confrontation scene to come when Leo lets his guilt out to Remi's mother.  

A better narrative could had been a full 2nd act revolving around how much further distant Leo grows from Remi and then using the final act showing some kind of major reaction which needn't be a suicide. The scenes involving Remi's mother since the loss of her son didn't invoke the emotions I expected it would. 

If you think about it, that one talk of girls to Leo and Remi changed everything. Those girls may even not realize that more than Leo, they are the ones responsible for Remi's death. It is really tough to pinpoint a person responsible to be honest, one could argue that Remi was too emotional boy and for his age he just couldn't take betrayal of his closest friend at all. 

Eden Dambrine is brilliant playing a coming of age character that's struggling with new learnings and a huge loss at his age along with a guilt that maybe unknowingly he was the reason why Remi did what he did. Gustav De Waele is equally good even with a lesser screen-time, it was heartbreaking to see how Remi has a fist fight with Leo at School, which was more of an emotional outburst that had been building for a while. 

Overall, Close promises a lot for first half of the movie and then falters to get manipulatively emotional. A different exceution would have resulted in a much better movie. 

My Rating : 6.5/10