Close(2022)

Thirteen year old "Léo" (Eden Dambrine) and his schoolfriend "Rémi" (Gustav De Waele) are inseparable. The play together, eat together, sleep together - an ideal fraternal relationship. At school, though, their classmates start to make disparaging remarks about them, and the naturally more gregarious "Léo" begins to shun his friend a little, then a little more... Tragedy ensues after "Rémi" doesn't show up for a…

Reviewed on October 21, 2022

I don't rate a film 10/10 unless it's wonderful and my reviews tend to be motivated by either abject disappointment or outright admiration. I think that's very much most people's experience of film, you either love it or you don't. With Close, there's everything to love and it is an exercise in pure love, not just in its storyline but also the art of film, acting and storytelling. Importantly. It is akin to a…

Reviewed on August 13, 2023

Summary: 9/10: A tender, devastating examination of how homophobia and toxic masculinity destroy male intimacy, anchored by extraordinary performances from Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele that make the film's tragedy feel both intimate and unbearably universal. There's a moment early in Lukas Dhont's Close when thirteen-year-old Léo and Rémi race their bicycles through fields of flowers in the Belgian…

Reviewed on July 14, 2026

While marketed towards a gay audience, is not really a gay story. Spoilers: it's about two young teens that were best friends their whole life, but when they got to middle school other kids thought they were a couple and started teasing them. The more sensitive boy ingored it, but the other boy was greatly bothered by it and dropped his friend to create a new image for himself. The more sensitive boy ended his life…

Reviewed on August 30, 2026