Close: Deceptive, by David Bax

He almost had me. In his first film since 2018’s vile Girl, an apparent attempt to sympathize with trans kids by flattening and wallowing in their misery, Lukas Dhont really had me going for a minute with Close. For most of its first half, the film effectively builds a believably tender friendship between two boys, Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav De Waele). Upon entering a new school year, though, the duo endure what is essentially a friend breakup, spurred by Léo’s self-consciousness about his male classmates’ mockery of his intimacy with Rémi. This is all heartbreakingly rendered. Also, Close is at least partially a hockey movie and I’m always a sucker for that.

But, just as I was sure I was on board, Dhont takes a hard turn into cheap, heavy-handed melodrama, made all the worse by the fact that he treats it as dourly as possible. Finally, the director of Girl has shown up.

Once again, Dhont insults us by insisting on a reality that will set off any discerning viewer’s bullshit detector. It’s not just that the screenplay (by Dhont and Angelo Tijssens, just like Girl) is so full of forced, juvenile self-seriousness. It’s that Dhont insists so deeply on the import of it all as to condemn anyone not willing to be led along.

This artificial weight of the piece is emphasized by Dhont and cinematrographer (Frank van den Eeden, who also, you guessed it, shot Girl). Their initial handheld naturalism increasingly gives way to tighter and tighter frames, close-ups that leave little room for interpretation.

Close‘s sound design is also geared toward leaving you no space to think for yourself. The microphones were clearly turned up to their highest sensitivity on set, making it seem as if the actors are breathing and speaking their dialogue directly into your ear.

At one point in the film, a character breaks their arm. The presence of and eventual removal of the cast would seem to be a reminder to the audience that time heals all wounds. I’ve found that to be true over the course of my life but I’m also aware that it’s a cliché. And that’s more or less all that Close is. A series of clichés. Whether they’re true or not doesn’t seem to matter. Dhont appears to believe that stating them sternly enough will make us believe them. Personally, I think more of movie audiences than that.