Close

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 school trip and the repercussions hit the young "Léo" and "Sophie" (Émilie Dequenne) - the mother of his friend - especially hard. On one level this film is about cruelty. Not a deliberate, malevolent style of cruelty - but one of indifference, of ignorance - a bully's sort of cruelty. On another it is a story of love, loyalty - bet...

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 dissection, an expert analysis of youth told through the eyes of two boys in tremendous pain. It is nuanced and a near savant, perceptive commentary on the predjudices cultivated within the human predicament from the very outset. It captures perfectly how instilled bigotry dessicates pure innocence from the moment a child sets foot ...