Eden Dambrine, Gustav de Waele, Emilie Dequenne, Léa Drucker
A loving friendship between two young boys is irrevocably disrupted in Girl (2018) director Lukas Dhont’s heart-breaking coming-of-age drama, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes.
13-year-old best friends Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav De Waele) are inseparable. Making first steps towards adulthood, they enjoy a tender and intense bond; so close that their parents treat them almost like brothers. But when they start high school and become newly self-conscious around their peers, needing to evince greater sophistication and independence, their relationship deteriorates, tearing them suddenly and tragically apart.
Evocative and sensitive, Dhont’s direction captures the indelibly painful moment when childhood friendships become contingent, when the outside world and its judgements begin to intrude in previously exquisitely trusting relationships. Beautifully performed by newcomers Dambrine and De Waele, brilliantly supported by Léa Drucker and Émilie Dequenne as the boys’ mothers, Close registers the profound shock and grief afforded by the loss of teen friendships, plus the immense vulnerability of boys who fall foul of codes of youthful masculinity.
