Lukas Dhont’sClosehas been met with near-universal acclaim, including an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature Film. The film centers on two thirteen-year-old boys, Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav De Waele), as they navigate the tribulations of coming-of-age. A heartbreaking meditation on the pressures to fit in at school, the film’s widespread adoration is certainly founded on the film’s universal appeal. While one can absolutely read the film as simply capturing the trials of young adulthood, the film also, as its nomination for the Queer Palm at Cannes suggests, offers queer spectators a unique experience of identification.Closeis uniquely powerful for queer audiences by depicting the painful effects of socialization.
In ‘Close,’ Léo and Rémi Share Their Own World
Closebegins by depicting the intimate bond Léo and Rémi share over the summer. The film opens with a black screen with the boys’ voices heard on the soundtrack. They sound like they’re playing an imaginative game. This cinematic effect captures the world as the boys experience it—there is only them in their world together. The first images that then appear on-screen depict the boys’ game and their running through a field of vibrantly colored flowers. The cinematography captures the beauty and innocence of their relationship. Throughout the summer scenes, their intimacy is supported through a series of close-ups that frame the boys’ loving looks at one another.
Everything changes when they go to school. On their first day, the two boys look lost in a sea of other children. Up to this point, Léo and Rémi have mostly been the only two primary figures on screen. Now, filmed from a high angle, the boys are displaced, no longer the only two people in their imaginative world. The change in environment signals the changes coming to their relationship.
‘Close’ Accurately Depicts How Queer Kids Are Treated by Their Peers
One of the first experiences many queer kids must deal with is being subject to other children’s curiosity.Closeuses its composition to depict this process. During their first class, Rémi admits to Léo that he is feeling nervous. To calm him, Léo tenderly puts his head on Rémi’s shoulder. Just after, the film cuts to a selective focus shot, where two boys in the background are in focus while Léo is blurred in the foreground. The two boys stare at Léo, suggesting they’ve noticed Léo and Rémi’s affection. Based on their stare and the lack of focus on Léo, it is clear the other boys find Léo and Rémi to be a mystery, and object for inquisitive glances.
Once an object of curiosity, queer kids’ differences are often made visible by other children, whether the queer children recognize their difference or not. The film captures this perfectly in a scene between the boys and a group of female students. The girls’ questioning begins with the loaded “Can I ask you a question?” For many queer youths, this is the wind-up to being asked about their sexuality or identity. Before receiving a response from the boys (indicating it did not matter if they wanted to be asked), the girls’ leader asks, “Are you together?” She asks the question with a slight smile and a quick glance at her friend, conveying the sense of humor with which she approaches the conversation. After Léo tells her they are not together, the girls continue to question them, and even though they claim they are not “trying to be mean,” their enduring smiles suggest their questions are not innocent either. As the questions continue, Léo gets visibly upset and wants to know why they would think that and why they cannot accept his answer. The girls repeatedly mention their closeness, suggesting that they are “too close” to be normal. Rémi sits silently, hurt, but his attention is focused on Léo. Léo, though, ends the conversation looking away, not returning Rémi’s look of comfort. For Léo, this encounter forces him to consider his difference, and his failure to return Rémi’s look indicates he is considering it in relation to their relationship.
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The Effects of Bullying Drives Léo and Rémi Apart
To be seen as normal, Léo begins to act differently around the other children, as many queer kids do to fit in. During recess at school, the boys are resting in the yard. Rémi places his head on Léo’s abdomen for comfort. Léo looks around to see what the other kids are doing and rolls away from Rémi. Though the boys spent most of the summer sharing a bed, Léo begins to break away based on what he perceives as normal from the other children. Though their relationship changes at school, Léo continues to behave as he did during the summer when they’re at home. This is clearest in relation to Rémi’s oboe practice. While Rémi practices, Léo encourages him and praises his talent. At the concert, Rémi glances at Léo in the audience for reassurance as Léo beams with pride. Their socialization at school has yet to affect their relationship outside the classroom.
However, after being bullied, Léo’s demeanor shifts more drastically. In the schoolyard, two bullies slap Léo’s behind and tell him that he likes it. They call him a girl and the f-slur to insult him. Though some of his friends attempt to cheer him up, Léo is visibly defeated by the encounter. In the following scene, though standing next to Rémi, Léo strikes up a conversation with Baptiste (Léon Bataille), an ice hockey player. The selective focus reduces Rémi to the background, signaling Léo’s desire to fit in with the popular, athletic boy. As queer spectators will recognize, the desire to not be bullied is strong enough to change who Léo associates with and what activities they want to do to seem normal.
Léo begins to change his behavior in private after being bullied, too. One night, Léo gets out of Rémi’s bed and moves to his own. When he wakes up, Rémi is now in his bed. Léo instigates an aggressive encounter between them, mimicking the attitude of the bullies by using aggression to enforce certain behaviors. Rémi spends the next morning locking himself in his bathroom, rejecting food, and crying at the table. He then spends the school day avoiding Léo. After this point, there is a silence between the boys that has never been there before. Léo tries to ask Rémi what is wrong (not acknowledging his aggressive behavior), and Rémi denies that there is anything wrong (not acknowledging his true feelings). The two boys formerly shared everything and now are keeping things from one another.
‘Close’ Captures the Pressure on Queer Kids to Fit in
The pressures of socialization culminate in Léo’s decision to try out for hockey, which will allow him to fit in with the other boys. As a surprise to Léo, Rémi attends the practice to support him. However, in juxtaposition to the oboe concert scene, there is not a mutual appreciation here. Léo is upset that Rémi is watching him play and asks him why he came. The boards between the rink and the audience symbolize the barrier that has risen between them. Rémi continues to look at Léo in admiration, but Léo looks out to the rink and to his hockey friends. Léo is actively trying to break from Rémi, so he can be just like the other boys. For many queer kids, the pressure to fit in forces them to change their interests in order to not be perceived as different.
The final break in their relationship comes when Rémi tries to fill the silence between them. When Léo does not wait for Rémi before school the morning after Léo’s hockey practice, Rémi confronts him in the schoolyard. Emotionally shaken by Léo’s absence, he questions why Léo was not there for him. Léo repeatedly tells him there is nothing wrong, which Rémi will no longer accept. Rémi begins to cry and lunges at Léo, starting an aggressive encounter broken up by the teachers. Léo’s determination to no longer be perceived as different creates an irresolvable break between them.
Unlike the numerous queer coming-of-age films set in high school,Closeactually captures just how early the pressure is for queer kids to hide their difference. Part of the tragic beauty of the film comes from seeing this component of many queer spectators’ lives represented as they experienced it as children. Now, the narrative trajectory as it moves on from Léo and Rémi’s break is (a) best left for the viewer to consider; and (b) simultaneously gut-wrenchingly real and melodramatically questionable, but no matter the narrative’s continuation, no film has captured the early pressures for queer kids to conform so genuinely.
