the meticulous visual language is perfect ★★★★★

The image is during the first counts of close still black when the tape fills with whispering voices. Léo and Rémi, both about 12 years old, play a fantasy game that only they know the rules: something with footsteps of approaching knights that only they can hear. Then they start running, across a field of flowers full of pink, green, red and white.

My extra son, that’s what Léo is called by Rémi’s mother. They stay together, as they have done countless times before: the Flemish director-screenwriter Lukas Dhont hardly needs time to make that clear. You can feel it in the universe of their own that they have also created here, whispering under the covers, dreaming aloud of Remi’s later career as an oboist, which will undoubtedly lead to a performance on the moon.

But the idyll is very temporary. The scenes in which the boys run together or cycle as fast as possible across the Flemish countryside, their bodies portrayed as a harmonious dance, quickly become memories. The first day in seventh grade changes everything. Boys who show affection to each other, even if they have not yet defined it themselves, are considered an exotic phenomenon. At best they are subjected to a giggly fire of questions from possibly genuinely interested girls, at worst they take beating from tough-behaved guys.

The schoolyard dynamics drive them apart. Léo in particular suddenly becomes aware of their hitherto unspoken (because completely self-evident) intimacy and seeks distance. For Rémi, the grief evoked by the removal hits inside.

close, awarded the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, is an example of filmmaking at the highest level. In an unspoken area between soul mates, intimacy, love and friendship (later supplemented by an even more difficult-to-pronounce feeling), the film shows a boys’ union that cannot exist in the real world, through touches, silent glances and shared fantasy. Where the word may fall short, Dhont and camera giant Frank van den Eeden find a flawless, endearing and soul-cutting image. In the beginning in soft yellow light, which gets harder as the story progresses.

Like Dhont in his award-winning dream debut girl (2018) managed to seduce protagonist Victor Polster into extremely sensitive play, in his role as a transgender ballerina, the only 31-year-old Fleming now lets Eden Dambrine (as Léo) and Gustav De Waele (Rémi) fly. Meanwhile, Dhont’s penchant for the grand gesture returns – something that came to the fore frequently during the much-discussed ending of girl. Then Léo collects chopped off red roses during the flower harvest, the color that close is inextricably linked with Rémi, and the symbolism splashes over the edges of the canvas.

In the meticulous visual language of close miraculously it fits perfectly. As if Dhont has secretly hidden an opera under all the quiet moments.