Close is an extraordinarily moving exploration of queer youth unlike anything a film has ever offered

Queeries is a column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens. 

Lukas Dhont is coming off a pretty phenomenal 2022. The 31-year-old Belgian filmmaker debuted his second feature film, Close, at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where it won the festival's Grand Prix (which, despite the prize's title, is actually second place to the Palme d'Or — but second place at the world's most prestigious film festival is still a very big deal). And the wins continued throughout the rest of the year, including major prizes at multiple other film festivals and various film critics groups, as well as a Golden Globe nomination and a shortlist mention for the Academy Award for best international feature.

These laurels have helped catapult Dhont to his current status as one of the most exciting voices in European cinema — a designation that Close makes clear is incredibly deserved. Guided by Dhont's sensitive direction and the remarkable performances of his young actors (Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele), the film is a deeply moving, at times devastating exploration of the friendship between two 13-year-old boys. One of my favourite films of 2022, its depiction of the perceptions of masculinity and the destructive effect that can have on queer youth feels so singular and generous. And with Close finally getting a proper theatrical release later this month, you can soon discover this for yourself.

(I'd advise going into the film knowing as little about its plot as possible, though do come prepared: Close makes for an intensely emotional experience, particularly if you have once been a young queer teen yourself.)

"The moment that the film tries to capture is this transition between childhood and puberty," Dhont tells me over a Zoom call. "When you come to the playground, you are confronted with a society that is divided into groups, and every group has its expectations and has its labels. And that is not only for boys — it's also for girls and it's for those who don't identify as either of those."

"Everyone understands, all of a sudden, this sort of verticality of a society when you come on that playground. And I think for many of us, it's also this moment where this force of a group can be so strong that sometimes, we betray parts of ourselves in order to feel like we can belong."

The film's origin story comes from a book that was recommended to Dhont by a friend: Deep Secrets: Boys' Friendships and the Crisis of Connection, in which American psychologist Niobe Way follows the lives of 150 boys from the age of 13 until the age of 18.

"At the age of 13, [Way] sat down with them and she asked them questions about their male friendships," he explains. "And what is really beautiful is that she's written down all these testimonies of these boys, and these boys talk about each other in an incredible, vulnerable way. They openly used the word 'love' when they talk about each other and there's no shame and there's nothing preventing them from doing that."

But, as you might expect, everything had changed by the time they were 18.

"You just see how the tendency is that these boys don't dare to use the language of emotion anymore, and that they start to distance themselves from those testimonies and from the other boys," says Dhont. "I feel like in the meantime they have understood that in our society, we learn to value certain traits linked to being a man or being a young man growing up — being independent, competitive, more at a distance with what happens on the inside. And actually, I think we deprive them of that very important connection, not only with the world, but also with themselves."

Dhont related to this very much himself. 

"I grew up in the Flemish countryside," he says. "And of course, my experience of growing up is not only linked to masculinity, because I was a young man growing up, but also linked to my sexuality because my experience was also very much queer. I feel like at a certain moment in my life, I started to fear intimacy and sensuality with other boys, because I feel like in our society you are conditioned to look at that in a certain way."

It was that jumping off point from which Dhont conceived of Close. 

"I wanted to make a film that is, on the one hand, about masculinity or the pressures coming from this patriarchal society where there are certain traits linked to masculinity," he says. "But I also wanted it to be about friendships."

"I feel like the strength of friendship was an important thing for me to talk about, but also the fragility of it. I feel like we all have been in that place where, because of the things we do or because of the things a friend does, all of a sudden that friendship starts to change and shift and sometimes break. And that idea of that breakup in a friendship is something that I felt like I wanted to translate and transform into images onscreen."

Dhont certainly does just that in Close, in large part thanks to his collaboration with Dambrine and De Waele, who give two of the greatest performances I saw all of last year — despite it being each actor's first film, and the fact that they were both just 13 years old during filming. And this collaboration really only happened because of a chance encounter on a train that Dhont was taking between the Belgian cities of Antwerp and Ghent.

"I was on the train listening to music, and then I started looking next to me and there was Eden talking to his friends," Dhont says. "I didn't hear what he was saying because I had music on, but I was observing his face and the way he was expressing himself. And I just felt like, 'Wow, this is really someone very special.' I felt this sort of artistry in him already — I can't describe it otherwise. And I thought, 'I'm going to regret it if I don't talk to this person.'"

So Dhont approached Dambrine, asking if he might be interested in auditioning for a film. He was, and at the casting call, he was clearly well-matched with da Waele, whom Dhont had met in a theatre class for young people run by his friend in Brussels. 

"I think our casting process was quite elaborate in the sense that we organized full days and  every day we invited 20 boys and we tried to work with them to see how they would grow and  how they would feel comfortable," says Dhont. "And by coincidence, Eden and Gustav came together in a group of 20. And, you know, some people just have chemistry. But them? Every time that a pair needed to be formed, they were just magnets towards each other."

"That was actually the factor that made us decide to work with them. It was not only their talent, but there was also the collaboration that immediately started to exist when they met, and you could just feel that. They didn't only want themselves to do good — they wanted the other to do good as well."

Cut to the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, and the two boys were joining Dhont on one of the world's most glamorous red carpets. 

"It was their first red carpet they ever did," Dhont says. "I was so nervous for the film and for how it would play. But then all of a sudden, I started looking at it all through their eyes. They noticed all these things that maybe I wasn't noticing because I was too in my head. And I think they helped me to just be in that moment."

Soon after, the trio were traveling to the United States for the film's premiere at the New York Film Festival. 

"Eden had never gone to the States before," Dhont says. "On the plane ride there, he was watching The Devil Wears Prada, one of his favourite movies. And so then we arrive, and literally one of the first people we see is Anne Hathaway."

"It was just wonderful to be able to share that with them and see their excitement — and also see how wherever we go, their performances have really moved people. I think for them that has been really exciting, to feel that what they put in the film of themselves is so appreciated."

You can appreciate the collective work of Dhont, Dambrine and De Waele yourself when Close begins screening in North American cinemas on January 27th.