Close (2022) BBC 4, BBC iPlayer, directed by Lukas Dhont, and written by Lukas Dhont and Angelo Tijssens

https://wwwbbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001zqvz/close

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_(2022_film)

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. This is a tearjerker. It reminded me of C.Day Lewis’s poem Walking Away.  The poet laurate is transfixed and transfigured the sight of his son (Oscar-winning actor, Daniel Day Lewis) Walking Away.

Behind a scatter of boys, I can see

You walking away from me towards the school

With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free

Into the wilderness, the gait of one

Who finds no path where the path should be.

Thirteen-year-old boys, Léo (Eden Dambrine), and Rémi (Gustav de Waele) live each other’s lives in rural Belguim. They are on the same path. They sleep in the same bed, when Leo sleeps over.

Their closeness attracts attention when they attend high school. Girls take Leo aside and ask if they’re ‘a couple’?

Leo becomes agitated. He explains they’re closer than brothers, but they they’re not a couple. Other kids in the class make homophobic comments.

Leo starts to distance himself from Remi. He cycles into school without him and Remi asks him where he was and why did he do that? He left early, he explained. But you always wait for me, replied Remi.

Leo takes up ice hockey with a classmate, but complains when Remi comes to watch him train. When Remi suggests he could join the team too, Leo puts him off.

Leo goes on a school trip. On the bus, everybody is counted. Remi doesn’t make that either.

In Day Lewis’s poem, ‘How selfhood begins with a walking away. And love is proved in the letting go’.

But there’s no Walking Away here. The ‘hesitant figure’ does not eddy away. This is how tragedy begins with the cruelty of the mundane translated into something darker and deeper. Terrific film.

https://amzn.to/48khBJ5