Review: Close

I felt prepared for this one as I've seen director Lukas Dhont's only other feature film 'Girl' and that tackled some sensitive topics with highly emotional results.

So while I knew this was going to be a tough watch, there are times when a drama about a particular subject will always overwhelm you.

It covers topics we will have for sure experienced and executed them in a brutally honest fashion. It does hint of potential routes it may go down. But the one we got for me showed that this story came from experiences of the director as they felt so raw and passionate.

The cast is very strong and everyone brought their A-game to tell this story right. However, there is a star in this and it is child actor Eden Dambrine. The emotions he can create without even saying a word was so striking. His expressive eyes told so much of how he was feeling and the aggression when required felt very reliable.

His chemistry with Gustav De Waele felt natural and will make you remember of the strong friendships you had with certain people when you were a kid.

Emilie Dequenne comes through in the second half particularly with a lot of heart and emotion as well.

Another character is the Belgian landscape. The colour and scale is shown in the camerawork effectively. It gave the audience a sense of peace and tranquillity in small doses whenever the story was getting tough to stomach.

This was a very strong piece of work that explores a universal topic that tells it in a hard but true way. It's one of those films that needs to be made and seen. But you end up wishing you hadn't as it emotionally breaks you.

Eden Dambrine's performance is worth the admission alone. His strength in his variation of styles of acting is enough to tell you the entire story.

This is a heart-breaking drama about friendship and learning to be alone and Dhont has given us another reason to keep an eye on any of his future projects.

Rating: 8/10