CLOSE***** - BFI London Film Festival 2022

Lukas Dhont (GIRL) returns to our screens with a devastatingly sad and beautifully observed story about the impact of homophobia on the friendship of two 13-year old boys in contemporary Belgium.  

As we meet them, Leo and Remi are as close and intimate as brothers, running and cycling free through fields of flowers. They feel innocent and pre-pubescent although I feel that Dhont's lensing points us to the idea that the way Leo looks at Remi is one of love and unacknowledged desire. 

This idyllic existence comes to an end of the first day of high school, when a girl observes their physical closeness and asks if they're a couple in a barrage of questions dripping in homophobia.  The fact that their relationship is not seen as normal or acceptable is emphasised by the schoolyard boys calling Leo a faggot and pansy. 

Although Remi is present at the conversation with the girls, their snide accusations seem to roll off of him. Maybe it's because he doesn't fully understand their meaning? Maybe he's just secure in what makes him happy - and that's just hanging out with Leo and playing the oboe. But Leo does react, angrily and vocally and physically, pushing Remi away from physical intimacy and learning to play ice hockey to become one of the cool, avowedly heteronormative boys. And yet, and yet, when he goes to see Remi at a concert, we still see his adoring glance. Remi, in his greater innocence, cannot fathom why his friend is pushing him away and his heart breaks.

The final hour of the film unfolds the consequences of heartbreak, with Leo, perhaps a self-hating, slowly realising that he is gay teen, coming to terms with his loss. In Lukas Dhont's delicate hands, this is all taken in delicate steps foregrounding Leo's further turn inwards, and his relationship with Remi's mother Sophie. It's fascinating to me that the adult men - Remi and Leo's fathers - are less present, but when they are, are vulnerable and anti-hetero-normative. 

This film is stunningly shot and beautifully acted. Credit to Dhont for uncovering and nurturing the talent of his two leads, Gustav de Waele (Remi) And Eden Dambrine (Leo). But special credit to Emilie Dequenne as Sophie. She deserves all the Best Supporting Actress awards that there are to give. 

CLOSE is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 105 minutes. Lukas Dhont won the Grand Prix at Cannes 2022. It also played Telluride and will play the BFI London Film Festival 2022.

BEN X - Sigur Ros sound-track good, schmaltzy ending bad

BEN X is the avatar of an autistic Belgian teen called Ben whose only social interaction is with a fellow on-line fantasy game-player. When vicious school bullies make Ben the star of Youtube he considers suicide. Debut feature writer-director Nic Balthazar does a good job in showing how Ben reacts to real-life as a computer game and technically the movie is spot on. What I didn't like was the lazy characterization of fear - rubbing an eyebrow, jittery feet - and the implausible, schmaltzy ending. Still, the movie evidently struck such a chord with audiences that it's being remade in English. One wonders if it will be successful given that the plot twist is so weak and, presumably, by now known.

BEN X played Berlin 2008. It was released in Belgium and the Netherlands in 2007 and in France, Germany, Turkey, Finland, the UK, Sweden, Hungary, Denmark and the US last year. It was released earlier this year in Argentina and goes on release in Spain next week. It is available on DVD.

PRIVATE PROPERTY / NUE PROPRIETE - the dangers of parenting without boundaries

Isabelle Huppert plays another of those intense, stubborn, sexually transgressive characters at the centre of a fucked up family relationship. This time she is a bitter divorcee living in a lavish country house with her two twenty-something lay-a-bout sons. She parents them without boundaries - showering in the same room with them, asking them for comments on her lingerie, allowing their adolescent demands to put a freeze on her social life. When she finally decides to break free - getting a lover and proposing to sell the house - she forces the boys to a moment of crisis - violent and savage.

It's a gripping drama thanks to a sharp script, strong central performances and the oppressive, claustrophobic photography of the country house. Most of all, the film-makers create a brooding, fatalistic atmosphere that is sickening.

PRIVATE PROPERTY played Venice and Toronto 2006 and was released in Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, the USA and Greece in 2007. It was released in Argentina and the UK earlier this year and is currently on release in Germany. PRIVATE PROPERTY is available on DVD.

CALVAIRE - Makes HOSTEL looks like Snoopy

CALVAIRE/THE ORDEAL is a genre movie that satisfies. In 90 minutes, the director, Fabrice du Welz, creates an atmosphere at first blackly comic, then slightly unnerving, then sinister and finally horrific. Marc Stevens is a cabaret singer who dresses in a sparkly cape and pays meticulous attention to his make-up. We meet him as he travels around the Belgian countryside performing in front of a nursing home full of desiccated, frustrated grannies. The director allows us to see Marc perform a full song, filmed in a single shot. Perhaps we are meant to laugh at his corny routine, but it is clear that Marc is happy in his calling. He will later cling to this when all around him is spinning out of control: “My name is Marc Stevens. I am a singer of love songs.” On the way to his next gig, Marc’s van breaks down in the back-woods of Belgium. He is taken by a vaguely sinister, yet seemingly harmless hillbilly who is searching for his lost and beloved dog to stay with another vaguely sinister and yet seemingly harmless hillbilly who has a room to spare. Increasingly nervous at the obstacles involved in getting his van repaired and embarrassed by the way in which the woodsman, Bartel, has befriended him, Marc obliges him by singing a tender love song. This song triggers something in Bartel, and he is reminded of his wife, who left him for another man. Bad things happen. This film completely creeped me out, despite the relatively restrained use of blood and gore because it created a sense of inevitability and claustrophobia. In HOSTEL, while bad things happen at the hands of psychopaths, the fate of the protagonist is ultimately in the hands of rational but ruthless people who can be appealed to, or outwitted, or paid off. By contrast, in CALVAIRE, there is no hope. Bad things happen not just because the protagonist is held hostage by a delusional hillbilly, but because the entire community is unhinged. There is no way out. There is no reason. And that, to me at least, is utterly horrifying.

CALVAIRE is available on DVD.