Close     4 ½ stars

I took advantage of the Chicago International Film Festival taking place last weekend to see one of the foreign films being shown. The one I picked, Close, turned out to be an outstanding movie. This film from France and Belgium is the second offering from Belgian director Lucas Dhont. The story is about two 13 year old boys who are best friends and are entering a new school where they don’t know many classmates. The two have been close friends for years and are at the point when they are just starting to mature physically. The peer pressure at the school has its effect on the two and Leo takes an interest in ice hockey, which he is not especially good at, and starts to draw away from Remi, his best friend. Remi is more interested in playing an instrument in the orchestra. I hope I am not giving too much away when I say that this is really a movie about suicide and the effect it has on those that remain after the tragedy. The young star, Eden Dambrine as Leo is in nearly every scene and has a real power at expressing emotion just with his facial expressions that one wouldn’t expect in someone so young. That may be due a lot of coaching from the director but whatever it is, it worked. Through the shots of soccer, playing ice hockey, riding bicycles and listening in classrooms, the audience gets the sense that they feel what the character is feeling, his look is so intense. This has to be one of the most emotional films I can remember and one that dares to address a subject rarely seen in the movies. The struggle to cope with the loss is shared by the parents, siblings and classmates as they all try to understand what happened and share their pain. This is one that won’t be soon forgotten. The movie is in French with subtitles and was shown at the Cannes Film Festival.