Close is hard to put into words, this film evoked such visceral emotions in me that I feel like I’m reliving my own experience and trauma writing about it. It presents such familiar and beautiful intimacy that only uncompromised childhood friends can share. That type of relationship that hasn’t been beaten down by expectations and fears of judgement. It dramatises masculinity through sheer tragedy but earns every single moment of its sombre nature. A concise 107 minute runtime also feels like living a whole adolescence with Leo and Remi.
We are transported to rural Belgium where Leo and Remi exist together in the most familiar dynamic. Their closeness is felt in the first few lines of dialogue where they play act being ambushed by a mysterious army, surrounding them, threatening to take away their peace in the shelter they share. They choose to run as fast as they can through the flower field owned by Leo’s family to escape. The camera races alongside them as they sprint through the vast floral colours. Leo’s mom asks if he’s staying at Remi’s, a question she seems to know the answer to as they laugh if he will ever come back home. Leo and Remi share a family dinner where Leo almost seems part of the routine for Remi’s parents. They sleep together in Remi’s bed in comfortable closeness, Leo helping Remi’s restless mind with a meditative story about a duckling and a bizarre lizard.
The boys are beginning secondary school the next day, they go in together, sit together and comfort each other in their nerves. This closeness is picked up on by their peers and the sensitive nature of their friendship is questioned by some girls in the classroom. Leo defensively denies that they are a couple as Remi stays quiet, listening to his friend strongly deny the accusations. For me, the beauty of this relationship is the innocence. I think its easy to look at how they act with one another and assume its romantic because of the intimacy shown at the beginning of the film, however I feel like this can just be a friendship, one that doesn’t have motives or a destination, it just is.
This accusation along with some homophobic abuse towards Leo and Remi causes Leo to distance himself from his friend, opting to join in on football games and conversations, to join a hockey team and to change his seating arrangement in class. As we see this film from Leo’s perspective, we only see glimpses of how Remi feels about this. The biggest showcases of Remi’s emotions are shown at the breakfast table the morning after Leo chose to sleep on the mattress on the floor rather than in the bed with Remi like they had been. The next time is Remi’s outburst at Leo when Leo doesn’t wait for him to cycle to school. This pain is felt as Remi begins to well up and Leo tries to shut him down, not wanting the other kids to pick up on this sadness and point it out.
This all culminates in the unfathomable tragedy of Remi taking his own life. Leo is given this news by his mother on the bus, in a devastating display of dialogue as a mother tries to explain something she never dreamed of having to. The next half of the film is a quiet manifestation of grief, told more through the silences between characters than the words themselves. Leo interacts with everyone around him in different ways, unsure how to articulate his emotions sometimes, letting them sneak up on him in moments he isn’t expecting. He cries while getting his cast put on after breaking his arm at hockey, not with the pain of the fracture, but with the time he has, sitting in the chair with no distractions, he is forced to face his own thoughts, which spill out into tears, perceived as physical pain from the doctor, but emotional from his dad.
Remi’s mom slowly builds up to talking to Leo, coming to his hockey practice, where they talk aimlessly and both wanting the other to bring it up. This scene is dense with emotions that aren’t expressed or discussed but felt by the viewer. She then talks to him in Remi's room, where Leo can’t face the guilt he feels so makes up an excuse to run away, avoiding his confession. Finally, they talk in the car after Leo travels to the hospital, where Remi’s mom works. We see Leo take the bus to the hospital, after clearly building up the courage to tell her what he needs to say. We see him crumble when he gets there, regretting taking the plunge. In the car, he tells her it was his fault, that he caused Remi’s death. She stops the car and tells him to get out. She falls into a childlike emotional response, unsure how to express her initial anger. While Leo runs away, she knows she can’t let him go, so runs after him to comfort him in the woods, no words exchanged but he knows she doesn’t blame him.
I think the concept of this film is an incredibly accurate look into a very specific time in a young boy's life. I understand this relationship and never fully confronted the emotions of it before this film. Losing a friend over masculine expectations, social changes and pressures is an idea that we are all used to, something we don’t think about. The pure and uncompromised love you share with a childhood friend is unparalleled, as you have no desire to figure yourself out, find where you fit in or see any further depth than there is. The dramatic suicide is gutaral and heartwrenching. It doesn’t feel real from the moment you hear about it. I think the familiarity of the dynamic shared helps to convey the tragedy of the event as you can almost empathise with this seismic shift in Leo’s life without having to experience this loss yourself. I feel a similar loss is felt in Bridge to Terabithia, which pulls the rug out from underneath the imaginative world created in this film. I remember watching this on the couch with my family after Leslie is revealed to have died and thinking nothing of it, waiting for her to come back and be standing in the treehouse in the woods. Not until I looked back and saw my family in tears did it sink in and feel real. Remi’s death brought me back to that brutal feeling of denial and forced acceptance that the resolution I’d hoped for was never coming, the boys would never make up, get back to where they were and grow up together, being there for each other like We Two Boys Together Clinging.
It's also difficult to talk about this film in a technical sense, as for large portions of it I couldn’t tell you what the camera was doing or how it was using the medium to push the story along, I was busy crying. In moments where I could emotionally process the camera, it was stunning, in colour and movement. The lighting is soft and bright in the beginning, with a golden hue and popping colours from the flowers and decor of the interiors. As the film progresses and Leo grows, the film loses contrast and the saturation it once had, becoming a duller landscape, helped by the culling of the flowers for the winter months. The music harmonises with the story so well, being careful not to overpower the tragic silence, knowing when to swell with emotion and when to hold back and let the actors tell the story.
Mon derniére point, this film is going to stick with me as Bridge to Terabithia did, like one of those core memories of cinema. It’s going to flash up in my memories like the reminder of a real lost friend. I won’t come back to this film for comfort even though the beginning story reminds me of simpler times. I don’t know if I’ll come back to this film at all but I also won’t be unhappy about that. I think having seen this once will be enough for me to remember this for a long long time.
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