Close (2023) - Movie Review

I’m starting to think that Bros from last year had an even greater impact on me than I realised because, ever since watching that, I find myself becoming more acutely aware of how Gay stories are commodified and framed for mass consumption, especially when it comes to films. Sure, there are no shortage of good, heartfelt, and authentic stories out there, but there’s a certain… uncomfortable pattern that a lot of them seem to fall into. One that feels oddly in-line with films like A Dog’s Purpose, where the attempt to make an impact with the audience involves victimising the central character(s). Gay misery and tragedy get more mainstream traction than anything positive or life-affirming, and this isn’t the only case where minorities are turned into misery porn for majority audiences. And I’ll be honest, this is one of the worser examples I’ve seen of this mindset in action.

I mean, for the first 40-or-so minutes, this film is quite engaging. It’s a coming-of-age story focusing on two 13-year-old boys (Eden Dambrine’s Leo and Gustav De Waele as Remi) and their… well, close relationship with each other. The framing isn’t direct as to whether this is a budding romantic relationship or not, but that manages to work out surprisingly well as just a look at a particularly intense connection between two people. Their bond is shown as such a pure and innocent thing that it’s honestly quite beautiful to see unfold, and got me thinking quite a bit about friends from my own childhood. I can’t say I’ve ever felt that close to any of them (or at least, I don’t recall as such), but I like this kind of depiction of a strong relationship between two people that doesn’t need to be seen as romantic to be seen as vital for the people involved. I get that there’s a long-running historical problem with downplaying or outright erasing Queer relationships, but believe me, that’s not the issue here.

It also makes for a good case against how toxic masculinity would frame such a friendship, which in-film becomes the butt of a few gay slurs by their fellow classmates as school starts. Where their respective parents are simply happy that they are happy and have each other in their lives, there’s still friction that comes from peer pressure and the continuing attitude of heteronormativity. If this were a friendship between a boy and a girl, with equal intensity… well, aside from disbelief that they are ‘just’ friends because that has its own mound of assumptions attached to it, it wouldn’t meet as much scrutiny since a boy and a girl being together is seen as ‘normal’. See also: ‘sexualising’ children by showing them that LGBT people exist, because straight relationships are never sexualised, and Gay romance doesn't exist, it's only the sex. All bullshit, just so we’re clear, and I dug this for that very reason: It normalises that level of profound connection between two people.

But of course, this is a film that shows two potentially-gay main characters being happy together, and we can’t possibly have that, now can we? As such, we’ll be getting into *SPOILERS* from here on out.

[tw: suicide]

So, Leo and Remi begin to drift apart because Leo succumbs to homophobic peer pressure, which leads to… Remi killing himself. With how much the film up to this point focused on showing things from Leo’s point-of-view, the way the death is portrayed has this odd distance to it, focusing primarily on Leo trying to wrestle with his grief and, more pointedly, his potential role in the death. Actually, there’s no ‘potential’ about it; the film rather emphatically frames the distance Leo put between himself and Remi as the primary reason for his death.

Now, on its own, this would be an interesting direction to take the story, looking at how internalised homophobia can truly fuck with a person’s priorities when it comes to how they feel about those around them, and the damage that can cause to both themself and others. However, Leo growing distant from Remi is the only impetus that we are shown. We never get a sense of what was going on with Remi himself, because that’s not how the film is framed, and the extent to which the film ends up laying into Leo in particular for what he did… yeah, he’s meant to take the full brunt of all this. And this isn’t even a matter of it being misplaced guilt, which would be more than natural in a situation like this; the film paints him in that corner, and in turn, makes Remi’s death into an object lesson about not abandoning those close to you.

Ignoring the fact that this kind of Gay martyrdom is incredibly tired by this point, and reduces Remi’s identity to just that of a ‘victim’ (a death too soon rather than an actual life), it also manages to poison the good that came before that melodramatic plot turn. It goes from genuinely-affecting emotionality to some quite forced moments and appeals for the audience to look inside themselves and question their own behaviours and thought patterns. As such, it makes that initial and uplifting beginning feel less like a fleeting moment of happiness before the cruelness of the world rips away their innocence, and more like an artificially-raised platform just to make the sharp drop into despair hit that much harder. It comes across as manipulative, and insisting on Leo learning the lesson of the film (as opposed to, say, the kids who were being openly homophobic and drove the wedge in the first place) only makes that feel worse.

In the moment, I can’t say that this got me all that riled up. After that initial serotonin hit from the first act, I felt like I was perpetually on the brink of tears… but never making that leap over the edge and really feeling it. And as I thought it over on the trip home from the cinema, it hit me that I didn’t make that leap because I could tell that the film had its hands on my back, putting its back foot into trying to push me over that edge. Fiction, by its very nature, is manipulative to a degree; it’s all about getting the audience invested in a story that didn’t actually happen. But when the strain to make the audience feel weepy is this obvious, and the reason for which is so misguided that it ends up saying insultingly little about the actual issue it’s highlighting, I am quite uncomfy with how this film handles an incredibly sensitive topic and the ramifications of it.

Put simply, this is the kind of film that isn’t all bad, but where the good parts end up contributing to why the bad parts are as bad as they are; it’s the worst kind of bad film, far as I’m concerned.