Close

An exceptional film of empathy and vision.

[A] heart-crushing but emotionally rich story…

Dambrine and De Waele deliver two beautifully intricate performances in which they convey the complexities of young male friendship.

Close is a fresh, moving and unforgettable chronicle of masculine trust and devotion.

Dhont has elicited remarkable performances from these striking boys after six months of rehearsals, establishing relationships and gradually introd...

A moving and often sublime piece of small-scale filmmaking, told with uncommon empathy.

A picture which is intimate in scope but which packs a considerable emotional wallop.

If you find it cathartic to sob over well-drawn characters, this sad tale is within hugging distance of being an absolute joy.

[CLOSE] feels like a slow descent into depression, with grief laced throughout like a rising tide rather than a tsunami of sorrow.

Dambrine and De Waele are wonderfully natural, conveying the complexities of youthful experience with impressive directness and poise.

What Dhont understands, in short, is how kinetic the rites of passage are—how growing pains are expressed not in words, however therapeutic, but in...

A crushing story of grief told with grace by Belgian director Lukas Dhont.

Close is beautiful, sad, tender and wrenching, a towering achievement both at the level of craft and theme.

A tender evocation of childhood love and heartbreak.

In place of the sentimentality that often comes with boyhood portraits, Dhont’s film renders a boyhood experience in thrillingly crisp, grown...

Terrific performances from youthful leads Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele, claustrophobic cinematography from Frank van den Eeden, weepie-worthy...

It’s hard to shake the feeling that Close takes the easy way out. It’s all the more unfortunate because the first section of this story is told wit...

It’s clear from the beauty and rawness of Close that we’re long overdue for something exploring the closeness between young men.

Builds upon the promise of 2018’s Girl, confirming Dhont as a deft and empathetic chronicler of the tumultuous anguish and ecstasy of adolesce...

It features world-wise performances from its cast, a haunting score from composer Valentin Hadjadj and breathtaking cinematography from Malte Rosen...

Close is artistically ambitious. Like a cinematic symphony, a musical piece in perfect harmony, not a note out of place.

An authentic study of loss, buttressed by two extraordinary child actors, and complemented by a handful of impeccable adult players, most nota...

A coming-of-age-story that’s exquisite and heart-breaking. Take tissues, and probably not just the one box.

Dambrine’s performance is by some distance one of the most extraordinary by a child his age I’ve ever seen: tempered, tightly wound, as truthf...

Could have been a run-of-the-mill potboiler about a sad-sack detective losing his ethics once he meets up with a femme fatale, there’s much mo...

It’s so funny. I don’t know if it’ll change race relations, but it’ll make you laugh.

Despite a hugely harrowing storyline, Close somehow musters the strength to take care of its audience and leave us with something beautiful an...

The film reminds us that any coming of age is a risky business where finitude and mourning are the only guarantees.

I… found clear-eyed tenderness in this portrayal of playground love and grief that comes on like a sudden summer thunderstorm.

Dhont’s visuals are strong and sumptuous and he coaxes spellbindingly naturalistic performances from first-time actors Dambrine and De Waele, but&n...

There’s no doubting the force of this drenchingly sad story.

[Dhont] is a generous and patient director of his unknown and more established performers, giving all moments to shine.

Dumbrine, an amateur in his first acting role, is a luminous presence who makes you feel every conflicting mash-up of love, resentment, and gr...

Sentimental, fantastical, and unabashedly moony, it’s a romance and a storytelling apologia all in one.

For much of "Close,” Dhont’s restraint dovetails artfully with his characters’ repression, though as it progresses, the movie increasingly seems to...