Stream Gem #1 —The streaming pick of the week

Each week, we’ll handpick a gem from the vast array of films available on streaming platforms, accompanied by brief thoughts that captures its essence without spoilers that might ruin your enjoyment of the film.

This week with Close by Lukas Dhont.

The title itself carries many meanings, which the film also reflects.

Close. Like a connection that is so dense that you almost become one.

The film is about a boyhood friendship that could not be any closer, one that can only take this form of sincerity in childhood. A distance begins to emerge through the confusions and circumstances of growing up without wanting to go further into the narrative.

Close. Like boundaries, so near to each other that we can’t see where one thing ends and another begins.

It becomes an exploration of the blurry edges of boundaries. In the film a teacher asks her student, when it’s the last time he cried, he only responds with “Because of sadness or anger?”. That describes the contradictions Lukas Dhont wants to observe with us. We see smiling faces, filled with sadness. We hear “everything is fine”, underlined with despair.

In this space of ambiguity Dhont confronts us with questions about the interpersonal, our feelings and how we deal with them.  The word close reveals a third meaning.

Close. Like the growing reticence of our innermost depths of feeling.