Where emotions and societal norms are fighting
Lukas Dhont aims at international success with Close
Lukas Dhont’s new film and Cannes Film Festival prize winner Close runs in French-speaking cinemas for about a month. Known for his first feature film Girl, the Belgian filmmaker keeps astonishing us.
At the age of 31 years old, Lukas Dhont’s name stays in mind with two films attacking the question of acceptance and gender within a society full of standards and prejudice. Based on his own memories and experiences, but also studies from an American psychologist, Niobe Way, the Belgian filmmaker questions the value of sensitivity and emotions within genderness.
Touching intimacy
Girl, released in October 2018, focuses on the story of Lara, dreaming for a professional ballerina future with the support of her father, however, with a body that doesn’t fit her, because she was born as a boy.
Between intimacy, pain and silence, Lukas Dhont clearly made a huge first impression with Girl. Through scenes where Lara is forcing on her body during dance classes, we witness a body exhaustion voluntarily shown by Lukas to depict Lara’s tiredness of her own body and deep and urgent desire to become who she wants to be. A work that deserved him the first Camera d’Or, the Queer Palm and the FIPRESCI Award at the Cannes Film Festival in Un certain regard section in 2018.
Can friendship withstand societal norms? A question that changed lives, his especially
Broken friendship
His second film Close premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022 and won the Grand Prix. It narrates the deep story of a fusional friendship between two 13th years old boys Léo (Eden Dambrine) et Rémi (Gustav De Waele), that does not resist the transition to adolescence and society standards, where we follow their endless relationship until an unthinkable event that will separate them.
Based on the studies of Niobe Way, a professor of psychology at New York University who worked on the question of male friendship between 13 and 18 years old, Close spreads an universal message through eloquent body language, delicate music, beautiful imagery, vibrant color and plenty left unsaid. In other words, this film speaks to everybody, boys or girls, men or women, on simply human relationships and the need for connection as a human being, and not necessarily on homosexuality.
“It’s a societal problem: we teach boys, when they grow up and become young men, to no longer express what they live in them”, the filmmaker explains in Challenges magazine.
A voice for humanity
His films are not only a series of shots to tell a story but to tell a reality, the reality of what humans are facing in a surrounding culture where there would be a sensitive thought, belonging to a female and homosexual world, and a hard one, to a male and straight one. However, Lukas Dhont films are exactly questioning these collective thoughts and illustrate an universal content erasing norms and standards.
Competing for the Oscars, Close by Lukas Dhont is currently to be seen in French-speaking cinemas.
