Cannes winner Close jettisons promising, sensitive study of teenage male friendship for heavy-handed tragedy

"We've all been in that place where a friendship has left us heartbroken," director Lukas Dhont told the LA Times. (Supplied: Madman)

We open with a whisper, a hushed incantation: two boys crouched together in an underground recess, voices echoing through inky shadows.

"Don't make any noise," one of them quivers. In the distance, they can make out the thunder of footsteps, the silvery clink of armour – at least in their game of medieval make-believe. A shaft of sunlight illuminates their hide-out, revealing their wooden swords: homemade weapons against all the wicked woes of the world outside.