Belgian film-maker Lukas Dhont found praise and then a backlash of criticism in 2018 for his debut feature, Girl, the story of a young transgender woman auditioning for ballet school, which some found to be inauthentic, and an unwarranted fetishisation of a trans person’s body. It could well be that he will get more criticism for this new film on the grounds that the unselfconscious love and friendship between two 13-year-old boys is being catastrophised and problematised.
I admit there are times when Dhont goes straight for the deafening minor chords of anguish. But there are two excellent performances from newcomers Gustav De Waele and Eden Dambrine as Rémi and Léo, and also valuable appearances from the actors playing their mothers: Sophie (Émilie Dequenne – iconic for the lead in the Dardennes’ 1999 Palme winner Rosetta, when she was hardly older than the boys are now) and Nathalie (Léa Drucker). Rémi and Léo are inseparable, hanging out and playing together all the time: physical, tactile, joyful and innocent, but certainly far more intense than most 13-year-old friends. Léo is especially close to Rémi’s mum and is physically at ease with her. He particularly admires Rémi’s musical talent – he plays the oboe. Schoolmates suddenly become aware of the intensity of their friendship. Girls – who are perhaps honest, or perhaps malicious, or just somewhere between the two – ask Léo if he and Rémi are a couple. With malign, ersatz sophistication, they ask if Léo even “realises” it.
