Lukas Dhont has made two award-winning films about the agony of adolescence: Girl, his 2018 portrait of a transgender ballet dancer; and now Close, which concerns the fragile friendship between two 13-year-old boys. So perhaps it is only natural that the baby-faced director buzzes with youthful energy. In the middle of asking a publicist for an oat latte with honey and hazelnut, he spies my mobile phone on the table of the film distributor’s office. “Oh my God, my coffee order’s being recorded!” he shrieks, like a class swot telling tales. “Ryan is using this in the Guardian!”
Dhont, who is 31 with a trimmed beard and a neat quiff, wears his heart on his sleeve. And what a sleeve: the dangling straitjacket-style arms of his white shirt render handshakes comically complicated. Worn over his beige trousers are shorts, also beige, which I mistake at first for a skirt. An abbreviated tie, reaching only as far as his sternum, runs from burnt crimson at one end to canary yellow at the other, as though it has been dunked in magma. “My mum taught fashion,” he explains. “Somehow I’ve always been close to the idea of storytelling through clothes.”
