Shut in movie spoiler 20164/2/2023 ![]() Like Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge, all innocence falls away. It’s a life-changing moment for Leo and Remi, though neither one fully realizes it at the time. In the cafeteria, a surprisingly forward girl puts the question to them, “Are you together?” and Leo tenses up, explaining that they’re just “close,” like brothers. On the first day of a new school term, surrounded by an unfamiliar group of students, the boys cling to one another especially tight in class and at recess (the way the siblings did in fellow Belgian Laura Wandel’s similarly insightful “Playground”). It probably wouldn’t be appropriate for “Close” to dramatize such dynamics between two minors, but it would go a long way toward answering the movie’s million-dollar question. ![]() The movie all but demands it, requiring us to project our assumptions onto the characters.Īre Leo and Remi gay? Might one of them be, but not the other? (These are not irrelevant questions, even if the film stubbornly refuses to address them.) In the real world, by the age of 13, many boys have already had their first sexual experiences with neighbors, cousins or classmates, if not predatory adults in their circle - and here I’m speaking not just of gay boys but all young men, regardless of who or what they wind up fancying. And yet, deprived of certain clues, audiences will construct whatever idea of these two boys they want in their heads, filling in the blanks with some combination of lived experience and personal prejudice. So much of their technique is subtext, which relies on us to play detective. As in “Girl” - which put audiences in the place of its protagonist - Dhont and co-writer Angelo Tijssens present observational scenes of everyday life, reveal character through behavior rather than expository dialogue. ![]() Their parents treat both kids as their own (Léa Drucker and Emilie Dequenne play Leo and Remi’s respective mothers, and both are terrific). Even their nights are spent sleeping over at one another’s houses, limbs entwined. Seldom apart, Leo and Remi seem to be joined at the hip. ![]() We meet lifelong besties Leo and Remi playing together in a makeshift fort a stone’s throw from blooming dahlia fields - an incredibly specific, unspeakably lovely profession for Leo’s family that would surely make Terrence Malick envious (his characters could spin for hours among the shoulder-high flowers). First, it’s worth celebrating the first 45 minutes of the film, which will resonate deeply with anyone, gay or straight, who’s ever found themselves adapting their behavior according to the homophobia of others. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes.“Close” presents a version of the same problem, but we’ll get to that later. The story offers little in the way of frights but rather a lot in the way of encouraging birth control. “Shut In” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Careening camera angles and squeak-creak-crackle sound effects don’t substitute for actual tension, and high-end cinematography (by Yves Bélanger, who gave “Brooklyn” its swanky sheen) doesn’t replace imagination. Neither its director, Farren Blackburn, nor his screenwriter, Christina Hodson, could have believed that this bromidic nonsense would generate chills. So when one of her patients, a little deaf lad (Jacob Tremblay), goes missing and bumps in the night disturb her sleep, Mary wonders: Is there a ghost or is she bonkers?įilmed in rural Quebec and mostly confined to the interior of the house, “Shut In” is just that. Though living in a commodious - and, of course, isolated - New England home, Mary cares for Stephen without so much as a cleaning lady to help. Her 18-year-old stepson, Stephen (Charlie Heaton), once a psychologically disturbed ball of hate, is now vegetative and paralyzed after a car accident. Watts looks becomingly fragile and perpetually worried. Playing Mary, a recently widowed child psychologist, Ms. If you’re in any doubt as to the dearth of decent movie roles available to women of a certain age - certain never to see 40 again, at any rate - then buy a ticket for “Shut In.” In this achingly inept thriller, you will see Naomi Watts do what she can to sell a plot of such preposterousness that the derisory laughter around me began barely 20 minutes in.
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