In Young Hearts, 14-year-old Elias (Lou Goossens) sees his seemingly idyllic life in the Belgian countryside crack when another boy around the same age, Alexander (Marius De Saeger), moves in across the street. Elias is immediately drawn to Alexander, whose insouciance with regard to all things queer both puzzles and marvels Elias. At one point, after cycling through the countryside, as they eat cherries by a lake, Alexander responds to Elias’s questions about his relationship status, telling him that he was in one with a boy last year.

The film wallows in a fantasy of Northern European rurality where childhood freedom is granted by hands-off parenting and bicycles that never need to be locked. In this world, going to school involves biking past comely cows and heavenly fruit stands, and pit stops to hold piglets and swim naked in a pond. Here the worst act of bullying comes in...