I am in a state of rapt thankfulness, if I may say so, after having just watched this film: it was tone-perfect! For once, and a first, we can enjoy a film which is also an advance in gay representation: not a touch of rancorous self-blame, or an undercurrent of political agendas, over-dramatic kitchen sink weights, silly gayness or tragic turn of events. Not since the danish film "You are not alone" do we have such a unapologetic stance, or since "A natural thing" a sense of the possibility of paradise.
For once the common denominator is innocence. The film takes its themes which may strike no new notes, but with a sure, steady rhythm that overstates nothing, and invites the viewer, not too close to the drama, but close enough to the young conscience of its protagonists and their sense of discovery and of turmoil, inviting him in, that in the end we are touched in a tuneful manner.
Young Sieg, a runner, prepares for a sports event, and the pressure by his coach is palpable. He also feels pressure at home not directed towards him, but by the tension between his brother and their father. We gather at some point in the film that his mother died last year, and, a point the director passes skillfully, he does the house chores trying to maintain the family balance and not to disappoint. That branches into the frustration of what his sense of self is after a new runner in his team, Marc, sets the sparks of love in his heart. Should he play it straight in order to, one surmises, form some sort of coalition with his brother that plays the independent rebel of the house? Should we press names in a film that wisely denies even the name of love, meant as a torch in the sky?
Here one should pay tribute to Gijs Blom (Sieg) and Ko Zandvliet (Marc): for me not only did they collapse the divide between portraying and being lovers, but the portraits they offer are quiet registers of high caliber.
Watch the progressive frustration in the face of Sieg, or the snatches of gaze after having watched Marc playing with his sister that signal his feeling of falling in love; watch Marc in the let's call it confrontation scene falling into Sieg and his 'girlfriend' and simply, stubbornly standing next to him, communicating his eagerness just to be next to him, and then, as Sieg seems to prefer the girl, look at him with eyes that push aside reprimand - I cannot emphasize enough the fact that the film shows no reprimand or condescension -, and mix love and hurtfulness.
Having also a sister, a loving one, helps; along with the uplifting joy of a trampoline, running along the beach with seagulls, going for nightly escapades, surprising deers, chasing cows after having a swim into the nearby where you live from lake, it all helps, into communicating - without any of it being kitsch, or a plain textbook of innocence - the expansive, secretive freshness of young love.
The director is mindful to, for example, establish three things with their first kiss: the suddenness of it, for us viewers, happening, with no false preparation, the no fuss feeling of it, and crucially the shot from above, that safeguards the intimacy of the boys. Only then we are let in, when the boys float on water with their gazes directed above, where we look them from, lit with revelation.
This concern of intimacy that runs through the film, of the protagonists' intimacy of feelings, pours into our intimate reception of them, along with a delicate, yet forward, sense of space. That is why, when in the end, Sieg after his resonant "No!", goes to find Marc, we do not need a "recognition" scene, but we can take flight with the boys as they speed towards their - at last - shared intimacy.
Thank you.
