Young Hearts

A Belgian film about early adolescence. Elias is fourteen and lives in a small town. His life is settled: family, school, friends. Then a boy moves in across the road from Brussels. The moment he sees Alexander something changes. What the film is interested in is not the relationship itself but Elias's reaction to it. The boy is frightened of what he feels and first tries to suppress it; what his friends will say, what his family will think and the definition in his own head all land on him at once. The narrative sets up no antagonist. Nobody attacks Elias; the real resistance is inside him. That choice separates the film from others in its genre. It was shown in the strand of the Berlin Film Festival devoted to young audiences and received a special mention from the children's jury. Lou Goossens plays Elias and Marius De Saeger plays Alexander. Anthony Schatteman directed; it is his first feature and he has said the story came out of his own life. A warm, careful example for anyone who likes quiet coming-of-age drama and stories of first love. For a viewer expecting tension, the film is built almost entirely of small moments.