‘Young Hearts’ Review: Tender, Queer Coming-of-Age Film About the ‘Craziest’ Feeling of All Time
Director: Antonio Schatteman | Script: Antonio Schatteman | Cast: Lou Goossens (Elias), Marius de Saeger (Alexander), Geert van Rampelberg (Luk), Emilie de Roo (Nathalie), Saar Rogiers (Valerie), ea | Playing time: 97 minutes | Year: 2024
With his first major feature film, Anthony Schatteman wants to make a story that he would have liked to see when he was fourteen years old. A film that can offer comfort to young people in the complicated search for their own sexual identity. young hearts describes that search through young Elias, who leads a fairly normal life in a quiet town in the Belgian countryside. A safe life that seems to take a turn for the fourteen-year-old boy when he falls in love with the boy next door.
Elias is a normal and ordinary boy. He’s not the toughest, but he’s not the most atypical at school either. He is dating Valerie cautiously. One where the boundary between innocent friendship and first physical affection is still very carefully explored. The most special thing about his life is that his father is a successful folk singer. But more in the style of Frans Bauer “he stayed so nice and normal” than in the grandiose, convincing and gooische style of René Froger. In short, Elías’s life has little drama.
That threatens to change overnight when Elías’s family has new neighbors. Elias soon befriends the courteous and open-minded Alexander. Alexander is the opposite of Elias in many ways. Elías is cautious and shy, Alejandro is outgoing and reckless. Even in something as exciting as love. Frankly and in a remarkably mature conversation for fourteen-year-olds, Alexander says that he previously had a crush on a boy. “It’s the craziest feeling ever,” he tells Elias, hanging on his every word. And: “You know it when you feel it.” Elías doesn’t know it yet, or he doesn’t want to know it for fear of the reactions of those around him.
What follows is a sweet coming-of-age film as love blossoms between the two boys. For Alexander, that love quickly becomes a fait accompli, but for Elias it is especially confusing. young hearts It is mainly about the struggle that young Elías wages within himself. Because he seems to have little to fear from the outside world.
Schatteman manages to create a heartwarming story. A story in which many people, queer or not, can recognize their own first steps in love. But sometimes it’s also very obvious. For example, Elías’s singing father’s big hit is called ‘First Love’ and courtly love is studied in school. And in the film’s barely one hundred minutes, there are many montages of teenagers frolicking in meadows, lakes, downtown Brussels, another lake, and in the pool.
And yet, the chemistry between the two leads doesn’t need such emphasis at all. Young as they are, Lou Goossens and Marius de Saeger play their roles very convincingly. From the first moment you believe that this love is more than a teenage fashion. Just like with your first love, you were sure you would never feel that way about anyone else again. Seeing that on screen in such a sweet way is certainly heartwarming.