Review: 'Close' is a shattering drama about a friendship that ends at 13, and the emotional loss when that happens.

What happens when a longtime friendship just … stops? That’s the thoughtful, shattering question at the heart of “Close,” one of the best movies about childhood in a long time.

Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav De Waele) are, at 13 years old, the best of friends. They ride bikes together, hang out at recess together, and run around together on the flower farm Léo’s parents operate — though they’re just as likely to have sleepovers at Rémi’s place. Rémi’s mom, Sophie (Émilie Dequenne), is nearly as close to Léo as Léo’s own mom, Nathalie (Léa Drucker).

The boys are so close, and so lacking in self-consciousness about it, that they’re taken aback when a girl in their class asks Léo and Rémi if they’re a couple. Both say no, quickly. But Léo becomes quite rattled by the suggestion.

Soon, Léo’s behavior changes. He doesn’t hang out with Rémi so much. He joins the hockey team, as if to assure everyone — including himself — that he’s masculine enough. And when Rémi confronts Léo on the playground, Léo rejects his friend with brutal finality, driving Rémi to drastic behavior.

Director Lukas Dhont and his co-screenwriter, Angelo Tijssens, dig deep into the emotional weight of Léo’s seemingly rash decision — and in Rémi’s heartbreaking response to it. The story explores how this one act of childhood thoughtlessness creates ripples that are authentic in their dark emotional weight.

Dhont also has gathered, in Dambrine and De Waele, two of the sharpest younger actors around — two boys who channel the wrenching emotions of anger, cruelty, sadness and despair in this perfectly calibrated drama. They’re lifted up by the supporting grown-ups, particularly Dequenne, who was in a similar role as a teen in the Dardennes brothers’ 1999 drama “Rosetta.”

“Close” melds these elements into a cohesive whole, so subtlety that you can’t separate them, just as you can’t separate these boys without severe consequences.

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‘Close’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 17, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving suicide and brief strong language. Running time: 104 minutes; in French, Flemish and Dutch, with subtitles.