
Elias does not label his sexuality, simply telling his mother: “I’m in love with Alexander.” That neither Elias nor Alexander labels his sexuality serves the film well. It is an acknowledgment that they are fourteen and have ample time to explore and evolve. What matters is not who they love categorically but who they love here and now.
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There are few gay coming-of-age films that an actual gay teenager could watch with his parents without cringing. Love stories between younger gay characters are in short supply – a symptom of the widespread notion that homosexuality is an “adult” theme. Where can a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old see their own experience reflected in cinema? Heartstone (2016) fits the bill but is unrelentingly grim. North Sea, Texas (2011) features a lurid masturbation scene. The pickings are slim.
Enter Young Hearts (2024), the story of Elias, a fourteen-year-old boy who develops a crush on the boy next door, Alexander. Young Hearts, while flawed, is quietly revolutionary. It fills a lacuna in the body of queer cinema by depicting the kind of puppy love that all young teenagers deserve to experience.
Young Hearts was written and directed by Anthony Schatteman in his feature directorial debut. Schatteman is a protégé of Lukas Dhont, director of the critically acclaimed Close (2022), which explored same-sex intimacy through a different lens that was less explicitly queer and far more tragic. The subject matter and cinematography are reminiscent of Dhont’s work without becoming derivative.
Elias and his family live in an idyllic Belgian village, sunny and lush and completely unlike the gray and drizzly Belgium I know. Elias’s father is a well-known singer, performing his schmaltzy love songs at local functions.
One day, Alexander and his family move into the house across the street. Alexander is a city kid from the mean streets of Brussels – a stark contrast to Elias, an elfin farm boy who looks a year or two younger than he is. Elias and Alexander become fast friends, and Alexander is completely nonchalant when he tells Elias that he once dated a boy. Elias’s eyes show that this news has awoken something unfamiliar within him. It is here that Lou Goossens, who plays Elias, first displays his remarkable talent for conveying subtle shifts in emotion. His performance remains subtle and captivating throughout the film.
The pair continue to bond in increasingly intimate ways until, during a sudden summer rainstorm, they kiss. Elias is frightened by the kiss, or by the fact that he enjoyed it. He withdraws from Alexander, no longer sure how he fits into his family and his village. He is also intimidated by the prospect of dating Alexander, who is already confident in his sexuality and experienced in kissing boys.
Elias’s anxiety consumes him, and he rejects Alexander in public. On a trip to Brussels, Elias freely expresses his love for Alexander, anonymous in the hustle and bustle of the city and proud to claim him as his “petit copain.” Back home in the village, he rejects Alexander’s affection in the presence of others. Alexander is reluctant to date a boy who is ashamed of their relationship. The two spend the film advancing toward and retreating away from their relationship – tangled up in confusion and self-consciousness and the rash behavior of teenage boys, but both ultimately wanting the same thing.
There is little explicit homophobia in Young Hearts. Elias’s village is not bigoted but heteronormative. Schatteman is parsimonious with his depictions of heteronormativity: a well-meaning “girl talk” from Elias’s father, a backhanded comment from a friend. There is nothing blatant or violent; there is just enough to unnerve Elias.
This subtlety accurately reflects gay coming of age in Western Europe in 2024. Same-sex marriage was already legal in Belgium by the time lead actors Lou Goossens and Marius De Saeger were born. I was Elias and Alexander’s age in 2015 when Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same-sex marriage across the United States. I have never known a world in which homosexuality was “the love that dare not speak its name”; films that keep that world alive often fail to resonate with the experiences of younger gay people such as myself. Young Hearts is the only film I have seen to depict the world I grew up in, and in that respect, it soars.
Elias’s coming-out scene is evidence of this reality. His family’s response suggests that for the adults in the room, acceptance and unconditional love was a foregone conclusion. This scene is heartrending nonetheless; Goossens’s tearful embodiment of Elias’s confusion, anxiety, and weariness is some of the most moving acting I have seen.
Notably, during this scene, Elias does not label his sexuality, simply telling his mother: “I’m in love with Alexander.” That neither Elias nor Alexander labels his sexuality serves the film well. It is an acknowledgment that they are fourteen and have ample time to explore and evolve. What matters is not who they love categorically but who they love here and now.
Young Hearts eschews sexual themes, which is for the best given the protagonists’ age and the innocence of Elias and Alexander’s relationship. It also makes this film palatable to families and to apprehensive viewers who might only associate gay cinema with the peach scene from Call Me by Your Name. A graphic scene would sully the film’s underlying purity.
This film suffers from a few overly sentimental moments that function as catharsis for older generations of the queer community who came of age in a more hostile zeitgeist. In one scene, a drag queen’s rendition of “J’aime la vie” moves Elias toward accepting his love for Alexander. This scene comes across as a mixed metaphor, more camp than profound, and unfaithful to both Elias as a character and Young Hearts as a film. Young Hearts is not the story of Elias’s induction into a greater queer culture; it is the story of his love for Alexander. Besides, fourteen-year-old boys don’t tend to “get” drag – even fourteen-year-old boys who kiss other boys. There is also a minor bullying subplot that Schatteman should have left on the cutting-room floor.
However, even when the story strikes a wrong note or takes a turn for the maudlin, Goossens rescues Young Hearts from itself with his stellar, precocious lead performance. The lush, florid score, composed by Ruben de Gheselle, also helps the film back on its feet when it stumbles. When all seems to be lost for Elias and Alexander, the score wilts and nearly disappears, which has a chilling effect.
The arc of Young Hearts is familiar to anyone who has watched a rom-com. Boy meets boy, boy loses boy, boy gets boy back. That Schatteman applied this familiar arc to two young boys makes Young Hearts remarkable. Never before have characters like Elias and Alexander been allowed to take part in such normalcy. Schatteman offers a narrative that renders contemporary queer coming of age with authenticity and celebration. He allows Elias and Alexander to transcend the usual tropes and achieve complete, joyous humanity.
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All images are screenshots from the film.