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‘Young Hearts’ Review: Confident Belgian Debut Takes a Gentle Look at Kids Figuring Out Their Identities
Featuring a breakout lead performance from newcomer Lou Goossens, 'Young Love' sees young teenagers wrestling with crushes and ingrained social codes.
Goossens plays Elias, a 14-year-old living in rural Belgium with his loving and mostly normal family — the slight exception being his father, Luk (Geert Van Rampelberg), who, while a pretty straight arrow in a personal sense, is enjoying unlikely success as a midlife pop sensation, with a hit single in the pipeline. “Young Hearts” is the first feature from Anthony Schatteman, a prolific shorts director, with several TV series to his name, and his direction feels calm and quietly confident in ways that is not always the case with a debut. Comparisons with Lukas Dhont’s splashier but less organic “Close” as another recent Belgian drama about self-questioning teenage boys, are perhaps inevitable, but “Young Hearts,” while gentler and less obviously tear-jerking, benefits from a sincere and lived-in emotional honesty which serves its aims well.
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