Young Hearts is a Belgian coming of age movie from 2024 directed by Anthony Schatteman. The movie is largely based on his own childhood.
What is the movie about?
Elias (played by Lou Goossens) is the son of singer Lou Montero. Elias has a girlfriend, but isn’t really in love with her. One day new neighbours move into the house across the street. The family consists of a father, his son and his daughter. The son is around the same age as Elias, the daughter is younger. Elias immediately becomes friends with Alexander (played by Marius De Saeger) But in the mean time he also starts to develop feelings for Alexander, but is uncertain on how to handle those feelings. When his mother talks him into going to the party and he gets into a fight with Alexander and his friends, he hides in his grandfathers barn.
© Thomas Nolf
What do I think of the movie?
Young Hearts is a heartfelt movie. Elias is from a small Belgian village, where love between boys is something new. And for the first time he has feelings for someone else, but these feelings are for a boy. And he doesn’t know how to deal with that. He can’t talk to his dad about his feelings, because his dad is too busy with his own singing career. He can’t talk to his mom either, because he doesn’t know how to talk to her. And his big brother is too busy with his own girlfriend. On the one hand he wants to give in to the feelings, but on the other hand, being the first gay boy from his village, he is afraid he will get bullied even worse and that nobody will understand him. His grandfather doesn’t judge him, but instead knows how to handle the situation. Which is a great part of the movie. Taking his grandson on a trip, so they can spend time together and let Elias sort out his feelings is what Elias needs. I love the part where they arrive in their hotel room. Grandfather asks Elias what he wants to do. Elias responds that he wants to die. Instead of trying to convince him otherwise, grandfather understand he isn’t serious and has a great response: “Als ge mij nodig hebt, nadat gij zijt doodgegaan, ik zit op het terras.” (If you need me once you’re dead, I’ll be on the terrace.) and leaves. He understands Elias just needs time and gives him all the time he needs. Next day when they’re hiking Elias talks about his grandfathers love for his late grandmother and grandfather says that if the feelings are real, he just has to go for it. That’s when Elias decides that he wants Alexander no matter what. When he tells mom, he even says he tried to feel for Valerie what he feels for Alexander, but it didn’t work. Mom steps out of the car to comfort him and to show her support. His brother doesn’t really respond. When he gets home and tries to talk to his dad, dad just ignores him and only thinks about his performance that’s later that day. You feel for Elias in that scene and almost start to hate dad. When at the farmers festival he can’t find Alexander after having seen him before, it’s unexpectedly his brother that points him in the right direction. Where in real life Anthony didn’t get the connection with his dad, in the movie there’s a positive ending. When dad sees Elias and Alexander together while he’s singing, he finishes his song and goes to his son. Without words it’s still obvious that he gives the relationship a blessing. And the movie ends with Elias, Alexander and their friends going to do something together. They’ve all accepted the relationship including Valerie.
The boys (Lou & Marius) are great together and make you feel the things they feel. The dialogues seems so natural, but that’s probably because they had influence on each scene. Before each scene, they would sit down with the director and discuss the scene and the dialogue. And where they has improvement tips for the dialogue, they were accepted so the dialogues would be more normal for kids their age.