YOUNG HEARTS

If you like your messages blunt, your plot predictable and your emotions rather underwhelmed, Young Hearts is the movie for you. For a genuine, heartfelt story: better look elsewhere.

Remember the kind of films your school teacher dragged you to in your youth? The ones that had a socially relevant subject at its core, where everyone learned an important message about prejudice and the young protagonists always got a happy ending? Young Hearts is that movie.

This new Flemish film’s subject is the unexpectedly blooming love between a teenager and his new neighbour, the important message – hammered home incessantly in every single scene – is that they should not be afraid to publicly show said love, and as to what happens in the final act … well, you can probably guess that by now, even if you’re unlikely to be prepared for a last reel car scene that is one of the least believable scenes I’ve ever seen on the big screen.

I’m not necessarily against a story with all too familiar narrative beats, as long as it feels genuine and real. Unfortunately that is where Young Hearts fails rather miserably. Writer-director Anthony Schatteman not only uses every cliché in the book in the interactions between his youthful protagonists, nearly every scene contains contrivances that are far removed from real life and will ring untrue to those in the know.

Young Hearts also lacks the poignant poetry needed to make a tale like this stand out, not just narratively but visually. While watching the film I was constantly reminded of Monster, the superb Kore-Eda film from earlier this year, that tells a similar story in a vastly superior, nuanced way instead of the blunt sledgehammer approach Schatteman uses.

I’d be hard-pressed to call Young Hearts a genuine stinker because some of the performances are okay and I guess the film’s heart is in the right place. But when half an hour in you’ve already lost count of the number of ways this movie could have been improved upon, you know you’re in for a frustrating viewing experience.

release: 2024

director: Anthony Schatteman

starring: Lou Goossens, Marius De Saeger, Geert Van Rampelberg, Emilie De Roo