Billie and Lucas, a young Brussels couple, both leave for university facing a year rife with change. Visions of the future, doubts about relationships and the expectations of adult life make up the main material for their conversations with friends and each other. Kind Hearts paints a candid portrait of the formative but also uncertain facets of every (first) love.
“For Kind Hearts, we did not set out to make a documentary ‘about’ love, but instead wanted to take a look at a love affair in the concrete, depicting meeting points between the two lovers Billie and Lucas. The experience of love is closely linked to the experience of narrative; in our minds, we recreate love as an adventure. This notion of love as construction is also reflected in the form of the film, characterised by its ambivalent place between staging and documentary. For us, working on a film is always a matter of attention, care and concentration, both in its choice of form and in its relationship to people and places. Kind Hearts’s ambition is to adopt a loving gaze at how these two lovers relate to the world and each other.”
Olivia Rochette and Gerard-Jan Claes
“As I enjoyed this film already while watching it, some hours later when I recall it, it even appears more beautiful and rich and it is hard to believe that the film is less than 90 minutes long. Cinema is not always only about what it reveals, sometimes it is also about options, potentials. Kind Hearts by Olivia Rochette and Gerard-Jan Claes seems to lead after the watching a life on its own, an echo which can be left on you after watching a film by Yasujiro Ozu or Eric Rohmer.”
Rüdiger Tomczak
