Lydia Wilson at the TLS:
This close framing, at times claustrophobic, often anxiety-provoking, is key to all the films made by the Dardenne brothers, Luc and Jean-Pierre. The Son, too, opens by closely tracking the protagonist, Olivier, so we almost see what he does; we can observe Olivier’s desperation to see, to spy, but we don’t quite know what or who or why. Tension is established and maintained, but not for its own sake: “Finding the ‘wrong place’ for the camera”, says Luc in his diaries, On the Back of Our Images, Volume 1 (translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman and Sammi Skolmoski), “is our way of creating the secret for the viewer all while bestowing the secret, and consequently an existence, upon our characters.”
more here.