While it neither opened nor closed this year’s BFI Flare, Close To You is easily the festival’s hottest ticket. And for one reason. It marks the return to the big screen of Elliot Page who, after a string of successes such as Juno and Inception, took a well-publicized break from filmmaking. Made in near-secret last year, and perhaps as cathartic as his Pageboy memoir from last summer, it also represents a sizeable personal investment, as he not only stars but also co-wrote the script and produced. His heart is definitely in it.
Sam (Page) rents a small room in a friend’s Toronto apartment and is dreading a forthcoming trip. It’s his father’s birthday and he’s going back to the family home for the first time in several years. In that time, he’s transitioned, found acceptance, peace, and confidence, so the prospect of going back to a place he associates with judgemental rejection hangs over him like the proverbial dark cloud. On the train, however, he comes across Katherine, an old school friend, which resurrects memories from his teenage years, both good and bad, and also dangles the possibility of a relationship. Stepping back into middle-class suburbia, however, is fraught with the comments and questions he dreads.
It’s an experience that will ring bells with so many. More duty than pleasure, it’s the kind of visit that brings differences, disagreements, and hurt back to the surface, regardless of the reasons behind them – and everybody’s circumstances are different. For Sam, it’s all about ignorance and attitudes, but the difference is now he has the self-belief to question and challenge but, at the same time, can sympathise when his parents are trying to understand, even if they’re making a hash of it. His father is awkward, but at least he’s making an effort, and his mother constantly beats herself up for using the wrong pronouns. Yet he still feels unwelcome, so much so that he never takes off his woolly beanie and rarely removes his parka. He’s ready to leave at a second’s notice.
Page’s co-writer, Dominic Savage, also directs, sticking with his preference for largely improvised dialogue. In this instance, the cast worked around an outline script to create the words and scenes. It’s a technique increasingly favoured by independent films, but it’s one that places huge pressures on the cast, and even actors who have the talent for it admit it’s enormously difficult. The problem here is that, while some of the actors – Page, especially – make it look easy and natural, there are others who are clearly ill at ease. The result is uneven and, at times, clunky: when it works, it’s extremely good, but it also makes the weaker sequences look even worse.
The relationship between Sam and Katherine isn’t wholly convincing either, even though Page and Baack play it with sensitivity, and there are times when you’d rather it didn’t develop. It’s Sam’s personal change and the situation with his family that’s at the heart of the story and it comes with enough drama and emotion to make a sub-plot, especially a romantic one, unnecessary. Close To You is a welcome return for Page, and a strong showcase for him, but it’s not the triumph it could have been.
★★★
Drama / USA, 2023 / 15 / Cinema / 30th August 2024 (UK) / Vertigo Releasing / Dir: Dominic Savage / Elliot Page, Hillary Baack, Wendy Crewson, David Reale
This review is a repost of our 2024 BFI Flare review / original review link.
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