Although it takes a bumpy path to get there, director Dominic Savage and star Elliot Page’s dramatic collaboration Close to You manages to become a thoughtful reflection on transgender identity, isolation, and loneliness. With a second half that’s shifts the focus more towards the movie’s B-plot instead of the main thrust of the story, Close to You manages to save itself from being a misfire. If it had toned down what it initially sets out to be in favour of the more dramatically satisfying, less cliched subplot, Close to You would be a real winner. Instead, this one is more of a moral victory.
Sam (Page, who also gets a story credit) is a recently transitioned man living in Toronto, dreading the fact that he has to return to his hometown of Cobourg for his father’s birthday. Sam hasn’t been home in four years, and his transition from the little girl they once knew is bound to cause a stir. In addition to dealing with his family’s wildly differing opinions and reactions, Sam also wrestles with coming back into contact with his first love, the sweet natured, hearing impaired, and sadly taken Katherine (Hillary Baack).
The story of someone finally returning to their familial fold after years away is a familiar one, and Savage and Page take a unique approach to try and make things seem as authentic as possible. While the scenarios were sketched out ahead of time, a great deal of the dialogue in Close to You is improvised by the actors in the moment, all of it captured in a verite, handheld shooting style. It’s a better idea in practice than execution. Outside of a riveting argument between Sam and his relentlessly needling brother-in-law (David Reale), an awkward first encounter with his mother (Wendy Crewson), and a touching heart-to-heart with his dad (Peter Outerbridge), most of Savage’s scenes slouch towards obviousness, even in the best of moments. The chemistry between the actors playing members of the family just isn’t there. They’re all talented, but the beats are so stilted and stuffy that there’s no organic flow, especially when they’ve all been told to back into revelations that are obvious and cliched. It looks intimate, but Close to You feels like the audience is witnessing the wrong kind of struggle.
Still, within that narrative lies some key truths about trans identity and feeling ostracized from one’s family. In the big city, Sam has the option to either be social or disappear from the public eye entirely. In a small town where “family comes first” and everyone pries into everyone else’s business, the first question he’s often asked isn’t about how he’s doing, but rather if he’s seeing anyone. There’s no place for Sam to be himself within his family because most of them are refusing to let him grow as a human being with dreams and desires of their own. It’s something that’s universally relatable, and in these moments Page’s performance often saves the film built around it. It’s easy to read into Page’s work as something personal for the actor, but there’s also a great deal of character work in the performance.
Page is able to ground the sequences of Sam and his family interacting because he has a consistency to his performance that some of the film’s collaborators are lacking without proper guidance and direction. Vastly more effective are the moments where Page is opposite Baack’s emotionally conflicted ex. Maybe it’s a result of having a chance to build a one-on-one relationship on screen instead of being tasked with carrying the weight of an entire family unit on his back, or just having more intimate chemistry and effortless shorthand with Baack, but it’s hard not to wish that Close to You had been a romantic drama instead of a family drama. The family stuff is well intentioned, but often flat to watch unfold, whereas the romance has a tenderness and inner conflict that’s less obvious and straightforward. In the end, the good in Close to You outweighs the disappointing, but not by much.
Close to You opens in select Canadian theatres starting Friday, August 16, 2024.
