“Close to You” represents the reintroduction of Elliot Page, a screen presence at once familiar, sharply redefined, and finally established on his own terms. In his first film role since coming out as a trans man, it’s clear that the actor has brought much of his identity and experience to this sensitively observed story of a trans man who is carefully reunited with his family after a five-year period of estrangement. (In addition to producing the project, he shares story writing credit with director Dominic Savage.) But Page’s performance isn’t just moved by any parallels it might bear to his own life: it’s a reminder of his own versatility and insight. He can be an actor, capable of raw emotional candor and acidic wit – both assets of a script that sometimes errs on the side of caution.
British director Savage is known for his improvisational collaborations with actors, which most recently attracted the best work of Gemma Arterton in 2017’s “The Escape” and extended to the TV project “I Am…”, a series of intimate, independent character portraits from the likes of Samantha Morton , Letitia Wright, and BAFTA Award-winner Kate Winslet. Crossing over to Canada to work with Page in his home country, the director’s technique once again gives his star plenty of latitude to explore himself on screen, and in the process capture something that feels honest, however based on imagination. That sense of raw integrity has stood the film in good stead on the festival circuit, where it has attracted particular attention from LGBT programmers and distributors since its raucous premiere in Toronto last fall, shortly after the publication of Page’s memoir “Pageboy.”
But dramatically, improvisation yields mixed results in “Close to You,” which moves between scenes that are finely detailed in its examination of overt bias and subtle microaggressions in the domestic sphere, and others that are more vaguely written, building relationships on backstories that don’t yet feel formed. The complete. Live acting, not just by Paige but by an impressive cast of Canuck character players, carries the film through the line, though even at a modest 98 minutes, it can feel tighter.
The day-long timeframe gives us a limited sense of who Sam (Page) is outside of the immediate drama surrounding him, though the actor’s tense, square-shouldered body language conveys a man accustomed to assuming different stances and faces depending on which company he’s in. We meet him, tense and acerbic. , in the stylish Toronto apartment he shares with his roommate, clutching his coffee mug as he cautiously contemplates his plans for the next day: a train ride to his sleepy hometown on Lake Ontario, where he will join his extended family for his father’s birthday lunch. It’s a visit he’s been putting off for years. Although his outwardly progressive parents and siblings had theoretically accepted his chosen sexual identity, he never shook the feeling of being an outsider in their presence. “It’s like I owe them so much,” he sighs. To him, their acceptance feels like a gesture.
The reunion certainly begins amicably but not entirely comfortably, a mood appropriately set by DP Catherine Lutz’s tepid, dark-toned lensing of the low-lit interiors and heavy wood of the family home. Sam’s mother Miriam (a wonderful Wendy Crewson) is eager to make up for lost time, offering lavish affection but trying too hard: when she absent-mindedly uses the wrong pronouns, her apologies put Sam at ease. Father Jim (Peter Outerbridge) seems more relaxed, content simply to watch his severely withdrawn child live a productive, independent life; Sam’s older sisters are more aggressive and passive, almost scolding in their constant inquiries into his happiness.
“You weren’t that worried about me when I wasn’t actually feeling well,” Sam replies, in one of the film’s most cutting lines — a sentiment that lays the groundwork for a more heated family feud in response to less polite transphobia. His brother-in-law Paul (David Reale). This scene serves as the film’s centerpiece, bringing any number of collectively latent conflicts to the surface, though there is an air of invention, even a workshop, in its shrill rhetoric.
To counter this tension is a separate, gentler subplot of Sam’s unexpected reconnection with his former high school girlfriend Katherine (Hilary Buck), now a married suburban mother with a palpable longing for something more. They meet by chance on the train from Toronto, and later have a heart-to-heart in the city. In contrast to the more difficult implicit negotiations with his family, Katherine’s acceptance of his new identity is unquestioned and unconditional (“You look the same, only more,” she tenderly notes) and a reorganized desire moves between them.
This tentative romance is poignant, but of a coy approach: Katherine is never fully focused as a character outside of her relationship with Sam, which is itself painted in soft pastel strokes, while the sparse piano and melancholy strings of the score (written by Savage with Oliver Coates) fill in some of the blanks. Emotional. The stories of a fragile family’s fallout and the spark of a second chance never quite mesh together, though they give Paige a full range of emotions to play: tough and soft, guarded and unrestrained, combative and seductive. For viewers who have lost touch with the star, it’s a happy reacquaintance.