Who hasn’t had the awkward family meal where those simmering resentments and intolerances almost inevitably rise to the surface. It’s little surprise that such domestic dinner table conflicts have featured so heavily in dramas over the years and the latest is ‘Close to you’ starring Elliot Page who plays Sam and, having transitioned, now rents a room in a Toronto house. But it’s the occasion of his father’s birthday that sees him make his first trip home in four years having found acceptance in the big city he now faces the potential rejection of a small town.
It’s the train trip home that sees him encounter an old high school friend Katherine (Hilary Baack) and a shared historical romance. But Katherine is married with two children and what seems to be a reignited flame of romance is bluntly extinguished once they get to their hometown….or so it would seem.
And so to the family birthday meal where Sam’s father welcomes him as his son, his mother is still beating herself up about not supporting Sam as much as she feels she could have and Sam’s siblings, in often unintended passive aggressive conversations. It is of course all going to come to a head when a brother in law who, in the guise of trying to understand, is out to just wind Sam up. Sam’s understandable counsel to his family that they should just allow him to exist like any other person is understandable but the sympathy quickly evaporates after their mother telling the family that for her, it is all about being family, is an understandable one for her generation but Sam’s reaction is explosive making him almost instantly unsympathetic. It is the best scene in the film.
This family dynamic is alternated with Sam trying to reconnect with Katherine and these scenes are far less effective but perhaps much of this comes down to the film being improvised making it something of an actors’ workshop feel and whilst Page handles this well clearly drawing on his own personal experience the rest of the cast carry it with varying degrees of success. Given the right material Page is a decent actor as Whip It and especially Juno showed but he has been off screen for a few years and seems to have adopted that irksome ‘vocal fry’ way of speaking, that affected croaky voice seemingly pioneered by the Kardashians, a family seemingly with eating disorders though ironically its them that are being shoved down audiences’ throats.
Shot on handheld camera with naturalistic lighting, ‘Close to you’ plays out as series of 1-2-1 scenes in a slightly overlong film that though obviously well intended comes across as something a vanity project .
related feature : Tom Prior writes, produces and stars in the new film LGBTQ, ‘Firebird’ based on an incredible true story!
related feature : Coming of age gay drama, ‘Sweetheart’ – REVIEW
Here’s the Close to you trailer….
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