Film Review: ‘Close to You’ is a Showcase for Elliot Page Within A Drama That Keeps You At Arm’s Length

Films about family struggles often touch a nerve. When the issue at hand is sexual identity, the nerves can often be frayed even more. Close to You depicts a trans man returning to his home after years away, with the family, as well as those in his hometown, acting in all manner of ways. It’s material that could make for an emotionally devastating movie. Here, unfortunately we’re given a version of this story that never elevates to that level. You feel for our protagonist, but the flick can’t keep up with him throughout.

Close to You has a really good central performance at its core. That much is undeniable. However, the decision to have the dialogue of this drama be mostly improvised ends up making everything seem smaller and less revealing than it otherwise might have been. You want to have big emotions and big feels here, but the film opts for a style that ultimately keeps you more at arms length than you’d hope for.

Sam (Elliot Page) is a trans man living in Toronto. Quickly, we learn that he’s debating whether or not to return to his hometown for his father’s birthday. Eventually deciding to head home, he sees Katherine (Hillary Baack) on the train, who used to be his best friend. There’s clear happiness in this reuinion of sorts, but it also speaks to pain in their past, which they dance around in their conversation and in their gaze.

At home near Lake Ontario, Sam has to interact with his parents Miriam (Wendy Crewson) and Jim (Peter Outerbridge), as well as his siblings Kate (Janet Porter), Megan (Alex Paxton-Beesley), and Michael (Daniel Maslany). They’re certainly happy to see him, but their questions are all triggering in one way or another. The more they all interact, the more tense and upset Sam becomes, until a blow up is all but inevitable.

Elliot Page is the highlight here, putting his all into a role that clearly means the world to him. Page has always been a performer with a soulful nature at their core, but this is upper echelon work. It’s not that everyone else around him is bad, far from it in fact, it’s just that Page is so much better so much the heart and soul of the picture that you really only focus in on this performance. Supporting players include the aforementioned Hillary Baack, Wendy Crewson, Daniel Maslany, Peter Outerbridge, Alex Paxton-Beesley, and Janet Porter, alongside David Reale, plus others.

Filmmaker Dominic Savage doesn’t do enough to make the improvisational nature of the story seem cinematic. Savage and Page co-wrote the script, such as it is (it’s essentially an outline for the performers, Page included, obviously), and there are obviously deeply emotional moments, but Savage’s direction is too simple. The improv never reveals anything particularly captivating, so you’re left with good intentions and a desire to tell a resonate story, only without the tools of the craft to make Close to You compelling on a moment to moment basis.

Close to You either needed to be more cinematic and narratively dramatic, or needed to lean harder into the improv of it all. As it stands, Elliot Page is excellent, but aside from that central performance, everything else is far more on the forgettable side. The film’s heart is very much in the right place. The execution is simply not quite on par, however. Alas.

SCORE: ★★1/2