TIFF23: "Close to You" - Film Review
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, Close to You wouldn't exist.
The latest feature of director Dominic Savage, Close to You, centers on a homecoming. This one isn’t particularly joyous, but is instead a source of apprehension and anxiety for Sam (Elliot Page). He grew up in a small, suburban town outside Toronto, but moved away five years prior to the events of Close to You. In those five years, he came out as a transman and effectively cut off all communication with his family. He felt it necessary in order to fully embrace his new identity, but when his mother (Wendy Crewson) asks him to come home to celebrate his dad’s (Peter Outerbridge) birthday, Sam finally comes face to face with the world he left behind. That includes his siblings and Katherine (Hillary Baack), a friend from his teenage years. As Sam quickly discovers when he gets home, some things never change while others become unrecognizable. Including himself.
In a post-screening Q&A, Savage and Page discussed the process of creating Close to You. It was a highly collaborative effort in which they sketched out the emotional beats of the story they wanted to cover, but no formal script was written. Instead, everything was improved. Savage allowed the actors to exist in scenes of forty-plus-minute takes. It’s a fascinating exercise in improvisation and performance, but the lack of a written script becomes fairly obvious early in the film. The actors often dance around moving the scene forward with over-repeated phrases like “I don’t know.” It’s clear they’re stalling for time, trying to think of something to say, but the impression is that the actors aren’t fully comfortable with improv. This sets up a catch twenty-two, because there are some scenes where the passion is clearly born in that moment, especially in Outerbridge’s performance as Sam’s father. It’s his quiet scene with Sam in the study that produces quite a bit of sniffling in the theater.
courtesy of TIFF
Close to You can feel a little meandering, like the multitude of walks Sam goes on throughout the day with Katherine. Their relationship is a major focal point of the film, and while Page and Baack turn in decent performances, there’s no sparkling chemistry between them. The friction of the plot is that it’s so fundamentally overwhelming for Katherine to see Sam again that she breaks down crying, but the audience doesn’t really understand why her reaction is so intense. Maybe it’s a side effect of the improv, but Close to You is frustratingly vague, not only about Sam and Katherine’s relationship, but in an overall sense. Time and again, Sam refers to how happy he is at his new job, how he loves what he does and thinks his coworkers are great, but the audience never finds out what that job is. There’s a pivotal fight around the dinner table toward the end of the film, and it’s the first time we realize that Sam has a brother. Sam and Katherine keep alluding to how much they loved each other as teens, but there’s never any information offered about their relationship. Did they date openly? Secretly? Were they best friends who were in love with each other, but never said anything?
Essentially, every movie is a series of conversations edited together to make something cohesive, but the lack of structure in Close to You makes that notion painfully obvious. It seems as though Sam is existing to move from room to room to begin a new conversation that feels like a slightly more realistic version of an after-school special about gender identity. There are genuinely cathartic moments for Sam, words that he’s clearly been longing to hear from his family, but they don’t make up for the tedious pace of the rest of the conversations. In a sense, the film’s down-to-earth moments probably hit very close to home for Page. Close to You is his means of introducing himself to us the same way he did with his parents. Finally, we’re able to see Page happy and living as his truest self. For that, I am grateful to Close to You. It doesn’t make up for the film’s weaknesses, but it’s one hell of a strength.
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