As Thanksgiving 2024 approaches, it’s safe to say that holiday dinners with family back home will be even more stressful than usual.
Conversations around the table with cousins and in-laws have always been a minefield for queer people from traditional families. Knowing that your uncle sitting across from you this year voted for someone who might take away your hard-won rights should make that turkey a lot harder to swallow. With such scenarios looming large in our minds, Close to You, a Canadian film from writer-director Dominic Savage in which Elliot Page plays a transgender man returning to a small town, ”, I feel a special poignancy. I went to my parents’ house for my father’s birthday after being away for almost five years.
Sam (Paige) lives in Toronto, renting a room from his friend and surrogate mother, Lee Suk-Quinn (Lee Suk-Quinn), while exploring and adjusting to life in the big city as a trans man. Now he is ready to go home for the holidays, but is anxious about the reception he may receive. On the train home, he meets Catherine (Hilary Buck), his “best friend” from school. The slightly awkward but warm acceptance he feels from her cheers him up, and he confronts his father (Peter Outerbridge). his mother (Wendy Crewson), and the siblings and significant others who make up his immediate family.
Things start out reasonably well, with a warm welcome from her mother, a newfound acceptance from her father, and a tentative rekindling of connections with her sisters (Janet Porter, Alex Paxton-Beasley), but a transphobic relative… It became difficult to ignore the increasingly aggressive provocations from (David Reale). He finds escape and solace with Catherine. After a chance reunion awakens the emotional bond they once shared, Catherine overcomes her initial reluctance to further connect. But old feelings and resentments stoked within his family dynamics threaten to derail any chance for real reconciliation within the household, reminding him why he left home in the first place.
Moody, raw, and tinged with a melancholy that asserts itself even in its happy moments, Savage’s film conveys an atmosphere as chilly as the slimy Canadian November in which it takes place. It literally brings the audience up close, most of it shot in close-up, clinging to the players’ faces as if we were part of the conversation, providing a tangible sense of intimacy. and connect us with the world. Emotional perspective of all involved. Much of it has an improvisational feel, and while the dialogue is at times hesitant or choked with uncertainty, it frequently erupts, allowing the eloquently expressed ideas to resonate. And that credibility is reinforced by a stellar turn of events in the role of Sam from Page, who co-wrote the film’s story with Savage, and a stellar ensemble of performances anchored by a talented cast. All of this combines to create an atmosphere that effectively evokes the feelings of helpless vulnerability that many of us, queer or straight, are familiar with when we return to scenes from our youth that we longed to escape. is creating.
In fact, the film’s constant sense of low-frequency anxiety may be too much for some viewers. Of course, for many, it is a familiar event and will bring back traumatic memories. It may all seem a little too “desperate and gloomy” to those who can’t relate and see respectful treatment of trans stories as agenda-driven or “woke.” Some people may dismiss it. People who do that are unlikely to see it in the first place.
That’s not to say “Close to You” is a total downer, though. There are also plenty of uplifting moments where connections shine through and we are reminded that love lies beneath all the confusion and misunderstanding that strained Sam and his family’s relationship – even if in those moments the characters themselves don’t realize it. Even if I didn’t feel it. Nor does it place the focus of all of his emotional vigilance on his transness. On the contrary, many of the conflicts are based on feelings of isolation, being judged to have a different focus in life than the rest of the traditional family, and what it is that makes him “different”. Focusing on other things that are not relevant. his gender. Glimpses of Sam’s other relationships celebrate the value of “found” family and even provide a glimmer of unexpected romance. In many ways, this movie might even be seen as a “feel-good” movie if it weren’t for the sense of unanswered sadness underlying it all.
Perhaps that’s why it resonates not just as a trans story (although that’s more important than anything), but about the queer experience as a whole. That is, the knowledge that no matter what positive changes you make or how fully you accept your truth. And when it comes to identity, there are always people who will judge you for who you are. Because the problem is not in you, but in them, you cannot solve it, and there is a feeling of helplessness that arises from that.
In the cultural climate suddenly thrust upon us in America, many of our thoughts about who we can trust in a society that has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to ostracize us have changed. No doubt you are struggling with perception. Because of this, “Close to You” has more of an impact on queer viewers than it might have intended at the time of its production. After all, that uncle across the Thanksgiving table may have treated you perfectly all his life, but knowing that his love for you was less than his worries about the price of groceries. , it becomes difficult to trust him again. And we have done so. It was a sobering reminder that the same can be said of a shockingly large proportion of our friends and neighbors.
Close to You premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, was released in Canada and the UK earlier this year, had a limited run in the US, and is now available for viewing at home through multiple VOD platforms It has become.
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