Rating: R | Runtime: 100 minutes
Release Date: August 16th, 2024 (Canada/USA)
Studio: Mongrel Media / Greenwich Entertainment
Director(s): Dominic Savage
Writer(s): Dominic Savage / Dominic Savage & Elliot Page (story)

The last thing a parent wants is for their kid to be sad.

Sam (Elliot Page) hasn’t been home in almost five years. No one there has seen him since his transition and they haven’t really spoken much either, but it’s his father’s (Peter Outerbridge’s Jim) birthday and he’s been asked to attend. Something would therefore be wrong if he didn’t feel a mix of fear and hope about the prospect. How would they react? Would he discover their acceptance was performative? Authentic? Fake? It’s a vulnerable act to return, but the chance it will all work out seems worth the pain of finding out it won’t.

Written and directed by Dominic Savage (from a story by him and Page), Close to You wastes no time folding the past into the present with all the uncertainty that brings. Sam’s train hasn’t completed its route before he runs into someone from two decades ago. It’s nice too … at first. Katherine (Hillary Baack) seems aware of his transition, giving him a hug and saying he looks good before small talk ensues. As soon as the conductor announces their arrival, though, that ease of two old friends reuniting disappears. She hardly says goodbye before she’s gone. It’s a sign of things to come: welcome platitudes making way towards the difficulty of a moment whose reaction cannot be known until it arrives.

The middle portion of the film beautifully portrays that uneasiness. We assume the worst from Sam’s initial description of a family acting like they deserve a medal for accepting him, but, despite Mom’s (Wendy Crewson’s Miriam) exuberance with seeing her child for the first time in years, there’s real empathy in that house. She and Jim are ecstatic. Sam’s siblings all give him a hug. But Savage and Page realize appearances mustn’t be deceiving to still prove complex. Miriam is trying, but can’t help misgendering him. Kate (Janet Porter) is happy he’s back, but can’t stop placing blame for their estrangement at his feet despite knowing it saved him.

The conversations are both awkward and heartfelt. They risk derailment because so much time has passed, but always balance because the love is unmistakable. And then Sam gets into a room with Jim alone to deliver the film’s defining moment—one that could have fallen into disingenuous sentimentality yet never feels anything but honest. So, of course, there’s also a display of honest bigotry too courtesy of Sam’s brother-in-law Paul (David Reale). It’s a come-to-Jesus moment years in the making with or without Sam’s presence. One that shows the difference between calling a space safe for everyone and actually ensuring it is.

Close to You could have succeeded as a family drama in this vein on its own. I think there’s enough there to sustain the runtime and momentum, but this isn’t about Sam’s family as a whole. It’s about Sam moving forward regardless of whether he allows them to come along for the ride. As such, Katherine eventually returns so the two of them can reconcile their shared history too—an event that inevitably means the most to Sam considering she was always his safe space whenever his family wasn’t.

I can nitpick the structure of the narrative and the editing that makes a few scenes feel as though they aren’t real (a few quick cuts make more sense as fantasy considering Katherine seems always available and not available at the same time depending on what the script demands), but I won’t fault the emotional impact of where we’re taken. Because even if it can seem a bit too slice of life in its out-of-time segues, the film must exist in that space of spontaneity to be as potent as it is.

Page’s performance is a big part of that too, but the real draw is the whole’s ability to deliver the highest of highs and lowest of lows without ever feeling fake. Because it’s not about making everyone else comfortable with who Sam is. It’s about understanding that Sam’s comfort to exist as his true self should never be compromised for anyone, especially not when the attempt is shielded beneath the façade of “family.” He hasn’t worked this hard to escape the past only to let those who are unwilling to move forward to drag him back.

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Hillary Baack and Elliot Page in CLOSE TO YOU; courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.