“I’ve missed you,” says a mother to her son early in Close to You, “and seeing you now just makes me miss you more.” It’s obvious what Miriam (Wendy Crewson) consciously means by this statement, and it’s a testament to the film’s writer/director, Dominic Savage, that her observation is so full of both compassion and caution. It has been a while since Miriam has seen her son, and from what we understand of the timeline here, that last meeting might have been under rather different circumstances. There is double-speak underneath such a statement, then, but the film heavily implies that Miriam may not know better than to put those words in that order, making their real meaning entirely unconscious.
The son, Sam, is played by Elliot Page, a fact that will instantly inform one’s understanding of the matter of the conscious vs. the unconscious in a conversation about distance. Page’s own journey played out in the public eye – at first, involving his sexuality, and then, later, his gender identity. Sam’s story might reflect this trajectory, considering the twin plot playing out concurrently alongside the main action, but issues of autobiography barely matter to this fictional story, which works – and works quite well – on its own. Part of that is because of Page’s emotionally transparent and forceful performance, of which anyone who has followed his career knows he is capable.
An arguably larger part, though, is the delicate way that Savage (with whom Page also receives a story credit) builds toward the moments of heightened, melodramatic shouting that take over the film’s third act. This shift almost feels inevitable, and we come to realize that there’s no other way this could play out — less because the filmmaker gives us the feeling that we’re circling a drain and more because the nature of these characters is so ably defined. If Sam is a testament to the fact that people change (to say the least, in his case), there must be people to balance that out and give us the dichotomy. Even more notably, Savage listens to those people, whether or not we like it.
Miriam, for instance, resides somewhere in a middle state of grasping without genuinely understanding. She lets slip the dead pronouns and corrects herself, but she also voices the unwanted opinion of that opening statement. Jim (Peter Outerbridge) says all the right things and laments that he couldn’t do more to help, haunted by the fear that he might find his child dead one day. Kate (Janet Porter) realizes she never really knew the brother with whom she shared a room, and Megan (Alex Paxton-Beesley), the other sister, simply looks on, acting as a mediator when she must.
The process during filming apparently involved an improvisational workshop of sorts, in which actors collaborated to come up with ideas about their characters using only the skeleton of a screenplay. By doing this, Savage and the actors dispel any notion that these characters might fit an easily deduced type (the conversations with Kate, for instance, immediately turn toward the childish humor recognized only by siblings). The sole character present whose introduction tells us everything we need to know or, indeed, eventually learn is Paul (David Reale), who will soon be Sam’s brother-in-law and has a lot of broadly derogatory opinions about the “rules” of dealing with the transition. The character becomes the center of attention whenever he feels he can, and that fuels the climactic shouting match.
That’s where the more typical movements of a domestic melodrama come into play, but the film finds as much, and arguably more, power in that major subplot, which is introduced during Sam’s train ride back home. In it, he runs into Katherine (Hillary Baack), a friend from a very different time in his life, with whom he wanted to be more. The moment of their reunion, which has one person recognizing the other instantly and the other person taking just a few seconds longer to reciprocate, is one of immense power, conveying in the smallest moment just how much of an effect the expanse of time has had. Baack’s performance is a revelatory one, sharing screen chemistry with Page that lingers long after the credits roll.
With this side of the plot, Close to You examines layers that its broader familial angle, with its gradual movement toward melodrama, simply cannot. There are no simple answers to the dynamic that re-forms between the two old friends. This movie understands just how difficult it is to pick back up where things left off so long after all those things have been recontextualized. That the movie even attempts to answer these unknowable questions moves it far beyond its own specific story and into the arena of the universal.
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment
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