Close To You

When Elliot Page talks, you listen. And even when he doesn’t, you can’t help but watch, waiting for him to figure out what he needs to say next — such is the power of the actor, here at his best in the largely improvised and deeply personal Close To You, which hinges almost entirely on Page’s soulful performance.

The actor shared with the world in 2020 that he identified as a transgender man and had changed his name to Elliot Page. His character in Close To You, Sam, is ostensibly a work of fiction, but grapples with a reality you can imagine Page understands all too well (the film begins with Sam looking out of his tiny window in a flatshare in Toronto, where Page has called home more than once). The film isn’t about Sam’s struggle to accept his identity — rather, it concerns his relationships with, and more undiscerning prejudice from, those around him: his family and an old friend-slash-flame.

Page has no trouble switching from animosity to empathy without flinching.

“You weren’t worrying about me when I was actually not okay,” Sam tells one of his siblings, who shows concern when Sam arrives home for his father’s birthday. Page plays the scene with a measured sensitivity, refusing any kind of manipulative sentimentality or fake outbursts. Director and co-writer Dominic Savage, here expanding on his similarly constructed I Am… series, mainly lets his actors do their own thing (save a repetitive musical motif nudging you to feel the right emotions), meaning most of the film’s dialogue is improvised. In Page’s hands, this works, and the Oscar nominee has no trouble switching from animosity to empathy without flinching, but his scene partners often struggle. The back-and-forth between Page and his mother, sisters, father or friends rarely hit as hard as they could because Page is head-and-shoulders above.

Hillary Baack plays Sam’s old friend Katherine, and the pair’s scenes together hold the most tenderness. The two actors have known one another for a decade, and it shows: their dialogue may not be the most inventive, but their body language speaks volumes. These stolen moments of intimacy help Sam push himself into the next chapter of his life, with the confidence that he now has what he needs to stand on his own two feet.