It’s become a bit of a cliché within the trans community, but it bears repeating for all of us: transition is not a fixed experience in life, but a constant series of choices—albeit often sparked by one big one.
Sure, some of these choices are fixed points with a “before and after”—surgery or hormones or changing your name. But there are also the everyday choices of self-determination, of boundary-setting, and of being the person you want to be. As queer and trans people, we wake up and make these choices every single moment of every single day.
Close to You, the new Elliot Page-led drama directed by British film vet Dominic Savage, is about the impact of those choices and the continued process of making them. Page plays Sam, a trans man living in Toronto who returns to his small Ontario hometown for the first time in years for a family celebration. On the train ride there, he reunites with childhood flame Katherine (Hillary Baack), and subsequently spends the trip grappling with how these various figures from his past see him and how those perspectives contrast with who he is now.
The film is seeing its wide release this week after more than a year on the festival circuit. It’s a passion project for both star and director (Page’s company Pageboy also produced), and Savage says he specifically wrote the film with Page in mind after a general meeting the two had. The pair collaboratively wanted to explore the idea of running into someone from your past in a new context.
“We just started playing with ideas and themes,” Savage said. “And then this, this story, emerged from many conversations that we had at that time.”
The filmmaking itself is very intimate, closely following Sam from his rental room in Kensington Market through the train ride (Via Rail route 42, for sharp-eyed Canadian rail fans) and into the walls of his childhood home. Savage’s camera frequently frames Page tightly from behind, putting the audience into his shoes—and head, which is constantly clad in a red beanie.
In a month where Page’s visage tops Netflix’s recommendations with Season 4 of the bombastic supernatural comic series The Umbrella Academy, Close to You falls on the far other end of the scope and scale spectrum.
It’s an intriguing choice for Page at this point in his career as both an actor and producer. He is arguably the most famous trans man in the world, so producing and starring in a film centring a trans character is not all that surprising. But while the media obsession with his public coming out nearly five years ago—and the details of Page’s own story revealed in last year’s memoir Pageboy—might lead some to quickly interpret the film as autobiographical, Page is quick to correct that idea.
He says there are many places where Sam’s story differs from his own and it was important to make Sam a fully fleshed character outside of the viewers’ association with the actor playing him.
“We have such a lack of representation that you can’t just, like, not think about this story you’re putting out into the world, of course, but I feel like it was a nice balance of something that I felt connected to, but also felt quite different from my experience,” he says.
Savage says that the details of Close to You, particularly the nuances of Sam’s family and their responses to his transition, came from bringing together many perspectives and experiences across the cast.
“All of those textures really came from both [the cast] as people, but also from the various different things that we tried,” Savage says. “The scenes between Sam and members of the family … we had lots of little ideas, and we tried them. And the film, I think, reflects the most interesting aspects of what each character brought.”
As a trans person raised in small-town Canada—who only came out and into myself after moving to the city—I certainly saw a lot (but not all) of my own experience in Sam’s. It’s hard to watch moments such as one where Sam has to reassure his well-meaning mom after she overly chastises herself for getting his pronouns wrong. Page says that relatability was a goal.
“Stuff is inevitably personal, in the themes, in the wish to be seen, in a lot of the moments that I imagine so many trans and queer people watch and recognize and have experienced,” Page says.
Take for example, Paul, Sam’s brother-in-law and primary antagonist. Where a louder film may have cast him as a slur-wielding bully, Paul’s transphobia manifests in quieter—but arguably just as devastating—ways. Paul is motivated more by ignorance than by hatred. He stresses how things feel new and aggressively pushes Sam to cut him slack for getting things wrong. Any of us who’ve had a boss or loved one reassure us that they are “trying” even as they complain about the burden of political correctness will be able to relate.
“[Savage and I] talked about, how can we tell a story that does feel different, that isn’t just going back to some sort of stereotypical completely transphobic family?” Page says. “And we wanted to explore just a lot more of the nuanced moments in a lot of these experiences, and try and capture that and not have it be devoid of complication and emotion.”
Adding to emotion is Baack, who brings a deep well of feeling and history with Page to her role as Katherine—groundbreaking in its own way as a casual depiction of deafness, something Baack and her character both share. Page and Baack first worked together a decade ago, and have remained close friends in the industry since.
“She’s just so there and so present and so open,” Page said. “I think Sam and Catherine, the aspects of them that have made them outsiders, is a part of what made their connection strong. And Hillary and I have talked about that in terms of our connection.”
Ultimately, while Sam continues to explore his reconnection with Katherine, he sets a boundary and leaves the family house with little resolution. The film ends in much the same way it started, with Sam waking up in his room in Toronto. And while the film doesn’t offer a satisfying reconnection between Sam and his family, the Sam we see at the end is changed by his experiences.
“It felt interesting for Sam to be like, ‘I’m actually going to maintain this boundary and I’m going to go see this person that I feel really sees me,’” Page says. “And that, to me, is something I think we’re actually not used to seeing. We’re used to them going back [to the family], and then everyone can have their own ‘let’s all just hug it out.’ And this was just a bit different.”
Viewers looking for a heartwarming resolution of family and forgiveness won’t necessarily find it in Close to You—but the film also manages to remain hopeful and ultimately offers a realistic look at the choices we make for our own happiness.
Close to You is in theatres across North America now.
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