Something’s only universal when it’s personal to a lot of people. So I guess it’s a fair assumption that bits and chunks of Elliot Page’s personal story as a trans man have been woven into the screenplay he co-wrote with Dominic Savage for Close to You. Pathos and hope permeate Sam’s experience being back at home after four years, which marks his first time entering that space as his real self. In one overwhelming weekend, Sam gets closure about a lot of things that’ve been on his mind ever since he left.
Spoiler Alert
What happens in the film?
On the day of his dad’s birthday, doubt’s written all over Sam’s face as he wakes up in the room that he rents from his friend. He’s long cut the ties of expectations with his family and the small town he came from. But since there’s still love between them, Sam and his family are making efforts to fix what’s broken. As he indecisively boards the train to his hometown, Sam fully expects his family to be performative for the sake of earning cool points. When he arrives, there’s already an air of unspoken tension in the room. It’s not that most of them aren’t loving and supportive of Sam, but there’s this sense that they’re overcompensating for not being there for him before.
How do Sam’s parents treat him?
Sam couldn’t have prepared for it. He didn’t know how they were gonna be or what they were gonna say. So his sensible reactions to the way his parents, Jim and Miriam, and his siblings, Meg, Kate, and Michael handle being around him after all this time are more about how open he is to giving them a fair chance. They’re well-meaning, well, mostly. There’s this constant note of apology in every word Miriam speaks to the son she’s just getting to know. Her awkward attempts to be supportive make her offer Sam financial support should he need it. But underneath all her queries about whether Sam’s found happiness in his new life, I think her heart’s broken because her love is confused. In one emotionally charged scene, Miriam hesitantly admits that she still thinks of Sam as her little girl, something that we already saw her doing when she accidentally said “her” instead of “him.” Sam understands that his mom means well and wants to get better at loving him for who he is. It’s actually a lot more heart wrenching when he and his dad find the privacy to be vulnerable and honest with each other. All Sam’s dad has ever felt about him is this paranoia that his sadness will obliterate him. He’s this loving yet obviously distant dad who didn’t know how to be there for his son when he was broken and miserable. All he did was worry that Sam wouldn’t come out the other side in one piece. But all things considered, Sam breaking out of his cage and finding his happiness means that his dad’s fears didn’t come true. And now that Jim knows that, he’s just happy that his son is happy and okay. That essentially means that, unlike what Sam feared, his parents don’t see him as a disappointment.
Why does Sam storm out of his home?
The people who don’t mask it very well when it comes to their complicated feelings about Sam are his sisters, especially Kate. There’s almost a weirdly blatant superiority complex in them. Sam chose a different path in life. They stayed back and became who they were expected to be. You see how there’s this resentment Kate feels toward Sam’s choice to go away and find a new life. She’s incapable of grasping that her idea of the perfect life, a traditional, heteronormative one with a husband and kids, isn’t everyone’s ideal life. In all her judgment and the problematic expressions of how hurt she feels about Sam not opening up to her when they were kids, you see that she’s coming from a place where she blamed Sam for the distance between them. She couldn’t accept that she never made an effort to actually get to know the sibling that she shared a room with. When you think about how much it must’ve hurt Sam to not be seen by the people who were supposed to love him, you realize that it must be incredibly difficult for him to now have these people act overly concerned about his well-being. They didn’t care when he was miserable. And now when he doesn’t need their validation to be okay, they can’t accept that he is, in fact, doing pretty well.
But the worst of all is Meg’s husband, Paul. When you see the expensive watch he brought as a gift to Jim, you already know that he’s a bit of a show off. But that’s hardly Paul’s worst quality. He’s one of those people who victimize themselves out of nowhere and miss the irony when they say things like “wokes are snowflakes.” He’s so uncomfortable being around Sam and so much of a prick that he keeps complaining about how he’s burdened by the expectations that no one, not even Sam, actually has from him. He doesn’t mind ruining a perfectly wholesome gathering of loved ones just because he can’t help but hate. Sam tries to let things slide for as long as he can. But with someone like Paul in the mix, things are bound to blow up. Despite Miriam’s efforts to right the situation, Sam knows that an apology from Paul will mean nothing. He’ll still be the kind of person who needs to bother someone just because he’s uncomfortable being around them. Sam realizes that his mother’s speech about how family’s the most important thing is meant to convey that she expects Sam to have an unconditional sense of patience for them. But Sam doesn’t agree with that. And his dad says all the wrong things when he walks out. Jim asks Sam to “rise above it.” But why should Sam have to be the bigger man when all he wants is to exist as he is? Sam’s rolled with the punches for far too long. And now that he’s comfortable with his life, he doesn’t want to be a pushover anymore.
Does Katherine come to meet Sam?
We’re let in on very little about what Sam and Katherine’s relationship was like when they were in high school. We first meet her when Sam bumps into her on the train taking him home. And immediately, you know that they meant a lot to each other back in their most formative years. When Katherine mentions that she still thinks about Sam when she visits the places where they used to hang out, that practically tells Sam that she still thinks about him fondly. The fact that Katherine’s overwhelmed to meet Sam after all these years keeps her jittery throughout their first conversation. You just know that a lot of unresolved feelings are standing in the way of them being fully comfortable around each other.
It’s only when you see them meet outside the station again that you understand why Katherine stopped their chat so abruptly and left. She still has a lot of strong feelings in her heart for Sam. Given she’s tried to move on, and now she’s a married woman with kids, it’s understandable that she’s terrified of her feelings for Sam resurfacing. But it’s a small town, so running into each other is inevitable for them. The picture gets clearer to us when they meet by the beach. As kids, Sam and Katherine only had each other in a world full of people who didn’t love them the way they needed to be loved. So meeting Katherine after all this time and realizing that she’ll always meet the world to him might be the most meaningful reunion Sam has in his hometown.
Throughout Close to You, the only answer Sam has to every query about her non-existent romantic life is how he isn’t looking for companionship right now. But Katherine means more than that to Sam. She might have been his only true loss. He’s never been loved the way Katherine has always loved him. So it makes sense that he asks her to leave everything behind and go with him. It takes Katherine some time to give in to her wish to get to love Sam when he’s fully become the person he’s always wanted to be. But when she comes to visit Sam in Close to You‘s ending, it’s like no time has passed in between the two lifetimes of Sam and Katherine loving each other. When Katherine says she’s proud of Sam, it sounds more genuine that any word of encouragement and appreciation Sam’s family could ever hope to conjure up. Katherine’s the only person who’s loved Sam throughout–back when he was feeling suffocated in a life where he couldn’t be himself and now that he’s living his truth. That’s all that Sam needs as of now.
Related
This post was originally published on here
