The writer-director Goran Stolevski, who made nine short films before his feature debut at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, shows no signs of slowing down. His first feature was “You Won’t Be Alone,” a feral witch epic that overflowed with ideas. Though that Noomi Rapace-led bildungsroman was ultimately too unwieldy, it introduced a director with staggering vision.
Stolevski’s second full-length film, “Of An Age,” shows off his expansive sensibility on a more intimate scale. It’s a much more personal story, weaving in his background as a gay Slav and immigrant to Australia. While the love interest in this film is a bit too good to be true, the love story is impossible to resist. This is a sweeping, lived-in romance that is as resonant as it is precise.
The film opens on Kol (Elias Anton, “Barracuda”) as he makes a drunk, choked-up phone call on New Year’s Eve 2009. We then immediately flash back ten years, just before the dawn of the millennium, as a teenage girl wakes up on an Australian beach. The girl is Kol’s best friend, Ebony (Hattie Hook, “Savage River,” excellent). After a night of hard partying, it seems she’s stranded herself hours away from their hometown.
Enter Kol, a 17-year-old propelled by anxiety more than oxygen, who has to try and collect his dance partner from god-knows-where in time to make it to their ballroom competition. As Kol can’t drive, Ebony’s outcast brother, Adam (Thom Green, “Dance Academy”), is unwittingly conscripted into in their retrieval mission.
The bulk of the film centers on this day as Adam brings Kol out of his shell. There is immediate tension between the two, and not just because Adam doesn’t care whether or not they make it to the dance competition. Kol is clearly gay but, in a cringe-worthy and relatable representation of countless teenage hoods, insists he’s not. Adam is much more comfortable in himself — perhaps because he’s six or seven years older than Kol, perhaps because he doesn’t share a roof with Kol’s homophobic uncle. Still, the two are matched in wit and clearly mutually attracted to one another.
“Of an Age” is, above all, a film about closeness. Through countless close-up shots, Stolevski and his cinematographer, Matthew Chuang, make Adam’s humble car feel even smaller. A square aspect ratio only intensifies this almost excruciating intimacy. The chemistry between Anton and Green, who can have entire conversations in a single shared glance, is blush-inducing.
As a result, “Of an Age” is a tale of self-discovery that easily gets under your skin, nestling close to your heart. In the same vein as “Weekend,” this romance is poetically depicted and deeply felt, staggering in its simplicity. It’s especially lovely for its immediacy — the film is not about whether these characters will end up together someday; it’s about how they feel right now.
But this rosy love story sometimes feels a bit too perfect. Adam feels a bit too perfect. Viewers may be clearly and intentionally aligned with Kol, but that’s no excuse for his love interest being a dreamy cipher. Where Kol is endlessly, wonderfully nuanced, his ethnicity and sexuality both tangled up in the complexities of immigrant life, Adam is…a fantasy. He’s gorgeous, funny, and into French music and Wong Kar Wai films. Despite his awkward teen angst and bacne, he is doggedly intrigued by Kole. He never says anything wrong.
Maybe gay teens sticking one toe out of the closet need a film like this. Maybe they need a character like Kol, who enjoys a dreamy first romance even though he is very much still a work in progress. But Adam’s perfection ultimately feels more like a defect than an asset. In such a gloriously grounded story, the love interest should feel like more than a pipe dream.
This is in no way a knock on Green’s performance — he’s very easy to fall in love with. But the undeniable backbone of this film is Anton, who wears Kol like a second skin even though he must play the character at both 17 and 28 years old. The gulf of development between those ages is Grand Canyon-wide, yet the 24-year-old actor makes the challenge look like nothing. This was no “Boyhood”-style shoot, yet adult-Kol swaggers with adult confidence that teen-Kol could only dream of possessing. It is a masterful performance, the first of many leading film roles for Anton, if there is any justice in this world.
Ultimately, “Of an Age” is witty and winsome, the perfect indulgence to enjoy with your partner or hopelessly unrequited crush. Stolevski — who also made his feature editing debut with the film — is clearly a force to be reckoned with. Whatever he makes next will surely be every bit as sweeping and elegant as his first two films — here’s hoping it’ll also be a little less neat. [B+]