T he last time Elliot Page appeared in a film, it was literally a car crash. Page, who was nominated for an Oscar at the age of 20 for the teen-pregnancy comedy Juno, was starring in a remake of the Julia Roberts thriller Flatliners, playing one of a group of medical students who engineer near-death experiences to get a peek at the afterlife. His co-stars included James Norton, Diego Luna and Kiersey Clemons, but during a hazardous driving scene it was only Page and Clemons who were not given seatbelts.
Stunt coordinators told them: “You’ll be fine.” Instead, they were traumatised. In his 2023 memoir Pageboy, the Canadian actor describes the shoot as “a shitshow”.
It wasn’t merely the cavalier regard for his safety. He also had pressure put on him to look stereotypically feminine, and one senior crew member asked whether he was angry that his character was straight. That was seven years ago.
Page, who came out as transgender in 2020 , has been seen on television in the interim, including a recurring role on superhero series The Umbrella Academy, where his character transitioned, too. Page’s return to cinema has been a long time coming but he could scarcely have chosen a better re-entry point than Close to You. It’s a thrillingly intimate drama in which he plays Sam, a trans man drawn back to his Canadian home town for his father’s birthday.
His well-intentioned family try their best to be welcoming and upbeat, but the conditions in their acceptance of him so.