Young lovers meet and meet again in thoughtful ‘Of An Age’

Not a ‘gay romance,’ but simply a romance featuring gay characters

By JOHN PAUL KING

Early in “Of An Age,” one of its characters declares, “I like seeing movies from countries I haven’t visited.”

It’s a line of dialogue that catches our ear in part because, in context, it comes dripping with layers of hidden meaning, but it also serves as a fitting cornerstone in a film that –though it’s set in a mundane Melbourne suburb and almost entirely focused on two characters – feels infused with a multitude of global perspectives.

Perspective, in fact, seems key to the heart of gay writer/director Goran Stolevski’s thoughtful and refreshingly tender-hearted coming-of-age tale about an unexpected romance that lasts only 24 hours yet casts its spell across more than a decade. Inspired by his own youth in Australia, Stolevski begins his film in 1999 and focuses on Nikola (Elias Anton), a closeted Serbian-born 18-year-old amateur ballroom dancer who lives with his very traditional Balkan immigrant family. On the morning of an important competition, his dance partner and best friend Ebony (Hattie Hook) calls in a panic, stranded on a beach miles away. He reluctantly enlists the help of her older brother Adam (Thom Green), visiting home on the eve of his departure for graduate school in Argentina, to drive him to her rescue. Though initially mistrustful, thanks to Adam’s word-of-mouth reputation, Nikola is soon won over, and by the time they pick up the wayward Ebony, an unspoken connection has formed between them, leading to an intense day and night in which the young men forge a deep bond with each other – both keenly aware of Adam’s inevitable departure the next morning.

From there, the story jumps ahead 11 years, when Nikola and Adam, now both living in other countries, reunite in Melbourne for Ebony’s wedding. It shouldn’t be surprising that a lot of long-carried emotional baggage begins to unpack, but the details of that are better left unspoiled, so we’ll just say that what happens measures the difference in perspective that transforms our lives throughout the years while reminding us that some things feel the same no matter how much else may have changed.

There’s a lot of delicate work involved in conveying a story with such universal scope within a movie as intimate as “Of An Age,” but Stolevski – a Macedonian Australian filmmaker whose first movie, the period horror film “You Won’t Be Alone,” premiered at Sundance 2022 – proves himself a delicate cinematic craftsman in telling it. Deploying his skills like a composer orchestrating a piece of music, he propels the narrative more through mood than plot; though his tersely composed dialogue leaves much unsaid, his visual style communicates the unaired feelings behind it with more eloquence than words alone might ever capture. From the close-up intimacy with which he portrays his protagonists’ time together to the grim banality with which he drapes scenes of their respective family lives, he enables us to feel his movie through the atmosphere he builds; the love story at its center may not match our own nostalgic memories – or romantic fantasies, for viewers from younger generations –but the heady rollercoaster of desire, emotion, and bittersweet thrill that he evokes through the elegant-but-raw simplicity of his screen craft is profoundly recognizable nevertheless. Heart-tugging as it may sometimes be, “Of An Age” doesn’t allow itself to become too precious or capitulate to sentiment, nor is it the kind of melancholy, hopeless tragedy so often told in movies about queer romance; on the contrary, one of its most surprising pleasures is its sly sense of humor, which is artfully displayed in a lengthy opening sequence depicting

Ebony’s awakening on the beach. Seeing her terrified and hysterical after a night she doesn’t remember, we assume the worst, but Stolevski disarms our expectations of drama by systematically revealing the absurd and comparatively harmless details behind it. He laces the same sense of ironic humor throughout, allowing himself the opportunity for numerous bemusing observations of “basic” existence pursued by the not-very-self-aware collection of friends and family in Nikola and Adam’s orbit; and while few of the dry comedic touches could be described as “laugh-out-loud” funny, they create and maintain a tone that not only keeps things from getting weighed down by the starry-eyed, yearning drama of his love story, but emphasizes the essential desire to rise above their surroundings that draws his lovers together as much as their palpable attraction for each other.

As to that, the sweetly authentic, superbly measured performances of its two leading men are a crucial element in keeping the movie on that narrow path between cynical and cloying. Individually, Anton and Green each create compelling and likable characters that feel far more fleshed-out than the often thinly-wrought figures at the center of many such romantic dramas, and they convincingly embody both the differences and the same-ness of their characters at ages a decade apart; together, they have a sweet but smoldering chemistry that ignites the fieriest memories – both real and imagined – of our own treasured “flings” of the past, and that, of course, is a big part of the film’s appeal.

The relationship here, of course, is more than just a fling, as Stolevski asserts by juxtaposing the leisurely, affectionately detailed roman à clef of his lovers’ youthful one-night affair with the more urgently succinct bookend of their reunion as fully formed adults. Though events of past and present are almost pointedly mirrored, they starkly illustrate the changes wrought by an evolution toward maturity, the differences in outlook that come from lived experience; the audacious dreams give way to managed expectations, the giddy recklessness leads to foolish choices, the happy-ever-after fantasies become tinged with the tempering sadness that comes with disappointment and loss. Yet through all those transformations, there is something between these two men that remains untouched by time and circumstance, a longing that most of us – if we are lucky – will recognize in our own hearts; it might not be enough to give us the kind of “happy ending” we once believed we wanted, but it’s a reminder that our most deeply felt connections endure even as everything else about us fades into something else, and that counts, perhaps, for much more than many of us recognize.

All of this helps make “Of An Age” a much better “gay romance” than its vaguely erotic, nostalgia-tinged marketing suggests it might be; but while American films continue to struggle with that genre, this Australian love story between a Serbian and an Irishman gets it right by transcending it; though there’s some garden-variety xeno- and homophobia from some of the movie’s peripheral characters, and though Nikola’s struggle with coming out is part of his journey, the obstacle in this couple’s union has nothing to do with oppression, or even with sexual orientation, but rather with timing and situation; they are just two people, at a crossroads in their lives, who are drawn together by an essential quality at the center of their being they cannot find in anyone else around them.

It doesn’t feel like a “gay romance,” but simply a romance featuring gay people, and that makes all the difference.