Two closed bedroom doors in a wood-panelled suburban home. Behind each a young man and silent tears. The thresholds we can't cross, the words we can’t speak, the palpable terror of teen queerness in the 1990s; All this is unpacked in Macedonian Australian director Goran Stolevski’s second feature film Of An Age. Set ‘across one very sweaty day in 1999 in the least glamorous suburbs of Melbourne’ Of An Age follows teenage ballroom dancer Kol (Elias Anton) as he tries to track down his unreliable dance partner and best friend, Ebony (Hattie Hook). A road trip to Altona in her handsome older brother’s car marks the start of a burgeoning queer romance, bookended by its rekindling a decade later.
Kol and Adam (Thom Green) are young men at odds with suburban convention, one pushing back against it and one still pining to be accepted by it, both longing for more. Kol is from a family of immigrants who fled the Balkans, and so must navigate both racism and homophobia. Throughout the film we see him grapple with supporting his family while living an authentic queer existence, something for which there is naturally no clear roadmap. Stolevski slyly references the fear we felt as we neared the end of last century. This fear that we may not make it into the next millenia was all the more present for queer people – missing persons, suicides and stealth existences were not unusual– if we misstepped on the precipice of Y2K we risked dropping off the side of the earth. We see this fear in Kol as he sweats in the passenger seat of Adam’s Kingswood, ill-equipped to deal with his newfound attraction to Adam.
In spite of this, Of An Age is not another gay tragedy. Though it doesn’t shy away from pathos, Stolevski treats his characters tenderly. It is a love story and, in terms of finding each other in the wilderness of suburbia at least, the characters win.
Hattie Hook does a formidable job of playing antagonist, confidant and comic relief all at once. Her character oscillates between the ridiculous and the perilous – a damsel in distress staggering from a phone booth, holding a single strappy sandal. She is emblematic of those ill-fitted yet heartfelt teenage friendships we form when there's no one else around to listen. Thom Green and Elias Anton have a slowly simmering chemistry that builds with every scene, and their world of understated realism and 90s sardonicism is well lived-in. We follow their journey, feel their frustration and tension, and long for a pay-off, as they do.
Of An Age is a film that shows true appreciation of craft. Laconic handheld cinematography by Matthew Chuang glides through Australian suburbia and across bodies meeting for the first time with the same affection. The attention to period detail is meticulous yet understated, feeling like a relic of our past, and the authentic 90s dialogue, complete with casual homophobia, is darkly funny (the turn of phrase ‘pissy gaybo dance competition’ is a particular favourite of mine). The cast and crew play their parts diligently under the guidance of Stolevski who wrote, directed and edited the film.
With notes of Puberty Blues, The Heartbreak Kid, Muriel’s Wedding and Head On, Of an Age builds on a legacy of Australian Film that cherishes queer, underdog and immigrant stories and will rightfully join them in inspiring future generations of filmmakers and cinema lovers alike. At its simplest, Of An Age is a story of human connection. It is its handling of the subject matter that will make it an enduring Australian classic.
Of An Age is in cinemas from 23 March, 2023
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