“Near You” marks a reintroduction for Elliot Web page, a display screen presence without delay warmly acquainted and sharply redefined, lastly established on his personal phrases. In his first movie function since popping out as a trans man, the actor has evidently introduced a lot of his personal identification and expertise to this sensitively noticed story of a trans man cagily reunited together with his household after a five-year interval of estrangement. (Along with producing the mission, he shares a story-writing credit score with director Dominic Savage.) However Web page’s efficiency isn’t transferring merely for no matter parallels it’d maintain to his life: Reasonably, it’s a reminder of what a deft and perceptive actor he will be, able to each bare emotional candor and acidic wit — each property to a script that generally errs on the aspect of warning.

British director Savage is understood for his improvisatory collaborations with actors, which just lately drew career-best work from Gemma Arterton within the 2017 function “The Escape,” and prolonged to the TV mission “I Am…,” a sequence of intimate standalone character portraits by the likes of Samantha Morton, Letitia Wright and a BAFTA-winning Kate Winslet. Crossing over to Canada to work with Web page on his dwelling turf, the director’s method as soon as once more provides his star ample leeway to discover himself on display screen, within the course of capturing one thing that feels truthful, nevertheless fictionally constructed. That sense of uncooked integrity has stood the movie in good stead on the pageant circuit, attracting specific curiosity from LGBT-oriented programmers and distributors, since its buzzy Toronto premiere final fall, shortly after the publication of Web page’s memoir “Pageboy.”

Dramatically, nevertheless, improv yields blended rewards in “Near You,” which bounces between scenes which are finely detailed of their examination of open prejudice and subtler microaggressions within the household sphere, and others which are extra vaguely essayed, constructing relationships on backstories that don’t but really feel totally shaped. From-the-gut appearing, not simply by Web page however a effective ensemble of Canuck character gamers, carries the movie throughout the road, although even at a modest 98 minutes, it may really feel tighter.

A day-long timeframe provides us a restricted sense of who Sam (Web page) is outdoors the instant drama surrounding him, although the actor’s alternately tense and square-shouldered physique language conveys a person used to assuming totally different stances and faces relying on the corporate he’s in. We meet him, nervy and caustic, within the boho-chic Toronto condo he shares with a roommate, clinging to his espresso mug as he warily contemplates his plans for the day forward: a prepare journey to his sleepy hometown on Lake Ontario, the place he’s to hitch his prolonged household for his father’s birthday lunch. It’s a go to he’s been laying aside for years. Although his ostensibly progressive dad and mom and siblings have notionally accepted his chosen gender identification, he has by no means shaken the sensation that he’s an outsider of their presence. “It’s like I owe them a lot,” he sighs — to him, their acceptance seems like a gesture.

Certain sufficient, the reunion begins amicably however by no means fairly comfortably, the temper aptly set by DP Catherine Lutes’ frosty, dun-hued lensing of the household dwelling’s low-lit, timber-heavy interiors. Sam’s mom Miriam (a beautiful Wendy Crewson) is raring to make up for misplaced time, providing effusive affection however making an attempt too onerous: When she absentmindedly makes use of the incorrect pronouns, her apologies put Sam within the place of comforting her. Dad Jim (Peter Outerbridge) is extra relaxed, content material merely to see his as soon as severely withdrawn youngster main a productive, unbiased life; Sam’s older sisters are extra passive-aggressive, nearly reproachful of their persistent enquiries as to his happiness.

“You weren’t this nervous about me once I was really not okay,” Sam responds, in one of many movie’s most reducing traces — a sentiment that lays the groundwork for a extra heated familial dispute in response to the much less politely disguised transphobia of his brother-in-law Paul (David Reale). This scene serves because the movie’s centerpiece, bringing any variety of latent conflicts collectively to the floor, although there’s an air of contrivance, workshopping even, to its closely pointed rhetoric.

Counteracting this stress is the separate, gentler subplot of Sam’s sudden reconnection with former high-school BFF Katherine (Hillary Baack), now a married suburban mom with clear yearnings for one thing extra. They meet by likelihood on the prepare from Toronto, later reuniting on the town for a coronary heart to coronary heart. In distinction to the trickier tacit negotiations together with his household, Katherine’s acceptance of his new identification is unquestioning and unconditional (“You look the identical, simply extra you,” she tenderly observes), and realigned need is stirred between them.

This tentative romance is poignant, however timidly approached: Katherine by no means comes totally into focus as a personality outdoors her relationship to Sam, which itself is drawn in tender pastel strokes, whereas the sparse piano and sorrowful strings of the rating (composed by Savage with Oliver Coates) known as on to fill in some emotional blanks. The tales of a brittle household fallout and a second-chance spark don’t totally mesh collectively, although they afford Web page a full spectrum of feeling to play: onerous and tender, guarded and unbound, combative and seductive. For any viewers who’ve misplaced contact with the star, it’s a contented reacquaintance.