It takes less than 24 hours for two young men to experience a wildly intimate, life-changing connection in Goran Stolevski’s new queer drama, “Of an Age.”
Whether such a whirlwind romance can be sustained, of course, is debatable. Still, Stolevski hopes audiences will come away from his film feeling grateful for the “sexy, beautiful, transporting” moments in their own lives, no matter how fleeting they may be.
“If you ran into someone else who understood this part of you [as a young LGBTQ person], the intensity of that connection had an electricity, a poignancy and a sexiness to it that, I think, is specific to the queer experience,” the Macedonian-born, Australian-raised screenwriter and director told HuffPost. “I wanted to dwell on that without making it unrealistic or inauthentic in any way.”
In theaters Friday, “Of an Age” follows Kol (played by Elias Anton), a 17-year-old Serbian immigrant and recent high school grad living in Melbourne, Australia, circa 1999. The film opens as he’s dealing with an unexpected crisis on the morning he’s set to take part in a ballroom dance competition with his best friend, Ebony (Hattie Hook).
Watch the trailer for “Of an Age” below.
With his contest appearance drawing near, Kol reluctantly reaches out to Ebony’s openly gay brother, Adam (Thom Green), for assistance. Though Kol identifies as straight, he can’t help but feel uneasy in the self-assured Adam’s presence, especially after his new pal peels off his shirt to cool himself off on a balmy summer day.
By evening, Kol and Adam are sharing a steamy embrace in the back seat of a car. After their night of frenzied passion, the pair go their separate ways, only to reconnect as grown men about a decade later following a surprising, if relatable, series of events.
As a wistful take on a young queer person’s sexual awakening, “Of an Age” has already been compared to 2017’s “Call Me by Your Name.” Stolevski, however, cites 1995’s “Before Sunrise,” which starred Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, as his main cinematic inspiration.
And though he also draws heavily from his own post-adolescent experiences, the filmmaker stressed that his movie is intended as an “emotional autobiography” as opposed to a literal one.
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“I’m not that interested in my teenage years,” he said. “But I wanted to capture the loneliness I had as a gay kid in the 1990s, before technology made it easier to connect with people.”
He went on to note, “The rush of romance is one thing, but I was looking at it from the perspective of someone older with a different life experience. What you think love is when you’re younger is sweet, but it can also lead to a lot of trouble later on. I wanted to investigate it in that way without minimizing the rush.”
Stolevski also had ample praise for both Anton and Green, and believes those who value textured performances over the presence of A-list stars will find themselves pleasantly surprised.
“With Anton especially, it was just recognizing a kid with a capacity to convey pain in a certain way,” he said. “He had life experience in his eyes that had parallels to my own. He doesn’t think about being vulnerable or unguarded, it just comes out of him.” As for Green: “Like Fred Astaire, he can make a hat rack feel alive.”
Stolevski won’t have much creative downtime after “Of an Age” opens this week. On Monday, Deadline reported that his next film, “Housekeeping for Beginners,” had been picked up for international distribution. The movie takes place in the present day and follows Dita (Anamaria Marinca), a queer woman who runs a safe house for young LGBTQ people just outside of Skopje, Macedonia.
“It’s about what makes a family and how conventional things aren’t always the best,” Stolevski said. “I’m not sure it ever is going to be just easy for queer people in the world, or if it is, it’s so far away from those of us living in this time and place. [But] I make movies hoping people 50 years from now will still watch them. I love that we can put aside demographics and connect that way.”
