Of An Age Review: No Sad Gay Cliches Here
Rainbow Popcorn reviews Of an Age, the Australian queer romance about love, timing and two men who meet in Melbourne in 1999.
MOVIE PODCAST REVIEWQUEER FILMS
Lee & Brett
10/7/20264 min read
Of an Age: A Sad Gay Movie Without the Sad Gay Movie Clichés
Spoilers ahead.
There are plenty of sad gay movies. There are also plenty of gay movies where someone dies, gets kicked out of home, gets beaten up, or spends 90 minutes desperately trying to come out.
Of an Age is sad, but thankfully, it doesn't need any of that.
Set in Melbourne in 1999, the film follows 17-year-old Serbian-Australian ballroom dancer Kol (Elias Anton) after his friend Ebony gets stranded in Altona — or, as those who know the Western Suburbs will will tell you, somewhere that is very definitely not Altona.
She calls her friend’s older brother Adam (Thom Green) for help, and the two end up spending the day driving around Melbourne together. What starts as a favour gradually becomes something much more complicated.
And, eventually, very gay.
Two people. One car. Very good dialogue.
The first thing that really works about Of an Age is the writing.
A huge amount of the movie is essentially two people talking in a car, which means the dialogue has to be good. Thankfully, it is.
The first drive between Kol and Adam is where the movie really starts to come alive. There are sideways glances, awkward pauses and the gradual realisation that there might be something happening between them.
Importantly, Adam doesn't immediately announce that he's worked out Kol is gay and start giving him a coming-out pep talk. He clocks what's going on and lets Kol work it out for himself.
That subtlety makes the relationship feel much more authentic.
Their attraction also isn't purely physical. They spend a lot of time talking and connecting before Kol really starts to think, Oh. He's hot.
It's a refreshing change from the version of this story we've seen so many times before where the young closeted boy finds the older man hot and follows him into trouble. The connection feels more authentic and, supported by the great performances of Anton and Green, that is what makes this story so sad in the end.
A very Australian gay movie
Of an Age is also unapologetically Australian.
There are Melways, Video Ezy, payphones, house parties, and enough very Australian slang to make anyone who grew up here in the '90s feel slightly attacked.
It doesn't feel like an Australian movie that's been written with an American audience in mind. It's specifically Australian, specifically Melbourne and, occasionally, specifically western-suburbs Melbourne.
Although we do have some questions about the geography.
Apparently, Altona Beach is actually Werribee South Beach. Watsonia is apparently some sort of backwards wasteland. And the filmmakers have clearly never consulted Rainbow Popcorn's official western suburbs transport department.
We're still not over the Altona thing.
The calm in the middle of the chaos
One of the things we really liked was the contrast between Kol's relationship with Ebony and his relationship with Adam.
Ebony is chaos. She's loud, frantic and, frankly, a bit of a dick.
Whenever Kol is around her, everything feels hectic. But when he's with Adam, everything slows down. He's comfortable. He's able to relax. And that calmness is what the initial attraction is built on. The more they talk and the more that conversation centres around topics of Kol's interest, the more he is able to be himself. Of course, that eventually leads to him realising that 'being himself' means having the hots for a guy.
There's also something familiar about the relationship between Kol and Ebony. She's the straight girl who befriends the closeted gay boy at school and becomes his support system — even if she's occasionally an absolute nightmare. For queer people who grew up with one particularly important straight friend, there's something recognisable about that. There's also something recognisable in Adam's advice to Kol to ditch her as soon as possible. While we love the supportive high school friend, they aren't always once the life raft is no longer needed.
Not every sad gay story needs a tragedy
The film eventually jumps forward to 2010, bringing Kol and Adam back into each other's lives.
And this is where Of an Age becomes genuinely heartbreaking without resorting to the usual gay-movie tragedy. Nobody dies. Nobody gets violently attacked. Nobody gets thrown out of home. Nobody has to overcome some enormous cinematic catastrophe.
Sometimes two people just fall in love at the wrong time.
Kol has spent years wondering what might have happened, only to discover that Adam has moved on, got married and built a life without him. That's painful enough.
The film understands that queer stories don't always have to be about surviving something terrible. Sometimes they're just about love, timing and the person you never quite got over. It's bordering on a romance trope but one of the things we love to find as a podcast is a movie where tells a queer story outside of the tropes reserved for queer stories.
And that's what makes the ending work.
Our Of An Age verdict
Of an Age is a very Australian, very gay little hidden gem.
It's well acted, beautifully written and surprisingly funny, with Thom Green and Elias Anton having the chemistry needed to carry a movie largely built around conversation.
It's also a nice reminder that queer romance can be romantic without everything needing to become sexual immediately — and that a gay film can be sad without somebody having to die.
Our only real request for future Australian filmmakers: if you say you're filming at Altona Beach, please film at Altona Beach.
