Review | ‘Of an Age’: you will never forget your first time
The first part is set in 1999, with the looming threat of the Y2K bug mentioned in passing. Two hours before a big dance competition, Kol gets a call from his best friend and dance partner, Ebony (Hattie Hook), who has woken up on a remote beach with a post-drug hangover, and needs to be picked up and driven. to the competition. For this emergency mission, told through a shaky hand-held camera and Aussie-accented dialogues that are sometimes hard to understand, Kol enlists the help of Ebony’s older brother, Adam (an attractive Thom Green), a 20-something linguist on the verge of to leave town in pursuit of his doctorate. Most of the action takes place during the car ride and consists of naturalistic banter between the two, which gets flirtier and flirtier, ending in a one-night stand – and a sexual awakening for the incarcerated Kol. Adam, for his part, just broke up with a boyfriend.
The rendezvous is more than just losing her virginity, however, in this sparsely told but lusciously romantic tale from Goran Stolevski, which is his sequel to the writer-director’s impressive folk-horror debut last year, “You Won’t Be Alone.”
For Kol, time seemed to stand still after that meeting, and when the story picks up again in 2010, just after the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull and on the occasion of Ebony’s wedding, the two characters meet for the first time since that night together again in 1999. . It’s no coincidence that the eruption — which disrupted global travel for months — is the backdrop to this second chapter. For Stolevski, the event serves as a sort of metaphor for Kol’s long-dormant passion, which flares up when he sees Adam (now married) again.
There’s not much more to the story, at least not in narrative terms. But Anton conveys a deep well of unrequited desire so powerful it doesn’t really need narrative gimmicks. Setting these two chapters against major world events – the turn of the millennium, then a catastrophic natural disaster – only supersedes what is already clear from Anton’s fiery performance: sometimes we never, ever get over the first turn away.
R. In theaters in the region. Contains foul language, sexuality and some drug use throughout. 114 minutes.