Australian film “Of an Age” works best whenever its two main characters dance around their mutual attraction. While both of them become more aware of their developing feelings along the story, they hesitate to step forward for each own reason, and their romantic tension on the screen becomes more palpable to us. Although it stumbles a bit at times, the movie is still a sensitive queer romance drama on the whole, and it also reminds me again that attraction is usually more interesting to observe than consummation.

The first part of the film, which is set in Melbourne, 1999, is about one eventful day for an 18-year-old Serbian immigrant lad named Nikola “Kol” Denic (Elias Anton) and his dance partner Ebony Donegal (Hattie Hook). When she wakes up in the next morning after her another wild drinking night, Ebony is surprised to find herself somewhere a bit far from their neighborhood, and she becomes quite frantic for a good reason. She and Kol are going to attend some important local dance competition on that day, and she does not even know where the hell she is now.

While Ebony manages to call Kol at a local phone booth (We did not have smartphones during that time, you know), Kol has to find her current location as well as someone to drive him to that location. It fortunately turns out that her older brother Adam (Thom Green) happens to be available, and Adam willingly comes for help with his car as a good older brother.

The first few minutes between Adam and Kol in Adam’s car are rather awkward to say the least because Ebony did not tell that much about Adam to Kol even though she and Kol are supposed to be best friends. However, Kol becomes more relaxed as speaking with Adam, who also went to the same high school from Kol and Ebony are soon going to graduate. Adam turns out to be less odd than Kol thought at first, and, what do you know, they come to talk a bit about the books they read. As a college student who will soon do his graduate school study in Argentine, Adam surely knows a lot about literature, and his favorite novel turns out to be one of the best ones in my inconsequential life. In case of Kol, his favorite novel is incidentally the first Charles Dickens novel I read during my high school years, and I surely understand well why it appeals to him so much.

Meanwhile, Kol also comes to learn that Adam is a gay, and, not so surprisingly, that leads to his gradual sexual awakening. While it looks like he has regarded himself as a heterosexual guy, Kol cannot help but look more at Adam as they talk more and more with each other, and Adam also seems to be attracted to Kol, though he never speaks out whatever he is feeling behind his casual appearance. After all, being a gay during the 1990s was not that easy even in Australia, and Adam also happens to have broken up with some dude recently.

Nevertheless, their mutual attraction beneath the surface become more obvious to us, especially when Adam plays the soundtrack of Wang Kar-wai’s “Happy Together” (1997). Around the time when he and Kol finally locate Ebony, Adam takes off his shirts just because it is hot inside the car, and it surely feels like a sort of seduction to Kol as Adam stares a bit toward Kol, while Ebony is somehow quite oblivious to that while slumping in the backseat due to her hangover.

The movie keeps rolling its main characters to the end of the day, and Kol finds himself more aware of his emerging sexuality. Watching him briefly touching a fitness magazine at one point later in the story, I was amused a bit as being reminded of how often I looked at the male bodybuilder photographs of many fitness books and magazines at local bookstores during my adolescent years. Like Kol, I was not that willing to recognize my homosexuality during that time, but, just like he eventually does around the end of the first part of the film, I came to follow my sexual desire in the end without any hesitation.

Compared to the first one, the second part of the film, which is set in 2010, feels rather underdeveloped, and I wish the movie took more time for developing what is going on between its two main characters. Furthermore, several other main characters in the story besides Kol and Adam are not particularly developed much, and Hattie Hook is unfortunately stuck with her superficial thankless role although she tries as much as she can do with the thin materials given to her.

Despite all these and other flaws in the film, the movie still engages us thanks to the good romantic chemistry between its two lead performers. Beside effortlessly embodying his character’s gradual growth along the story, Elias Anton also impresses us for his convincing transformation from a young awkward teenager in the first part to a more confident adult man in the second part, and Thom Green ably complements his co-star via his equally nuanced performance. Thanks to their solid acting, the movie is frequently filled with subtle erotic mood, and that may remind you of several sublime romantic movies of Wong Kar-wai such as “In the Mood for Love” (2000).

“Of an Age” is the second film of director/writer/editor Goran Stoleveski, who previously made a feature film debut with “You Won’t Be Alone” (2022). Although it feels quite different from “You Won’t Be Alone” in terms of mood and style, “Of an Age” is certainly another interesting work, and it confirms again that Stolevski is a talented filmmaker to watch. In short, this is a modest but touchingly intimate romance film, and I sincerely recommend you to check it out someday.