Writer and director Kit Zauhar crafts a quiet glimpse into modern relationships in her sophomore film This Closeness. We meet Tessa, who creates relaxing videos for her ASMR channel, and her boyfriend Ben. They’ve come to Philadelphia for Ben’s high school reunion, staying in the small apartment of an acquaintance named Adam.
As Tessa and Ben navigate spending time in such close quarters with this stranger, tensions emerge between them. Ben reconnects with an old friend, making Tessa question where she fits in his life. Adam, an awkward guy with his own issues, further complicates things. The tight space exacerbates any inherent awkwardness or insecurity within this trio.
Set entirely within the apartment, Zauhar observes her characters with nuanced understanding. She explores the intimacy that develops through living in someone else’s home. The distance that remains even between partners becomes clear as unspoken doubts and needs surface.
It’s a perceptive portrait of modern relationships and the struggles of Gen Z, finding meaning amid ambiguity in both romance and careers. While the setting remains static, a dynamic dance of closeness and distance unfolds between these three souls under one roof.
Developing Characters
This Closeness brings compelling characters played by talented performers. Tessa, Ben, and Adam anchor the film’s intimate drama through fully realized yet flawed souls. Each character reveals hidden depths and insecurities throughout, keeping viewers engaged in their unfolding journeys.
Tessa displays ambition yet struggles connecting, running her ASMR YouTube while dating Ben. As an biracial Asian woman, she faces unique challenges. Zauhar conveys complexity, with Tessa charming one moment and prickly the next. Her ASMR videos show care for others, yet relating to Ben proves difficult. Zauhar imbues Tessa with authentic desires and fears, from pursuing creativity to worrying what others think.
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Ben clearly cares for Tessa but also enjoys past excitement with friend Lizzie. Pais displays Ben’s appealing confidence, concealing doubts within. He banters casually yet senses distance from Tessa, left reflecting by the film’s end. Pais brings nuance, from amusing observational humor to sad longing for connection. Audiences understand Ben’s good intentions and flaws equally.
Initially odd, Adam reveals a sensitive soul. Edlund infuses him with nuance, neither full villain nor hero but a real person. Lonely and nervous, Adam tries making human connections yet lacks skills. Edlund ensures viewers empathize with Adam’s plight, seeing a man, not a mockable outcast. Their gentle rapport hints he and Tessa share vulnerabilities, each knowing isolation.
Together this cast elevator material, mining naturalism’s rich possibilities. Like people we’ve known, their characters grow on us. Minor errors fade before revelatory, honest moments. Performances feel unvarnished yet thoughtful, characters breathing on their own terms. This Closeness profoundly explores what unites and divides us through authentic, subtly powerful acting. Audiences connect with its imperfect but recognizable characters and cheer their hopeful, suspenseful journeys.
Intentional Intimacy
Kit Zauhar’s confident direction imbues This Closeness with deep intimacy despite constraints. Working solely within an apartment yields not cramped boredom but a lived-in naturalism. Zauhar proves less location defines drama than intention.
Her evolved cinematic style showcases this. Scenes feel cozy yet richly detailed through still frames absorbing each motion. Transitions flow fluidly. Lighting shifts subtly signaling changing moods—warmth between characters, chillier during isolation.
Sound too enhances intimacy. Noise carries beyond visible areas, letting eavesdropping feel voyeuristic yet inclusive. Music elevates climaxes, feeling truly there alongside characters. Sound design makes the world beyond walls present tense, not background.
Creativity triumphs limitation. Zauhar breathes life into a space confining lesser works. Perspectives vary through tight closeups yet maintain fluidity, slipping inside characters’ experiences seamlessly. Simple actions speak volumes through her observant lens.
Acting merges perfectly with cinematography. Characters interact intimately while cameras don’t intrude, capturing nuanced performances respectfully. Viewers absorb this closeness too, sympathizing with complex emotions evolving richly onscreen. Locations suffocate some works, yet Zauhar transforms confinement into full, three-dimensional worlds.
This Closeness stands as a triumph over restrictive budgets through devotion. Zauhar’s intimate vision extracts profound depths even from small details, respecting both art and audience. Her evolving style invites viewers into characters’ lives, not as removed observers but empathetic companions on their journeys. Intent defines success more than means, as she brilliantly illustrates.
Unvarnished Truths
The writing in This Closeness feels refreshingly real. Zauhar penned lines sounding so natural, at times it’s like eavesdropping unseen. Conversations flow as candid, prickly, or tender as people. Contradictions emerge you recognize.
Characters talk over one another, miscommunicate, or steer conversations off-track, as people do. Silences and stutters too feel truthful, not just filler. Their uncomfortable truths resonate—we’ve all said one thing while feeling another. Or pretended certainty, masking doubts.
The characters especially ring true for many. Tessa and Ben’s messy but comfortable relationship reflects millennial difficulties defining commitments. Experiences like financially necessity-driven room sharing evoke current struggles. Their issues navigating romance and individuality in an online world will spark self-reflection.
nuanced dialogue explores them realistically. Subtext and unspoken tensions bubble beneath surfaces. Discomforts emerge from small interactions rather than melodrama. It’s relatable in its mundanity.
Zauhar handles difficult conversations deftly. Big realizations happen gradually through apparently casual chats. Rich backstories gradually shine through in passing comments too. It fleshes lives plausibly versus dropping exposition.
This intimacy lifts one into characters’ worlds fully. Even awkward silences feel authentic, carrying their own meanings. The writing ensures this apartment setting, with just a few souls, still resonates widely. Zauhar demonstrates dialogue’s power by telling universal stories within limited spaces.
Threading Intimacy and Distance
This Closeness delves beneath superficial interactions to reveal intimacy’s many layers. Zauhar depicts intimacy between lovers, friends, and strangers—but intimacy needn’t mean proximity.
Tessa and Ben exhibit comfort through familiarity. Yet distance emerges where past overlaps place, as Ben rekindles ties, leaving Tessa outside. Distance also divides Tessa and housemate Adam, whose awkwardness hints at loneliness.
Their apartment forces close cohabiting, yet sounds transmit private moments. Reactions show intimacy can feel invasive. Living atop others shapes interactions—we maintain anonymity amid crowds through ignore and disengage skills.
Even private spaces lack true privacy. Yet intimacy transcends physical, as Tessa’s ASMR work shows. Her videos aim for relaxation and connection without contact. An intimate act, its reception isolates creator and subject.
Intimacy arises too from bared vulnerabilities. Conversations letting deeper feelings surface between unlikely pairs like Tessa and Adam. Their moments conveying intimacy needn’t stem from lust nor last, but from glimpsing another’s essence.
Zauhar captures intimacy’s complexity through constraint. Apartment walls close yet open windows to others’ lives. From there, intimacy and distance interweave, shaping how characters attach or detach significance from fleeting intimations and gestures.
Urban environments necessitate distance-creating despite close-quarters living. Yet distance proves insufficient firewall, as proximately breeds unlikely bonds. This Closeness illuminates intimacy as a spectrum we treadfully navigate, blending nearness with removedness in everyday life.
Threading Through Themes
This Closeness delves meaningfully into modern relationships and their undercurrents. Central are connections formed, tested, and sometimes broken between Tessa, Ben, and Adam during their brief apartment overlap. Their interactions illuminate relatable themes.
Loneliness lingers within seemingly coupled Tessa, spurring intimate moments with unlikely Adam. Both long for depths rarely plumbed. Nostalgia’s rose-tint pulls Ben from his present engagement with Tessa. Rekindling past intimacy prioritizes recollection over rebuilding now’s foundation.
Insecurities surface from these rifts. Tessa questions her role in Ben’s world, while Ben avoids confronting waning passion. Their rapport hints work remains. Adam’s hesitancies emerge from being misunderstood, yet he reaches compassionately.
Subtler themes like race and class flavor tensions. Tessa feels out of place amid Ben’s circles. Her kinship with biracial Adam contrasts her isolation. Financial limitations that necessitate sublet living shape dynamics, as do imbalances between lives online and neighbors offline.
Through these twentysomethings’ navigation, universal struggles emerge. Cultivating intimacy proves complex amid external pulls. Nostalgia distracts from maintenance. Insecurities endanger trust. The digitization supposedly connecting people paradoxically enables distance in proximity.
Yet hope exists. This Closeness conveys empathy’s power to bridge gulfs, if momentarily, between even unlikely pairings. Deepest bonds form not from superficial familiarity but from a from a willingness to see beyond surfaces into another’s essence. Its characters’ compassion offers a roadmap through life’s interconnected themes of intimacy, loneliness, and growth.
Small Moments, Big Impact
Kit Zauhar crafts intimacy with finesse in This Closeness. Unfolding entirely within an apartment, the film maximizes minimal aspects to reveal universal truths about human connection.
Zauhar guides complex performances that feel authentic, not performative. Nuanced conversations and interactions say more without words. Tight focal choices observe subtlest gestures, from averted eyes to nervous laughter, deepening understanding.
Sound too resonates, from overhead noises to whispered ASMR, drawing us into others’ private selves.
The film excels at probing what underlies unease between even comfortable couples. Wounds fester beneath seemingly solid foundations until the right proximity pops bubbles.
Yet empathy prevails, showing hurt people gently seeing beyond perceived flaws to shared vulnerabilities. If loneliness dogs us all, compassion soothes that ache, even fleetingly.
Zauhar’s deft directorial hand transforms a relatable premise into a rich examination of relationships’ messy complexities. This Closeness proves that everyday moments profoundly impact how we connect, for better or worse. In crafting catharsis from life’s small dramas, Zauhar’s engaging film leaves us gazing thoughtfully within our own lives.
The Review
This Closeness
Kit Zauhar's This Closeness proves to be a masterfully intimate examination of modern relationships and the delicate tensions that both build and threaten connections between people. Zauhar skillfully crafts complex, authentic characters and plunges artfully into the nuances of their lives, bringing profound insights from seemingly small interactions. Though sparse in setting and story, This Closeness achieves remarkable fullness through its empathetic direction and talented performances. It feels deeply honest in its reflections and leaves viewers contemplating relationships in a meaningful new light.
PROS
- Intimate, authentic examination of relationships
- Deeply nuanced characters and performances
- Thoughtful insights into modern relationship struggles
- Crafts profound impact from minimal aspects
- Empathetic and meaningful narrative
CONS
- Sparse story and setting may not engage some viewers.
- Slow pace may test the patience of some audiences.
