In 2022, Macedonian Australian filmmaker Goran Stolevski established himself as a talent to watch with his daring directorial debut, the folk horror film “You Won’t Be Alone,” about a witch body-jumping through a Macedonian village, experiencing the vast spectrum of love and cruelty life has to offer. His sophomore feature, “Of an Age,” is quite different — a high school coming of age story set in 1999 and 2010, about a Serbian immigrant teenager, Kol (Elias Anton) growing up in Melbourne, coming to terms with his sexuality and experiencing first love. Despite the genre contrast, there’s a commonality between the two films in the the way that Stolevski captures the aching beauty snatched in life’s darker moments — the heart of the matter remains the same, the bittersweet tone just as poignant.
“Of an Age,” which takes place over the course of two 24-hour periods set 11 years apart, is like “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset” combined into one film, in which two characters are rocked by a chance encounter and reckon with it years later. 1999 opens with a gasp, and proceeds at a breathlessly frantic pace, as Ebony (Hattie Hook) wakes up out of a blackout on a strange beach and calls Kol in a panic to come and pick her up — they’ve got to make it to their ballroom dance finals in time.
Though we initially meet Kol practicing his ballroom routine in the garage, this film is more in line with Andrew Haigh’s “Weekend” than Baz Lurhmann’s “Strictly Ballroom.” With Ebony in a harried state, Kol grabs her gear and calls upon their only option for rescue: Ebony’s enigmatic brother Adam (Thom Green), who rolls up in a station wagon to pick up Kol and collect Ebony from the beach.
