The Canadian drama “Close to You” is a quiet, contemplative and yet deflatingly unsurprising homecoming story about an unhappy, maladjusted daughter who returns to his former home and former life after gender reassignment treatment.

It stars the transgender actor Elliot Page, who helped create the story for a largely improvised screenplay that touches most of the bases you’d expect, but with a frankness that’s disarming and sometimes refreshing.

Sam has made a new life for himself in Toronto, enduring years of gender changing treatment to become a better-adjusted person even if he’s not exactly thriving financially.

But his father’s birthday has Sam packing for a weekend back in tiny, lakeside Cobourg, where Sam’s sisters, brother and brothers-in-law are gathering in the family home to celebrate. Sam hasn’t been there in four years.

Most will welcome him. Some will stumble over pronouns and one will fume over the “new rules” and lash out in the most predictable ways.

“We shared a f—–g bedroom, and I didn’t know you!” one sister cries in what we take to be despair and guilt.

And then there’s that high school crush (Hilary Baack) Sam stumbles into on the train. Katherine isn’t shocked at seeing him. But she’s shaken, and we can see the old feelings that she, at least, is struggling to fight off.

“I can’t, I can’t I can’t” is all she can say after all these years. She and Sam will take the time to say more, we feel. Because that’s the way melodramas with gay characters too often unfold.

Married? Loving husband? Kids? Is that just compromising her “true” self? Shouldn’t she, in her 30s, throw that all away just to see a “first love” high school flirtation through?

Writer-director Dominic Savage (“The Escape,” “Love + Hate”) treats every moment, every image with such somber gravitas that “Close to You” is practically smothered in seriousness and good intentions. Sam’s journey home is tracked in long hand-held camera treks through Toronto to the train, and a long walk home in Cobourg, with every step freighted with dread.

After a while, that gets old. And as the largely improvised conversations develop in directions that only rarely move or even surprise, the picture’s slack pacing starts to wear on you.

Wendy Crewson and Peter Outerbridge play the welcoming parents, with each having an idealized “You’re still my child” scene that moves and is a model for “how to speak to your trans kid.”

But the picture’s good intentions and occasional affecting scene are undercut by the politically correct checkboxes the tale tallies. It’s not enough that Sam and Katherine were almost a thing, back in the day. Katherine has to be hearing impaired.

Page is quite good in the lead, with Savage keeping the camera tight enough for us to ponder what’s going through Sam’s head in most every scene. The consideration that went into making this trip home shows in Page’s performed reticence, even if the impulse to lean on talking points to debate “my simple existence” with a transphobic man is about as surprising as the impulse to storm out.

“Close to You” can be appreciated for its frank depicton of the post-hormone and surgery body and life of a transgender man no longer tormented by the confusion and self-loathing of gender dysphoria. But the story Savage and Page chose to tell with Page’s new reality can seem trite and melodramatic.

Not an easy trip “home” to make. We get that. But not every step Sam takes through the Ontario winter has to play like Dostoyevsky, Ibsen or James Joyce.

Rating: R, sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Elliot Page, Hilary Baack, Wendy Crewson, Peter Outerbridge, Janet Porter, Anbdrew Bushnell, Alex Paxton-Beesley and David Reale

Credits: Scripted and directed by Dominic Savage. A Greenwich Entertainment release on Netflix.

Running time: 1:38