“Blue Jean” – A bit faded [MOVIE REVIEW]
It’s easy in this day and age of same sex marriage to forget about the years of discrimination faced by gays and the acceptance (still not entirely acknowledged) that homosexuality was not a lifestyle choice but rather was rooted in the DNA, the person’s biology. It can’t be prayed out; it can’t be wished out; it can’t be punished out. It just is, like heterosexuality just is. But this isn’t a treatise on homosexuality and acceptance. This is a movie that is about one person at a specific moment in time in England and her very human interior conflict.
This story takes place in 1988, when the British government under Margaret Thatcher is determined to pass a series of regulations, Section 28, that prohibited the “promotion of homosexuality.” It was only in 1967 that homosexuality was finally decriminalized in England. But the stigma remained and the HIV/AIDS era of the 1980s and 90s only increased the inherent and underlying prejudice. There are states in the U.S. that had criminalization of homosexual acts on the books well into the 2000s (e.g, Arkansas, 2005; Alabama, 2003; Florida and Kansas, 2003; and more). Certainly churches still vilify, often adamantly, what they consider the “homosexual lifestyle,” but this was Britain’s effort to codify it, allowing homosexuality to be a fireable offense.
Rosy McEwen as Jean. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Jean is a physical education teacher at a local school. Pretty, shy, solitary, Jean is living a double life. Only recently acknowledging her homosexuality, she keeps her public life very separate from her private one. She has a girlfriend, Viv, and she frequents a local lesbian bar. But Jean, even there, is not entirely comfortable. She can’t afford to lose her job and her new friends are on the out and proud side of the line, actually way over that line.
Besides her teaching duties, Jean is also the coach of the girls’ netball team (a British variation of girls’ basketball). Aloof to the other teachers and at a distance from her students, she keeps her head down and avoids conflict. Then onto the court ventures Lois, a potential athletic powerhouse. Ridiculed by the others for her inarticulate awkwardness and lower class appearance, they change their tune when she starts helping them win. But still, the students think, there’s something off about her. Jean recognizes it immediately as Lois tries to gravitate toward her. It’s easy to push Lois away, like she does the others, in the guise of professionalism. But when Lois, only 15, begins to show up at the gay bar frequented by Jean, the wall she has carefully constructed between herself and the outside world is in danger of crumbling. Lois has breached her private world.
An incident occurs at school that pits Lois against the head mean girl, Siobhan, and Jean, even knowing better, sides with Siobhan in what becomes an event that will negatively alter Lois’s life from that point forward.
The topic attempted by writer/director Georgia Oakley in her feature debut is complex. In painting a portrait of a closeted, repressed woman, Oakley is trying to show the almost impossible barriers erected that prevent a homosexual from integrating fully into society. Rosy McEwen, Jean, is a masterful actress who is able to portray her angst quite well despite the underwritten part that has her constantly moping in almost every situation. Jean knows who she isn’t but she’s unsure of who she is.
Oakley has a laser focus on Section 28, a ruling that allowed local authorities to dismiss anyone suspected of promoting the so-called homosexual lifestyle. This gave administrators free reign to fire any teacher suspected of being gay because, in their view, their mere known presence as a homosexual was tantamount to advocacy. It was presumed that those teachers were grooming their students to follow them into the bowels of that hell. Regardless of the specious reasoning of this presumption, it was government-sanctioned discrimination. But in case you, the viewer, missed the significance of Section 28, Oakley referred to it, either with film clips of news broadcasts or radio speeches, innumerable instances (by that I mean, lots and lots and lots of times) throughout the film. Poor Jean was a nervous enough wreck without turning on her TV or radio (again, many many times) and being reminded of the dangers awaiting her.
Kerry Hayes as Viv and Rosy McEwen as Jean. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Jean, and again this is primarily by virtue of Rosy McEwen’s excellent portrayal, is the only fully developed character. Her gay cohort, especially her new lover Viv, are very out there, the personification of everything Jean is not — outrageously dressed, tattooed, pierced, and raucous. We know what they stand for; they are very vocal about their pride of self. We just don’t know anything else about them and their lives, other than they play a lot of pool and drink a lot of beer. Are they independently wealthy? Unlikely. Do they have jobs? Certainly not in the conventional sense. And as private and closeted as Jean is, somehow she has found her way to the one gay bar in town, not exactly hidden in plain sight, populated with people very unlike herself except in the one way. What is it that attracts her there? Why is she with Viv? Who is Viv? Is this her very timid walk on the wildside? There does not seem to be any commonality other than homosexuality. And foolishly, Oakley is equating these women as representative of all lesbians. They’re not. Gay men and women are a veritable rainbow coalition of careers, appearance, politics and viewpoint. It is highly likely that Jean was not even the only homosexual teaching at her school. She was, however, the only one frequenting that particular bar.
Teenaged Lois is another missed opportunity. Yes, we see that she is in need of mentors and short on self esteem, but she’s more comfortable with what others would call her predilection, than her teacher is. That Jean betrays Lois is not an unsurprising act of self-preservation, but when Oakley tries to end the film on what she considers a note of conciliation, she fails miserably. Although this is something of a spoiler alert, the ending is actually offensive because, rather than offering the support or the apology that the expelled Lois deserves, Jean picks her up from her miserable fast food job, a peek into an equally miserable future life, and takes her back to the gay bar to be embraced by the pierced and tattooed set who offer the underaged Lois a beer. Oakley has let both her audience and her characters down with what she thinks is a gay pride message.
There are a few moments of insight, all of which involve Jean desperately trying to reconcile who she is now with the path she must take to become her best, fearless self. But those moments are too few and far between. Despite what the writer believes, Jean does not evolve.
Both Kerrie Hayes as Viv and Lucy Halliday as Lois are fine actors. Unfortunately they are unable to do anything other than scratch the surface of their characters because they’ve been given so little room to explore their personalities. Clearly they come from circumstances that helped define their personas. But yet again, this is something that the writer/director chose not to explore.
Oakley has an agenda, and that’s okay, but she doesn’t develop either it or her characters in a convincing manner. It’s not enough to glance back at the bad old days (which weren’t as bad as the ones before when homosexual acts were imprisonable —think Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing). Oakley just left dinner on the table to get cold. In the end you may mourn Jean’s dilemma; it’s doubtful she’ll do something brave that will kill her chances of landing another teaching job. Sadder still, you just won’t care.
Opening June 9 at the Nuart.