The Miseducation Of Cameron Post Cert: 15, 1hr 31mins
Last year, one of the most talked-about films of the summer was the gorgeous-looking art-house hit Call Me By Your Name, directed by Luca Guadagnino.
Northern Italy looked fabulous, Armie Hammer brought very short shorts back into fashion and the closing music – Sufjan Stevens’s haunting Visions Of Gideon – sent entire audiences out into the street dabbing gently at their eyes.
Against all the odds – or certainly against mainstream Hollywood thinking – a film about a teenage boy’s first gay relationship made quite an impact.
Moretz (far right) is a revelation as Cameron, and gets suitably downplayed support from American Honey star Sasha Lane (centre), as well as Forrest Goodluck (far left)
Which probably goes some way to explaining both the fuss and the marketing push behind The Miseducation Of Cameron Post. A top prize-winner at the independently spirited Sundance Film Festival and directed by a woman, Desiree Akhavan, it also chronicles a first gay-teenager rite of passage but from a much darker angle.
Because when 17-year-old Cameron Post (Kick-Ass star Chloë Grace Moretz) is found having sex in the back of a car with her sexy first girlfriend, no one sits her down, as they did in Call Me By Your Name, for a cosy chat about wishing they had done something similar when they were young.
Instead, an embarrassed, confused and even somewhat penitent Cameron is packed off by her evangelical aunt and uncle to God’s Promise, a religious ‘re-education centre’ specialising in so-called gay conversion therapy.
A few months of hard work here, promise the people who run it, and Cameron will be as straight as straight can be. Her ‘miseducation’ has begun.
This is a film that’s funny and mildly sexy – thanks to flashback and the unsurprising discovery that therapy doesn’t always work. Above: Melanie Ehrlich with Moretz
What they want to rid her of, explains the nice, smiley but hideously moustachioed Reverend Rick (John Gallagher Jr) is the ‘sin’ of so-called ‘SSA’ – Same Sex Attraction.
They like to picture it, he goes on, as an iceberg with most of the reasons for succumbing to SSA lurking unseen below the surface. Drawing and personalising your own iceberg is very much part of the therapeutic process at the fiercely religious centre, and ‘disciples’ are encouraged to fill them with their own reasons for apparently being gay.
But while some inmates cheerily fill theirs with ‘did too much sport with Dad’ and ‘didn’t get enough physical affection from Mom’ Cameron can’t think of anything to write. Particularly as her parents are dead. ‘Great!’ exclaim her new friends, ‘write that down, they’ll love that.’ Actually, they put it a little more bluntly than that but you get the idea.
Akhavan, who co-adapts from Emily M Danforth’s novel as well as directs, gets the tone pretty much spot on. Watching the deeply unsettling narrative unfold, it’s easy to take comfort in the mistaken belief that this is an American phenomenon that couldn’t happen here. But it has and still does, although the Government is currently considering legislation to make such courses illegal.
In other hands this sort of story could have been hard work, but that’s certainly not true here. This is a film that does have a serious point to make but it’s also funny, mildly sexy – thanks to flashback and the unsurprising discovery that therapy doesn’t always work – and very nicely acted indeed.
Moretz is a revelation, in a totally convincing and beautifully understated way, as Cameron, and gets suitably downplayed support from American Honey star Sasha Lane, as well as Forrest Goodluck, the latter playing a young Native American coming to terms with the idea that he might be what he calls ‘two-spirit’.
And keep a look out for the reliably good Jennifer Ehle, playing the centre’s super-creepy head, Dr Marsh, who, according to canteen gossip, gained her professional reputation by ‘de-gaying her own brother’. No, it’s not her most sympathetic role.
But for all its strengths, The Miseducation Of Cameron Post does have one glaring weakness – there’s only about two-thirds of a really good film here. As a result, just when we’re expecting it to move up a gear or a two for a dramatic last lap, it suddenly comes to a weak, minor-key close.
Which, after so much impressive work, is a little disappointing but after a deep breath and a moment or two’s reflection, still far from offputting.
SECOND SCREEN
Puzzle (15)
Rating: 
American Animals (15)
Rating: 
The Seagull (12A)
Rating: 
Hurricane (15)
Rating:
Puzzle begins with a woman organising a modest suburban home for a party. She vacuums, rearranges the furniture and puts up a Happy Birthday banner. Only later, after guests have eaten the cake she’s made, drunk the drink and broken a favourite plate, do we discover, poignantly, that it is her own birthday party.
Agnes, it seems, is a woman who is used to being taken for granted – particularly by her huge husband and grown-up sons – but not for much longer.
An unexpected gift of a 1,000-piece jigsaw sets the drama rolling. Agnes – beautifully played by an American-accented Kelly Macdonald – discovers she has a real talent for jigsaws.
Agnes – beautifully played by an American-accented Kelly Macdonald (above) – discovers she has a real talent for jigsaws after being gifted a 1,000-piece set
Travelling to New York to buy some more, she finds an ad for a ‘puzzle partner’, an ad that will introduce her to the sophisticated Robert (Irrfan Khan) and the world of competitive jigsaw puzzling.
Yes, we’re in Shirley Valentine territory with this remake of a 2009 Argentinian film, but the execution by director Marc Turtletaub is exquisite and Macdonald, despite being a little too young and pretty to totally convince, gives her best performance in years.
American Animals gains an early laugh when it begins with the caption, ‘This is not based on a true story’, and another when the words ‘not based on’ slide off the screen. So, is it fact or fiction, or a blend of both?
We’re never quite sure as we watch a certainly credibility-straining story unfold about a group of young Kentucky misfits who plan to steal a rare book of original prints by the American wildlife artist John Audubon, apparently worth millions of dollars.
Every so often the action is intercut with direct-to-camera contributions from the real people involved. But are they really the real characters or just more actors?
The structure is initially intriguing, then becomes confusing, but what really does damage is watching what, in truth, is a very slight story being spun out for almost two hours.
A top-notch cast led by Annette Bening (above with Jon Tenney) deliver a fine screen version of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull
A top-notch cast led by Annette Bening as Irina and Saoirse Ronan as Nina deliver a fine screen version of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. The key relationship between the writer Trigorin (Corey Stoll) and infatuated wannabe actress Nina seems more obviously abusive than usual but it all never quite shakes off its theatrical origins.
Hurricane is the story of 303 Squadron, made up mainly of exiled Polish pilots who destroyed more Luftwaffe aircraft than any other Hurricane unit in the Battle of Britain.
With much of it in subtitled Polish, there’s an enjoyably old-fashioned feel to what ensues, with director David Blair blending Polish courage and British reserve, plus convincing flying sequences.
VENICE FILM FESTIVAL
Matthew Bond’s pick of the best – and worst – from Venice 2018
The 75th Venice Film Festival drew to a close last night, and while I wasn’t there long enough to see everything, my week on the Lido was certainly enough to see the Italian festival throw down a clear challenge to its ever more arty French rival at Cannes.
It got off to a cracking start with First Man ★★★★★, the story of how Neil Armstrong became the first man to step on the Moon. It’s directed by Damien Chazelle, whose last two films – Whiplash and La La Land – garlanded nine Oscars between them: First Man, due out next month, will surely add to the collection.
Ryan Gosling is a model of ‘right stuff’ restraint as Armstrong, while Claire Foy is a joy as his spirited wife.
Ryan Gosling is a model of ‘right stuff’ restraint in First Man, the story of how Neil Armstrong became the first man on the Moon, while Claire Foy is a joy as his spirited wife
A Star Is Born ★★★★★, which sees Bradley Cooper making his directorial debut, may be the fourth time in 80 years that William A Wellman and Robert Carson’s rags-to-riches showbiz story has been reworked, but Lady Gaga is a nomination-grabbing revelation in the role made successively famous by Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand, while Cooper – despite the occasional moment of self-indulgence – impresses as much behind the camera as he does in front. Out next month too.
Westerns have been big at the festival this year, and The Sisters Brothers ★★★★ is in the classic tradition, with Joaquin Phoenix and John C Reilly on top form as Charlie and Eli Sisters, hired guns for sale, and Jake Gyllenhaal as an early private detective.
Despite the subject matter, in 22 July ★★★ Paul Greengrass just about gets away with retelling the story of the 2011 massacre committed by Anders Breivik, but it’s a close-run thing. Be warned, Breivik’s racist far-Right views do get almost as much screen time as the trauma of his victims.
As for Mike Leigh’s Peterloo ★, about the 1819 massacre of 15 demonstrators in Manchester… Well, the overwritten screenplay is like the worst history lesson you’ve ever sat through, some very good actors give very poor performances, and the whole thing – laced as it is with the ersatz flavour of northern heritage park – seems to go on for ever. It’s out in November: no rush.