‘Blue Jean’ Review: Riveting Queer Identity Drama Is a Head-Turner for Both Director and Lead Actress
A young woman with a short crop carefully touches up her blonde dye job in the arresting opening moments of Blue Jean, painting the goop on her hair with practiced efficiency to the shimmering notes of Chris Roe’s score. Stepping from the bathroom into the living room of her drab flat, she settles on the couch to watch Blind Date, described by raucous host Cilla Black as “The show that tries to find a boy and a girl that go together like birds of a feather.” That might sound exclusionist or even like a microaggression to some more politically inclined queer viewers. To Jean, it’s just pleasurable fluff.
The scene subtly foreshadows an internal conflict played out with sensitive insightfulness and dramatic tension in writer-director Georgia Oakley’s highly assured debut feature and in a transfixing performance awash in mostly suppressed feeling from Rosy McEwen in her first leading role.
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The production has been garnering acclaim on the festival circuit since its Venice premiere last fall. Winner of four British Independent Film Awards, it opened in limited release in the U.S. through Magnolia earlier this month. In its own modest way, Blue Jean’s sure-footed originality made me think of other breakthrough films from the U.K. that bring freshness and clarity to their queer gaze — Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, Frances Lee’s God’s Own Country, Rose Glass’ Saint Maud and Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun high among them.
One distinctive aspect of the film is that it’s a drama very much rooted in an incendiary political issue but one in which the activism remains background texture for an intimate character study.
Set in Northeast England in 1988, it provides a snapshot of the period in which Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government was pushing through the legislative proposal known as Section 28, making it illegal to “promote” homosexuality in state schools or sanction it as an acceptable family relationship. Similarities to the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida and like-minded moves in other red states will escape no one in the U.S.
We hear Thatcher and other Tories braying on TV (“Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay”); we see campaign billboards around town; we hear news of a group of lesbian activists abseiling from the public gallery in the House of Lords down onto the Chamber floor.
But there are no didactic discussions from Jean’s out-and-proud butch girlfriend Viv (Kerrie Hayes) or her circle of friends, despite their disgust with the Section 28 prospect; nor from Jean’s colleagues — some of whom are in favor — at the high school where she works as a gym teacher. Any mentions of the legislative proposal (which passed that year, remaining in effect in Scotland until 2000 and in England and Wales until 2003) are seamlessly woven into the conversation. Oakley even declines to add the usual postscript text conveying that data.
Those choices intensify the focus on Jean as a young woman who has embraced her sexuality — she has a heterosexual marriage and divorce behind her, and has come out to her family, at least to her “tolerant” but judgy sister Sasha (Aoife Kennan) — but remains in hiding in her professional life. She won’t allow Viv even to phone her at work, let alone come watch a game with the girls’ netball team that she coaches.
If this sounds like a queer variant on bog-standard British miserablism, it’s not. The strikingly shot (by talented DP Victor Seguin) film’s sense of place and time is vital and evocative (who doesn’t love a bracing jolt of New Order?) and the looming threat to LGBTQ freedoms is palpable. But the social realism is laced through with lyrical moments — some practice scenes on the netball court are captured with a dreamlike beauty, alongside a hint of danger fueled by adolescent hormonal rush, rivalries and bullying.
There’s also a joyous sense of community in hangout scenes at a local lesbian bar or in the women’s housing co-op where Viv lives with a tight posse who have welcomed Jean but perhaps see her as a work in progress, beyond her obvious mutual passion with Viv. At one point, Viv seems to be speaking for the group when she describes Jean as “skittish … like a deer in the headlights.”
Jean’s efforts to remain under the radar at school are challenged when outsider student Lois (Lucy Halliday) joins the team soon after spotting Jean at the pub. The new player is ostracized at first, but gains acceptance once she scores the winning goal in a game. This doesn’t sit well with the team’s alpha mean girl Siobhan (Lydia Page), who starts taunting Lois, quickly graduating to a homophobic slur.
Meanwhile, Lois starts hanging around the fringes of Viv’s group, and Jean’s threats to kick her off the team if she continues coming to the bar cause friction. But the real crisis comes when Jean witnesses physical aggression between Lois and Siobhan and is forced to pick a side in a disciplinary meeting.
Oakley’s script draws from the experience of lesbians oppressed under Section 28, and that verisimilitude informs every moment of McEwen’s quiet but stirring performance, the strain showing in telltale flickers across her face.
Jean believes an essential part of her job is creating boundaries, but the degree to which she has compartmentalized her sexuality inevitably causes cracks in her carefully guarded veneer. Even the relaxed but firm manner with which she keeps the students in line becomes more uncertain. The pressure is most keenly felt in her relationship with Viv, who chafes at Jean’s internalized homophobia and knows from past experience to protect herself from the hurt engendered by a partner whose self-acceptance comes with conditions. Jean’s sheepish acknowledgment that Viv’s punky biker look would make her “stick out like a sore thumb” in some situations reads as an admission that she can never be fully integrated into her girlfriend’s life.
Scenes between McEwen and Hayes are played with sensuality, aching tenderness and regret, particularly a meeting late in the action at a café and a subsequent exchange at a house party. If an occasional script element seems just a tad on the nose — like Jean’s insomnia and the relaxation tape she requires to get to sleep, even after a bout of vigorous sex — the authenticity of the performances more than counters that.
Some of the smaller observations are lovely, such as Jean’s discomfort at Sasha’s refusal to remove the wedding photo of her sister, looking like a different person with her long brown curls and gauzy gown; or her flinching when Sasha chides her about it being confusing for her 5-year-old son Sammy (Dexter Heads) to find Viv in Jean’s apartment when he’s dropped off in a babysitting emergency. The drama expertly gauges the way these incidents intrude on Jean’s peace of mind and are amplified by the political backdrop.
Enhancing the film’s supple modulations and richly felt moods is a score by Roe that’s unusually wide-ranging in tone, from delicate romantic strains to brooding strings and into more nervous agitation that almost suggests low-key horror.
Oakley defies expectation by not building her catharsis around the Section 28 news or even around a big epiphany for Jean. Instead, it comes without words, after a party at Sasha’s, where Jean surprises herself by being bluntly candid in response to a male guest’s invasive questions. The terrific scene gives way to evidence conveyed strictly in Jean’s face that she appears to have found a new resolve and the readiness to change.
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