Blue Jean

Blue Jean

Writer/director – Georgia Oakley

2022, UK

Stars – Rosy McEwen, Kerrie Hayes, Lucy Halliday

 

 

Two things ‘Blue Jean’ made me reflect on, being a teenager of the 80s. Firstly, that it is a universal truth that our teachers were surely more fresh-faced and younger than we thought them at the time.  Secondly: as a teenager, I clearly remember thinking, “They can’t pass Clause 28 into law, surely, because it’s so obviously bigoted. Right?”

 

Set in a nicely recreated '80s - not too glam; not too drab – ‘Blue Jean’ sets a lesbian teacher the task of self-acceptance against the rise of Section 28. Clause 28 being legislation that forbid the “promotion” of gay and lesbian identities in the classroom. Despite soapy elements, this isn’t a tale of characters in search of arguments and cheap drama, but in search of pockets of joy and solidarity against English miserablism. It’s all centred on Rosy McEwen’s wonderful performance as Jean, her vulnerability and clash of feelings and loyalties and overt caution to the fore; yet always there’s the sudden teacher’s steely edge to the voice with the youngsters that lets you know who’s in charge. All this is laid bare and the repression confronted when there’s danger of exposure from one of Jean’s pupils turning up at Jean’s usual lesbian bar.

 

It’s not a film that expects angry defiance, or condemnation of those that found it necessary to be closeted, but to look at someone trying to navigate the compartmentalisation of her life and her self-preserving hypocrisy as needs must. Sarah Cleary writes, “This subject matter demands a more uncompromising approach”, asking for a more combative approach rather than introspective. But there is surely room for a portrayal of someone who is just trying to cope and messing up and conflicted and not quite doing the right thing. Or, as Maryann Johanson writes, “we absolutely should not need marginalized people to be braver or stronger or better than any of the rest of us.”

 

These are themes that are not atrophied in the political past, it’s all very present, and focusing on the history only goes to highlight how far we have both come and have to go. It’s a film that surely strikes with a certain generation that came of age under Margaret Thatcher. Chris Roe’s score gives it an atmosphere of a thriller, evoking Jean’s constant state of dread and fear of impending doom. Otherwise, it mostly shoots for and achieves restraint and texture rather than didacticism, so that when it is sometimes unsubtle in its exposition (thank you, radio) or use of side characters (this is not a man’s space), and especially egregious with Jean’s coming out with a laughing/crying jag as she watches horses run free, the film – and especially McEwan – has gathered a lot of good-will to overcome such flaws. At its best, ‘Blue Jean’ illustrates the subtleties and fears that cause closeted personalities, and offers sympathy.