In praise of Beau­ti­ful Thing, a quin­tes­sen­tial­ly British com­ing out movie

In queer British cin­e­ma, roman­ti­cism of char­ac­ter and place has been his­tor­i­cal­ly preva­lent. From the whim­si­cal Mau­rice, where lovers lie care­free in long grass, to the artis­tic license of Derek Jarman’s exper­i­men­tal work, peri­od pieces and escapist dra­mas have long offered relief for LGBTQ+ peo­ple from late-20^th-cen­tu­ry British life.

At the oth­er end of the spec­trum sits Het­tie Macdonald’s 1996 film Beau­ti­ful Thing. Here, rolling hills are replaced with high-rise tow­er blocks; the Eng­lish coun­try­side swapped for the nar­row con­crete stair­cas­es of a South East Lon­don coun­cil estate. Adapt­ed from Jonathan Harvey’s 1993 play of the same name, Beau­ti­ful Thing marks a sig­nif­i­cant depar­ture from the hith­er­to quaint­ness of queer British cin­e­ma – an ode to youth ground­ed in the real­i­ty of what it meant to grow up queer in ​’90s Britain.

Rough around the edges but ten­der in its approach, Macdonald’s film embod­ies the kitchen-sink dra­ma tra­di­tion with its focus on the pri­vate lives of an unas­sum­ing group of work­ing-class char­ac­ters. Over the course of a hot sum­mer 16-year-old Jamie (Glen Berry) expe­ri­ences a pro­found sex­u­al awak­en­ing, wrestling with his feel­ings for the boy next door, Ste (Scott Neal). Though the pair must face up to the pos­si­ble reper­cus­sions of com­ing out, the film’s title card has already sig­nalled that things will turn out okay: an arti­fi­cial rain­bow stretch­es across a blue sky, an imme­di­ate and unbreak­able sym­bol of hope.

While harm or death are all too often a com­mon con­clu­sion for queer char­ac­ters, the film’s heart­felt han­dling of the ten­ta­tive romance between bash­ful Jamie and ath­let­ic Ste sets it apart. Root­ed in an instant­ly recog­nis­able British sum­mer, where cold beer cans soothe heat­ed argu­ments and every­one floods out­side at the first hint of sun, Beau­ti­ful Thing ties queer­ness to a famil­iar, relat­able setting.

The first dis­play of inti­ma­cy arrives in a slow-paced sequence when Ste sleeps over at Jamie’s to escape his abu­sive father and broth­er. He lies squished on Jamie’s bed as the lat­ter mas­sages pep­per­mint lotion over his bruised back. It’s a moment of peace­ful con­sol­i­da­tion in which Jamie’s car­ing touch­es are fleet­ing but com­mit­ted. Mac­Don­ald frames Jamie’s room like a sanc­tu­ary, cut­ting between tight shots of the boys’ faces as they cal­cu­late whether to act upon their grow­ing attrac­tion. In the con­text of British cin­e­ma in the 1990s, this awk­ward, non-explic­it scene pro­vid­ed a rare moment of on-screen gay inti­ma­cy acces­si­ble to young viewers.

Jamie’s bed­room is not the only safe space the boys find. Flick­ing through a copy of Gay Times, past arti­cles on HIV trans­mis­sion and com­ing out to fam­i­ly mem­bers, Jamie finds the address of a gay pub in the area. A sub­tex­tu­al ode to the impor­tance of LGBTQ+ spaces, the cam­era nav­i­gates the pub at eye-lev­el with Jamie and Ste as they weave through the crowd, immers­ing them in an opti­mistic and accept­ing com­mu­nal queer space. It is their first pub­lic out­ing, in both sens­es of the word.

Cru­cial­ly, Mac­Don­ald does not iso­late queer­ness. Under­pinned by wider social fac­tors such as class and race, her film sees Jamie taunt­ed with homo­pho­bic slurs while friend Leah (Tame­ka Emp­son) is tar­get­ed with racist aggres­sion. This extends beyond the world of the film: both Jamie and Ste are in edu­ca­tion at a time where Thatcher’s Sec­tion 28, a dis­avow­ing of the ​‘pro­mo­tion of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty’, remained in place; it would be anoth­er sev­en years before its repeal.

Beau­ti­ful Thing leaves us with a provoca­tive, pow­er­ful image. Jamie and Ste sway togeth­er to Mama Cass’ ​‘Dream a Lit­tle Dream of Me’ at gold­en hour in their con­crete court­yard. Then, Leah and Jamie’s moth­er San­dra (Lin­da Hen­ry) join them – an affec­tion­ate, almost defi­ant pub­lic dis­play of queer accep­tance and togetherness.