Blue Jean – first-look review

The dra­con­ian Britain known under Thatch­er once felt like a thing of the past, but as we slide into anoth­er reces­sion and face hav­ing a new girl­boss Tory as Prime Min­is­ter, it’s under­stand­able that film­mak­ers should want to bring atten­tion to the wounds of the past, and how these might be rel­e­vant to our cur­rent polit­i­cal and social tur­moil. Geor­gia Oakley’s under­stat­ed fea­ture debut turns back the clock to 1980s Tyne­side, where ded­i­cat­ed PE teacher Jean (a cap­ti­vat­ing Rosy McEwen) is forced to reck­on with her iden­ti­ty when a new stu­dent arrives in her class.

A clos­et­ed les­bian, Jean is fair­ly unas­sum­ing at the school where she works, pop­u­lar with stu­dents and liked well enough by her col­leagues – but she real­ly comes alive in her free time, which is large­ly spent at the local les­bian bar, play­ing pool and lark­ing about, often with her girl­friend Viv (Ker­rie Hayes), though Jean occa­sion­al­ly feels uncom­fort­able among their out-and-proud social cir­cle. While Viv is most­ly under­stand­ing, she feels par­tic­u­lar­ly hurt when Jean refers to her as just a ​‘friend’ when speak­ing to her young nephew. Her rela­tion­ship woes aren’t Jean’s only prob­lem – Lois (the new stu­dent at school, played by Lucy Hal­l­i­day) is being bul­lied by star pupil Siob­han (Lydia Page), and for Jean, step­ping in means risk­ing her own per­son­al life being exposed.

‘Blue’ is the opti­mal word then – poor Jean is hav­ing a rough time of it, and only seems able to find solace in the com­fort of a warm bath and an episode of Blind Date. But lone­li­ness has a way at creep­ing in, and Jean strug­gles to rec­on­cile her desire for love and free­dom with a fear of los­ing her fam­i­ly and the job she adores. Mean­while, the tele­vi­sion set grim­ly nar­rates that Prime Min­is­ter Thatch­er is look­ing to intro­duce ​‘Sec­tion 28’, pro­hibit­ing ​“the pro­mo­tion of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty” with­in schools. As his­to­ry tells us, this was a par­tic­u­lar­ly mis­er­able time in British his­to­ry, with many queer peo­ple forced to con­ceal their sex­u­al­i­ty else face pub­lic harass­ment, vio­lence, and pos­si­ble jail time.

Despite the heavy sub­ject mat­ter, Oak­ley can­ni­ly avoids lean­ing into melo­dra­ma. Jean’s predica­ment is easy to under­stand, but she’s hard­ly with­out her flaws – her alliances tend to lie with those who don’t deserve them, and Jean would rather save her own skin than do the right thing. It’s not an easy bal­ance to strike, but McE­wan gives a spell­bind­ing per­for­mance, con­vey­ing Jean’s flight­i­ness and unease where the rel­a­tive­ly sparse script leaves room for her. It’s a hap­py mar­riage of direc­tor and actor, while Vic­tor Seguin’s inti­mate cin­e­matog­ra­phy bathes the film in gor­geous swathes of teal and indigo.

This isn’t a bold, blus­ter­ing piece of British cin­e­ma; it’s more thought­ful and tac­i­turn than that, but should serve as a painful, poignant reminder of what we lose when we are forced to act in our own self-inter­ests and the inhu­man­i­ty of ask­ing peo­ple to repress ele­ments of their iden­ti­ty. Con­sid­er­ing the stran­gle­hold trans­pho­bia has on British cul­ture cur­rent­ly, Blue Jean feels all the more impact­ful as a cau­tion­ary tale of how this intol­er­ance only breeds hatred and hurt.