Blue Jean

We are in the midst of a moral pan­ic. LGBTQ+ ​“groomers” are the right-wing boo­gie­man du jour and vocal big­ots the world over are com­pelling law­mak­ers to, please, think of the chil­dren. Geor­gia Oakley’s Blue Jean takes place in the shad­ow of a sim­i­lar cul­tur­al moment, when Mar­garet Thatcher’s gov­ern­ment enact­ed Sec­tion 28 – an infa­mous piece of anti-gay leg­is­la­tion that crim­i­nalised the ​“pro­mo­tion” of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty by local author­i­ties and schools.

The film fol­lows Rosy McEwen as Jean, a clos­et­ed PE teacher work­ing at a Tyne­side com­pre­hen­sive in 1988. By day she’s a (sort of) straight-pass­ing mem­ber of respectable soci­ety, by night she clubs with her out-and-proud girl­friend Viv (a like­able Ker­rie Hayes). But this tidy divi­sion between work and play is threat­ened by the arrival of Lois – one of Jean’s stu­dents – on the local les­bian scene. And when Lois is false­ly accused of forc­ing her­self upon a fel­low stu­dent, Jean has to con­sid­er poten­tial­ly out­ing her­self (and jeop­ar­dis­ing her career) for a greater good.

A film like Blue Jean demands a strong sense of peri­od but, unfor­tu­nate­ly, its vision of Thatcherite Britain has all the air­less­ness of a muse­um dio­ra­ma. This not only man­i­fests in the cos­tum­ing and pro­duc­tion design, both of which fail to account for the taste of pre­ced­ing decades, but also in the more ephemer­al task of con­jur­ing up a bygone cul­tur­al cli­mate. Radios and tele­vi­sions sound­track the film with a dis­tract­ing num­ber of news bul­letins on Sec­tion 28, yet the pre­vail­ing atti­tudes that these archival mate­ri­als describe are rarely seen. Instances of on-screen homo­pho­bia are chiefly com­prised of school­yard bul­ly­ing and off-colour remarks, and the worst we see Jean and Viv receive is a dis­ap­prov­ing glare from an elder­ly stranger.

At best we could call the film’s lack of bite eva­sive, and at worst naïve, but it con­tributes to a per­va­sive air of anachro­nism that ulti­mate­ly under­mines the dra­ma. In one par­tic­u­lar­ly peri­od-shat­ter­ing moment, an uncon­vinc­ing­ly touchy-feely head­mas­ter informs Lois and her accuser that, ​“per­pe­tra­tors of sex­u­al assault have no place at this school,” demon­strat­ing a lev­el of sen­si­tiv­i­ty that many 21^st cen­tu­ry edu­ca­tors would strug­gle to muster.

And if the film’s con­cep­tion of ​’80s het­ero­sex­u­al hege­mo­ny seems incom­plete, then its depic­tion of con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous gay life feels equal­ly unimag­i­na­tive. Oak­ley man­ages to make one of the most vibrant and excit­ing peri­ods in UK queer cul­ture look sort of dull, reduc­ing its bound­less inven­tion to gelled light­ing and a per­func­to­ry ​‘Blue Mon­day’ needle-drop.

This may all sound harsh giv­en the film’s clear­ly good inten­tions, but the devil’s in the details, and there’s a ter­mi­nal lack of speci­fici­ty here. Oakley’s deci­sion to nev­er have Jean come into direct con­flict with Sec­tion 28, only fear it, leaves the ques­tion of com­ing out to serve as the heroine’s ulti­mate strug­gle – will she be brave enough to be her­self? Not only is this a tired approach, it’s not even one espe­cial­ly in need of a peri­od set­ting. Jean’s is essen­tial­ly an inte­ri­or jour­ney, one where his­to­ry looms threat­en­ing­ly over­head but nev­er seems to swoop.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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