Freak Show

“Some­times I dream I can fly, but I’m so exhaust­ed from flap­ping my wings”, says Bil­ly (Alex Lawthor), the cen­tral pro­tag­o­nist of Trudie Styler’s shal­low LGBTQ teen dram­e­dy, Freak Show. The film aims to inspire with a mes­sage of empow­er­ment and accep­tance, though it often tries too hard to do so. It suf­fers from the same fate as Bil­ly, los­ing any sub­tle­ty or sen­si­tiv­i­ty as it reach­es for the stars.

We quick­ly learn that Bil­ly is a proud, gay teenag­er obsessed with glam­our, glitz and lit­tle else – such is the one-dimen­sion­al nature of his char­ac­ter. After his lov­ing but unsta­ble moth­er (Bette Midler!!) checks into rehab, Bil­ly is forced to move in with his stereo­typ­i­cal, dis­ap­prov­ing father (Lar­ry Pine). He is then enrolled in an ultra con­ser­v­a­tive high school, where he is faced with dif­fi­cul­ties rang­ing from abu­sive class­mates to dis­mis­sive teachers.

Bil­ly endures, though it’s hard to feel a huge amount of sym­pa­thy for him. This is not the fault of Lawthor, who has made a name for him­self with TV roles in Black Mir­ror and It’s the F***ing End of the World, as he imbues Bil­ly with a mea­sure of cred­i­bil­i­ty. Instead the blame lies in how the char­ac­ter is writ­ten – his unwa­ver­ing supe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex makes it hard to pine for his success.

Despite this insipid cen­tral pres­ence, the film does offer some com­pelling sup­port­ing turns. It thrives when depict­ing com­plex inner strug­gles, whether it’s the dif­fi­cul­ties of hav­ing a tra­di­tion­al father accept­ing his son, or the sto­ry of Flip (Ian Nel­son), the reluc­tant jock, try­ing to come to terms with his own identity.

Nev­er­the­less, Styler, direct­ing her first fic­tion fea­ture, fails to cul­ti­vate a sense of real­ism. With more slo-mo fash­ion mon­tages than cap­ti­vat­ing inter­ac­tions, she always appears to favour style over sub­stance. Sad­ly her style is not half as dis­tinc­tive as Billy’s out­fit choices.

The sto­ry improves con­sid­er­ably towards the end, as it cli­max­es with a great ​“We’re all freaks and that’s okay” mes­sage via Billy’s home­com­ing speech. By this final stretch, it demon­strates a bet­ter under­stand­ing of issues it wants to explore with­in the teen and queer com­mu­ni­ties, but it’s not quite enough.