Love, Simon movie review (2018) | Little White Lies

Love, Simon

07 Apr 2018 / Released: 06 Apr 2018

A young man wearing a navy jacket and jeans standing next to a red car in a leafy, sunlit setting.
A young man wearing a navy jacket and jeans standing next to a red car in a leafy, sunlit setting.
3

Anticipation.

How on earth could a coming-of-age drama handle the experience of coming out?

3

Enjoyment.

Often painful viewing, but you may well cry at the end.

3

In Retrospect.

A necessary step that nevertheless betrays the crippling straightness of Hollywood.

What does it mean for a gay man to be nor­mal’? This com­ing-of-age com­e­dy seeks to answer that question.

Love, Simon begins with the chill­ing words My name is Simon, and I’m just like you…” As the first ever main­stream US com­ing-of-age film to cen­tre on a gay pro­tag­o­nist, it is safe to assume that this open­ing mono­logue is addressed at a pre­dom­i­nant­ly straight audience.

Before we even have the time to ques­tion this prin­ci­ple of assim­i­lat­ing gay­ness with­in the het­ero­sex­u­al world by eras­ing dif­fer­ence, Simon (Nick Robin­son) goes on to describe his life as nor­mal’, a word which itself rais­es its fair share of ques­tions. What is nor­mal’? Nor­mal how? Is being nor­mal a good thing? What does it mean for a gay man to be nor­mal’?

Far from clear­ing things up, Simon’s expla­na­tion of what con­sti­tutes his nor­mal’ life only com­pli­cates pro­ceed­ings fur­ther. His con­cept of nor­mal­cy is clear­ly mapped onto that of the Amer­i­can com­ing-of-age film: a nor­mal teenag­er in a typ­i­cal teen movie has love­ly but awk­ward par­ents, a quirky younger sib­ling, an eclec­tic set of friends, and a dis­tinc­tive, mon­tage-friend­ly rou­tine for get­ting to school every day.

Duti­ful­ly, so does Simon. This gives us a frame­work for address­ing the film, but also – once again – rais­es ques­tions: can a com­ing out sto­ry real­ly fit into the Amer­i­can main­stream teen movie mode and emerge unscathed and un-prob­lema­tised? Should we want it to?

The answer to the first ques­tion is: as well as any straight sto­ry can. Most of the nar­ra­tive leaps and short­cuts that Love, Simon relies on are only bewil­der­ing because we’ve nev­er seen a gay sto­ry giv­en the same casu­al, fan­tas­ti­cal treat­ment that straight sto­ries have a bil­lion times before.

But there is a lim­it to the equiv­a­lence one can try to estab­lish between straight and gay com­ing-of-age sto­ries. Even in Simon’s clear­ly tol­er­ant and lib­er­al neigh­bour­hood – there is already one open­ly gay boy in his school – Simon is still expect­ed to be straight and has no way of know­ing how his peers would react to his com­ing out. By con­trast, a straight char­ac­ter nev­er has to face such uncer­tain­ty, and cer­tain­ly does not risk being cast out – or even attacked – in the same way.

Group of four young people standing in a school corridor, dressed in casual clothing.

As a result, a few nar­ra­tive twists and turns that would be per­fect­ly fine in a straight sto­ry seem cal­lous and insen­si­tive here. When school­mate Mar­tin (Logan Miller) finds out about Simon’s secret and uses it to black­mail him, Simon is too scared not to obey the boy’s annoy­ing demands. When these demands prove to have dis­as­trous con­se­quences on Simon’s friends, and the truth about the black­mail­ing sur­faces, Simon’s friends blame him for being self­ish. In a world that remains crush­ing­ly homo­pho­bic, this response just seems entire­ly unfair.

And yet, despite these strange­ly mis­judged moments, Love, Simon suc­ceeds in nav­i­gat­ing most of the pit­falls of the gay com­ing-of-age nar­ra­tive and is ulti­mate­ly mov­ing and gen­uine. Simon’s I’m just like you” mono­logue, as it turns out, isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly addressed to a hypo­thet­i­cal, most­ly straight audi­ence. Rather it is Simon’s rehearsal run for his first email to Blue, a mys­te­ri­ous high school stu­dent writ­ing under a pseu­do­nym about his own sex­u­al­i­ty and his fear of com­ing out.

The film is at its best when it con­veys Simon’s lone­li­ness and his long­ing for some­one just like him”, a heartache that car­ries the sto­ry beyond its unsuc­cess­ful attempts at humour, cringe-wor­thy pop cul­ture ref­er­ences, and oth­er clunki­er char­ac­ter­is­tics. Nick Robin­son in the title role deserves huge cred­it for man­ag­ing the riv­et­ing tran­si­tion from clas­sic straight movie pro­tag­o­nist to a char­ac­ter with real depth and a pro­found, ele­men­tal long­ing. A par­tic­u­lar­ly mov­ing con­ver­sa­tion between Simon and his moth­er, played beau­ti­ful­ly by Jen­nifer Gar­ner, could lazi­ly – but not com­plete­ly inac­cu­rate­ly – be described as the Hol­ly­wood ver­sion of Michael Stuhlbarg’s sage father­ly advice in Call Me by Your Name.

This com­par­i­son is more telling than it might first appear. As great as it is to see Hol­ly­wood final­ly pro­duc­ing a gay com­ing-of-age sto­ry, it is hard to rejoice in a film that nev­er­the­less feels like it were engi­neered to ruf­fle the fewest feath­ers pos­si­ble. By con­trast, non-main­stream cin­e­ma has been putting gay char­ac­ters in the spot­light for a long time, and even the least explic­it art house films – such as Call Me by Your Name – feel more pro­gres­sive for not assim­i­lat­ing gay­ness into a straight culture.

Still, being rep­re­sent­ed in a pos­i­tive light with­in the main­stream remains a pos­i­tive force: we are already hear­ing count­less accounts of Amer­i­can teenagers embold­ened to come out after screen­ings of Love, Simon, feel­ing safe and accept­ed. One can only hope that Hol­ly­wood can one day make a film about Ethan (Clark Moore), the open­ly gay teenag­er in Simon’s school whose fab­u­lous perm, incred­i­ble sense of style and camp man­ner­isms appar­ent­ly mean that he can­not be at the cen­tre of a main­stream stu­dio pro­duc­tion just yet.

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