The Mise­d­u­ca­tion of Cameron Post

No one ever warns you how much being a teenage girl hurts. The glossy pages of girly mag­a­zines explain how to nav­i­gate exams, fash­ion faux pas – even the expe­ri­ence of being coerced into smok­ing your first cig­a­rette or neck­ing a can of cheap beer at a house par­ty. But what of the acute agony of try­ing to exist in a world that denies the valid­i­ty of your exis­tence at every turn? How do you safe­guard against that? How do you explain that the world will eat you alive giv­en half a chance, and all we have as a defence are the fam­i­lies we find for our­selves? There’s no easy answer, but cin­e­ma seems like a con­tin­u­ous­ly safe bet, capa­ble of cap­tur­ing the anx­i­ety of ado­les­cence in a more tan­gi­ble way than per­haps any oth­er medium.

In her 2015 debut fea­ture, Appro­pri­ate Behav­iour, writer/​director Desiree Akha­van mined her per­son­al expe­ri­ences to cre­ate a bold, brash chron­i­cle of mod­ern wom­an­hood in Brook­lyn, New York. Her fol­low-up feels decid­ed­ly qui­eter – and not just because it plays out against the rel­a­tive calm of rur­al Mon­tana. Based on the 2012 Young Adult nov­el of the same name by Emi­ly M Dan­forth, The Mise­d­u­ca­tion of Cameron Post tells of a 17-year-old girl who is sent to a Chris­t­ian con­ver­sion ther­a­py camp after being caught in a com­pro­mis­ing sit­u­a­tion with anoth­er girl on the night of her school’s Home­com­ing ball. Though the film is set in 1993, the sub­ject mat­ter couldn’t be more time­ly giv­en the ongo­ing bat­tle for LGBT rights hap­pen­ing in the US and else­where. Con­ver­sion ther­a­py isn’t some new bogey­man – this inhu­mane prac­tice has been used to sub­ju­gate young gay peo­ple for decades.

Chloë Grace Moretz is Cameron Post, a state track and field cham­pi­on who is sent to ​‘God’s Promise’ by her pious aunt (Ker­ry But­ler). Still best known for her break­out role as the 13-year-old who said ​“cunt” in Kick-Ass, there’s always been a sense with Moretz that she just need­ed the right role to tru­ly shine. She has cer­tain­ly found it here – Moretz gives a deeply vul­ner­a­ble but excep­tion­al­ly mature per­for­mance as a teenage girl strug­gling to come to terms with who she real­ly is. In one scene, Cameron comes undone as she realis­es the hope­less­ness of her sit­u­a­tion, and as she begins to cry, her whole body starts to shake. Moretz cap­tures what it is to be young and act much old­er for the sake of self-preservation.

Sasha Lane and For­rest Good­luck are sim­i­lar­ly remark­able as Cameron’s fel­low ​“dis­ci­ples” Jane Fon­da and Adam Red Eagle, who strug­gle with their own cir­cum­stances and try to make the best out of their dire sit­u­a­tion. Humour has its part to play too – Akha­van points out the ludi­crous­ness of evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty, but also touch­es on the minu­ti­ae of teenage rela­tion­ships. Yet so much of Cameron’s friend­ship with Jane and Adam is built on what’s not said rather than what is – on glances shared across the room. It’s this quiet­ness that enables the film’s loud­er moments to real­ly sing: when Cameron jumps onto a table to belt out 4 Non-Blondes’ sem­i­nal song of frus­tra­tion ​‘What’s Up?’, it’s a moment of gen­uine free­dom that will make your heart soar. Tem­po­rary release by way of Lin­da Perry.

Touch­es of ​’90s nos­tal­gia raise a smile but nev­er feel campy or over-the-top. Flan­nel shirts, a Clinton/​Gore bumper stick­er, Cameron attempt­ing to swipe a Breed­ers cas­sette – these details place the film in a spe­cif­ic peri­od, but they don’t date it. Akha­van paints a vivid por­trait of life as a gay per­son in a post-Stonewall world, before LGBT rights came into their own and the inter­net pro­vid­ed found fam­i­lies for queer peo­ple everywhere.

In flash­back we see glimpses of Cameron’s for­mer life and her ill-fat­ed rela­tion­ship with Coley (Quinn Shep­hard). There’s a beau­ti­ful ten­der­ness to these scenes, and Akha­van plays with mem­o­ry by inter­cut­ting them with footage from the present, show­ing Cameron begin­ning to ques­tion her own expe­ri­ence in light of the Chris­t­ian rhetoric she’s exposed to. It’s hard to think of anoth­er direc­tor who would have approached the mate­r­i­al with such affec­tion, can­dour and restraint. Ash­ley Connor’s cin­e­matog­ra­phy adds to the film’s dream-like aes­thet­ic, lend­ing the char­ac­ters’ lush sur­round­ings a lim­it­less qual­i­ty – an open, idyl­lic prison.

At God’s Promise, sib­ling team Rev­erend Rick (John Gal­lagher Jr) and Dr Lydia (Jen­nifer Ehle) coun­sel their young wards. Rick, who admits he used to strug­gle with same-sex attrac­tion, is the quin­tes­sen­tial youth pas­tor of pop cul­ture folk­lore – flop­py-haired and cute as a labrador, always with a gui­tar in-hand ready for some ad hoc wor­ship­ping. He seems harm­less enough, the sort of guy with whom con­ver­sion camps like to asso­ciate their mis­sion. Lydia, by con­trast, is cal­cu­lat­ing and stern, ​“a Dis­ney vil­lain who won’t let you jerk off,” as Adam puts it.

But there’s some­thing more to Rick than meets the eye. The tragedy of his char­ac­ter is how sin­cere­ly he believes he is doing the right thing, that sex­u­al­i­ty is a sim­ple con­trol issue. The dev­as­tat­ing nature of con­ver­sion ther­a­py (“pro­gram­ming peo­ple to hate them­selves”, as Cameron puts it) is unequiv­o­cal, but Akha­van suc­ceeds in large part due to the empa­thy she extends to each and every char­ac­ter. This is not a film that deals in bina­ries, but rather the grey area in between.

While The Mise­d­u­ca­tion of Cameron Post is an impor­tant LGBT film, it also feels like a land­mark addi­tion to the com­ing-of-age canon. At one point Cameron, begin­ning to won­der if Lydia and Rick might have a point, admits to Jane, ​“I’m tired of feel­ing dis­gust­ed with myself.” Jane bites back, ​“Maybe you’re sup­posed to feel dis­gust­ed when you’re a teenag­er.” That’s the deep cut at the heart of Akhavan’s film – being young and in pain shouldn’t auto­mat­i­cal­ly be accept­ed as part of grow­ing up. Akha­van emphat­i­cal­ly rejects this fal­la­cy, instead show­ing that strength comes from admit­ting who you are, and fig­ur­ing out how to move for­ward from there.