The Miseducation of Cameron Post | Little White Lies

The Mise­d­u­ca­tion of Cameron Post

05 Sep 2018 / Released: 07 Sep 2018

Three young people sitting on a forest floor, surrounded by fallen leaves. One person wears a red jacket, another has dreadlocks, and the third has blond hair.
Three young people sitting on a forest floor, surrounded by fallen leaves. One person wears a red jacket, another has dreadlocks, and the third has blond hair.
4

Anticipation.

Loved Appropriate Behaviour, hoping for more of the same.

4

Enjoyment.

Funny, fragile and quietly fierce, with an excellent lead turn from Chloë Grace Moretz.

5

In Retrospect.

The sort of film that stays with you. Powerful in its restraint, and unfailingly full of light.

Desiree Akha­van presents a con­fi­dent, heart­break­ing por­trait of life inside a Chris­t­ian con­ver­sion ther­a­py camp.

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.

Two people, a man and a woman, lying on the grass with their eyes closed.

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.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.