Blue Jean
Directed by Georgia Oakley
Running time: 1hr37 | REVIEWED BY CATHERINE BRAY
Rosy McEwen stars in Blue Jean
It’s 1988 in Tyneside, in the North of England. As a combination of political decisions and personal circumstances conspire to catch Jean (Rosy McEwen) in a trap from which there can be no clean or elegant escape, we get a masterclass in how to capture quiet self-loathing on film.
Jean is a teacher, and Section 28 legislation has just been introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s government stating that local authorities shall not “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”. Homophobia was being stoked like never before by tabloids in the midst of the AIDS crisis. Jean is necessarily closeted at work, but out in her personal life, a compromised combination that leads inevitably to conflict.
The straight people in Jean’s life are, almost without exception, either oblivious, suspicious or actively hostile to the existence of gay people generally, and to Jean’s specific existence as a gay woman. Where the film is particularly clever is in its portrayal of other gay people in her life. They are not shown to be an all-encompassing rainbow of unconditional support. Jean’s girlfriend is out and proud, and perhaps understandably is often hurt or angered by Jean’s failure to live more openly. But what can she do? Jean’s livelihood feels utterly precarious. Section 28 was insidious, not just because of its manifest unfairness and obvious cruelty, but because of the thousands of subtly painful disruptions and knock-on effects it had in people’s personal lives.
Jean loathes herself for being unable to live differently, to be a mentor to a young girl in her class who is struggling with both her sexuality and her classmate’s attitude to it, and she feels betrayed by her family — who seemingly preferred her when she lived as a straight married woman. She’s also oppressed in a peculiar way by her girlfriend’s liberation and fearless way of life. The most complicated emotions — like self-hatred — proceed from these kinds of grey areas and ambiguities, and are often much harder to handle than a more pure or straightforward emotion like the hatred of another.
This is a tremendously psychologically acute directorial debut from Georgia Oakley, with a fantastically layered and complex performance from McEwen, who is able to convey oceans of repressed feeling through the subtlest surface ripples — I hope we see plenty more work from both of them.
BLUE JEAN (2021) Written by Georgia Oakley | Shot by Victor Seguin | Edited by Izabella Curry
Screened in Giornate degli Autori at the 79th Venice Film Festival
