Love, Simon (2018)
Everyone deserves a great love story. But for Simon
it's complicated: no-one knows he's gay and he doesn't know who the
anonymous classmate is that he's fallen for online. Resolving both
issues proves hilarious, scary and life-changing.
Director:
Greg BerlantiStars:
Country:
USALanguage:
EnglishRelease Date:
16 March 2018 (USA) See more »Also Known As:
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda See more »Company Credits
Production Co:
The familiar formula of the high school movie is elevated by warmth,
humor and remarkable delicacy surrounding the difficulty of being a gay
teenager.
It’s
easy to forget, given Moonlight’s groundbreaking Oscar haul and the
steady stream of acclaimed LGBT indies released since, that queer
characters in mainstream films are still barely visible. They make
infrequent throwaway appearances in minor roles, providing emotional or
comic support while their stories remain secondary, thinly sketched,
irrelevant. Attempts to crowbar them into franchise films have been
embarrassingly coy and so instead, their narratives have been forced to
stay within smaller films, where the risk of offending or alienating an
over-catered straight audience wouldn’t be viewed as such a problem.
This all makes the arrival of Love, Simon feel like a bit of a
landmark moment. It’s a glossy wide-releasing comedy from Fox, an
adaptation of a YA novel that boasts the team of producers who turned
The Fault in Our Stars into a global smash along with a cast filled with
of-the-moment teen stars, a Jack Antonoff-curated soundtrack of new
music and, most importantly, a gay character in the lead. It’s,
shockingly, still a big risk not just because of the protagonist’s
sexuality but because teen movies are no longer in vogue (even last
year’s critically adored The Edge of Seventeen couldn’t make it to $20m
at the worldwide box office). One worries about the weight carried by
one film, and how execs might use its potential failure to warn against
“experimenting” again.
Simon (Nick Robinson) is a regular high school teen. His life is
unremarkable, something he’s highly aware of, and the only thing about
it that feels out of the ordinary is a secret: he’s gay. Pretending to
be straight is a self-preservation tactic that might make him feel
lonely but it also makes him feel safe. Simon’s routine is upended when
he discovers, via an underground blog shared amongst his classmates,
that someone else at the school is also gay. The pair begin an anonymous
email flirtation and his life starts opening up to the possibility of
not only romance but the idea of finally being himself
Teen movies that revolve around gay central characters have
traditionally been small in both budget and audience so it’s pleasing
that from the outset, the director, Greg Berlanti (one of TV’s most
powerful show-runners), is unashamedly courting a mainstream crowd.
Love, Simon is as slickly packaged as its heterosexual peers, and as a
result, there’s a tightrope being walked, the film hoping to attract a
larger, straighter crowd while having to ensure the gay audience doesn’t
feel as if the protagonist’s story is being sanitized. The script, from
the This is Us writers Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, based on the
novel by Becky Albertalli, manages this with impressive subtlety and,
given the studio framework, an important lack of timidity.
Simon’s sexuality is not a barely hinted-at subplot but the key
thrust of the film and there’s an almost educational significance for a
wider audience in its well-orchestrated portrayal of the specific and
intricate difficulties of being a gay teen. The daily deception, the
constructed behaviors, the niggling fear of exposure – there are nifty,
poignant insights into how terrifying an already terrifying time can be
and, while it’s an experience we’ve seen on the big screen before
(Moonlight’s middle section handled it heartbreakingly well), it’s never
played out on such a grand stage before and at such a vital moment in
time. The polished, sometimes overly soundtracked veneer still allows
for a procession of acutely observed details, from the hypersensitivity
around how others discuss sexuality to the unspoken jealousy aimed at
those able to conduct themselves with more surface-level comfort.
That’s not to say that Love, Simon is just an earnest PSA, though.
It’s a hugely charming crowd pleaser, an infectiously entertaining
coming of age film that feels primed to attract and retain a loyal
eager-to-rewatch audience. There’s a wealth of snappy dialogue and what
feels like an attentive grasp of teenage life, meaning that the high
school movie box-ticking that occurs (there’s a Halloween party and
a big speech at a football game) doesn’t feel robotic. Robinson is an
immensely likable lead and as he tries to figure out which local teen
might be his secret crush, he does some fine, delicate work conveying an
uneasy longing, unsure of how long to stare, terrified of what might
happen if he’s wrong. The refreshingly diverse teenage cast around him
are all strong (including 13 Reasons Why’s Katherine Langford and The
Flash’s Keiynan Lonsdale) while there’s a standout, scene-stealing turn from Insecure’s Natasha Rothwell as a drama teacher.
When the film arrives at the third act, Simon’s coming out is spread
out over a number of keenly observed scenes, authentically wrought and
undeniably impactful. Berlanti avoids overly ratcheting up the drama and
a scene between Robinson and Jennifer Garner, playing his mother, is
wonderfully understated, its impact that much greater thanks to an
avoidance of cloying theatrics. There is one rather regrettable misstep
near the end as the script makes a misjudged #AllLivesMatter-style
attempt to liken coming out to other high school reveals (“Everyone has
to announce who they are”); grouped together with a few other
step-too-far feel good moments, it’s at risk of pushing the film into
the realm of fantasy.
But Berlanti pulls us back from potential overkill as Simon’s
romantic pursuit also reaches its climax and – without spoiling the
identity of his e-pal – what could have been pat ends up thrilling. The
audience in my press screening reacted giddily as if it were the end of a
Marvel blockbuster: cheering, clapping and squealing at what felt like
an unfettered breakthrough moment for mainstream representation of
same-sex romance. Love, Simon won’t be short of critics (and many of
them will be adamant that its story is either unimportant or, gasp,
amoral) but within its sleek studio skeleton, there’s genuine heart.
- Love, Simon is released in the US on 16 March in the UK on 6 April
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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