With a peroxide blonde pixie cut and a long swishing coat, Jean (Rosy McEwen) makes for a striking figure as she walks around Tyneside. Recently divorced and newly out, she’s the reserved one in the rowdy gaggle of lesbians she drinks and plays pool with.
When Jean’s (brass) buttoned-up sister calls around, Jean’s proud, radical girlfriend Viv (Kerries Hayes) can’t comprehend her awkwardness and discomfort. “You don’t know what it’s like for me,” Jean tells Viv. She has good reason to be reticent. It’s 1988 and Margaret Thatcher’s government has passed Section 28, a shameful, homophobic clause preventing teachers from the “promotion of ... the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship” in schools.
For Jean, a PE teacher, even the advertising billboards – “Are your children being taught moral values?” – feel targeted. Casual banter in the staff room (“Craig would love you to come for a drink with us”) telegrams Jean’s carefully compartmentalised life.
These constructions are threatened when a new student, Lois (Lucy Halliday) runs into Jean at a local lesbian bar. Jean, who speaks to her netball-playing charges about fight or flight impulses, visibly flinches between these options.
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An elegantly structured film composed of clever, delicate movements, every aspect of Georgia Oakley’s debut feature – from Izabella Curry’s editing to Kirsty Halliday’s period costuming – is as restrained as Rosy McEwen’s excellent performance.
She’s assisted by terrific scene partners, including Hayes and eerily good newcomer Halliday. Chris Roe’s score and Victor Seguin’s cinematography add to the sense that we’re watching a genuine 1980s artefact, replete with contemporaneous clips from Cilla Black’s Blind Date.
Historical context adds gravitas to the project. Glimpsed television newscasts and the casual use of the word “pervert” in the changing room evoke all the fears and prejudices bound up in Section 28. Jean’s visit to her sister’s house, where the latter refuses to take down a photograph of Jean’s wedding day, echoes the current discourse around deadnaming.
