Love is love
The Miseducation of Cameron Post (15)
Director: Desiree Akhavan
The Plot: It's 1993, and 15 year-old Cameron Post (Moretz) has a big secret - she's gay, something her devoutly Christian family considers a sin. When she's caught being intimate with another girl, her aunt sends her to a religious camp called God's Promise, run by Dr Lydia Marsh (Ehle) and her brother Reverend Rick (Gallagher Jr). The camp offers controversial gay conversion therapies to young people, claiming to "cure" them through their ultra-strict religious teachings. Cameron struggles against the camp's teachings and environment, and while she makes friends with the similar-minded Jane (Lane) and Adam (Goodluck), she must make a tough decision about her life and beliefs.
Check out the trailer for the film here.
The overwhelming tone of the film is one of observance. Rather than explicitly passing judgement, the film instead simply aims to provide a window into this particular aspect of (in this case, American) religious society to allow us, the audience, to make our own decisions about how we feel about it. While the story is arguably on Cameron's side, she isn't glorified in any way and is just shown for what she is - a young girl getting to grips with her sexuality, in an environment that forbids it. The film doesn't set out to portray what's going on at the camp as right or wrong, but it also doesn't shy away from showing the harshness of the world Cameron finds herself in once she's literally dumped at God's Promise without a say in the matter: despite its lack of fences and charming rural location the place has shades of a prison, with its "disciples" given strict rules to follow, and the claustrophobic framing of its interior shots reinforce this very effectively. Then you have the core of the story itself, the "treatment" the young kids are given for their "same sex attraction", as Dr Marsh and Reverend Rick refer to it as. It's this element that will have the most emotional impact on viewers - what kind of impact I obviously can't say, as there will be people who watch this film with strong religious beliefs and think what's being done is right, and there will be people who think the opposite. By taking the very neutral approach of presenting us with something that goes on in society, and inviting us to make our own minds up about it, director Desiree Akhavan and her fellow screenwriter Cecilia Frugiuele have made the right choice. This approach doesn't work for all films, but it does here.
The film is, understandably, driven by the central performance from Chloë Grace Moretz. As Cameron, this is the world as seen through her eyes, and Moretz gives a subtle, restrained performance that's honestly one of her best. It took me a while to appreciate it: Cameron is a relatively quiet character in terms of speaking out about what she's feeling for the majority of the film, so conflicted is she about her sexuality compared against what her family and the camp is telling her, and it's only towards the end that her real fire about her situation begins to come out. Moretz does well throughout, particularly in an emotional moment where she secretly calls her aunt (phone calls aren't usually allowed for the "disciples") and is refused her plea to come home, but also in the film's two love scenes that aren't at all titillating and very much have the feel of awkward, youthful encounters. Cameron finishes the story as a character who's much more confident about who she is and what she perceives to be wrong, and her transition to this is a believable one thanks to Moretz's performance.
Despite the focus very much being on Moretz, the rest of the cast all do well too. As Dr Marsh, Jennifer Ehle is both cold and unwavering in her faith and beliefs and to me came across as a vile character, in a very effective performance. As her brother Rick, Gallagher Jr is also very good - he's supposedly a poster boy for his sister's "cure", having been a homosexual man in the past, but there's the suggestion that this might still be the case and he has some scenes where his more vulnerable side becomes apparent. I was also impressed with both Sasha Lane and Forrest Goodluck as Jane and Adam, Cameron's fellow campers who befriend her and end up becoming an important influence on her. Both are dealing with similar issues to Cameron, and Lane and Goodluck both put in believable, likeable performances.
There are some negatives to be found, of course. At 91 minutes it has a very short run time, and I felt (for a change) that it actually would have benefited from being longer. The ending is also left open - following her decision to leave the camp, it would have been nice to have seen (however briefly) where Cameron goes from there, but this is left to the audience to imagine. I should also make a point of acknowledging that while I very much liked the approach the film took in how it doesn't judge, some viewers may be put off by that.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
A compelling story that deals with a very controversial subject, without casting judgement and instead opening it up to the audience to decide on how they feel about what's being presented. A strong performance from Chloë Grace Moretz drives the film, even through it's more unsettling moments. Highly recommended.
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