Movie Revie: The Miseducation of Cameron Post

The Miseducation of Cameron Post **** / *****

Directed by: Desiree Akhavan.

Written by: Desiree Akhavan and Cecilia Frugiuele based on the novel by Emily M. Danforth.

Starring: Chloë Grace Moretz (Cameron), Sasha Lane (Jane), John Gallagher Jr. (Reverend Rick), Forrest Goodluck (Adam), Emily Skeggs (Erin), Jennifer Ehle (Dr. Lydia Marsh), Quinn Shephard (Coley), Kerry Butler (Ruth), Dalton Harrod (Jamie), McCabe Slye (Brett), Owen Campbell (Mark).

 

You would be forgiven if you saw the previews for the Sundance winning The Miseducation of Cameron Post and thought that it was a twofer of tried movie clichés – a quirky, comedy-drama, coming of age film in the Sundance vein of other Sundance winners that have been quickly forgotten (remember The Way Way Back? – don’t worry, no one else does either) with an added element of gay tragedy to the mixture as well. I feel for LGBTQ audiences who want to see their stories told, but more often that not, are faced with watching tragedies told of their lives as being little more than pain and suffering. Take the typical Sundance formula, and place it in a gay conversation camp in the early 1990s, and you have elements that in lesser hands may have made The Miseducation of Cameron Post insufferable. But luckily, it’s in lesser hands.

 

The movie stars the wonderful young actress Chloe Grace Mortez – who was such an assured child actress, you worried she would become a cliché, that thankfully hasn’t happened as she has matured – as the title character, an orphan living somewhere in rural Pennsylvania (reminding viewers of what James Carville once said about the state – that its Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, with Alabama in between) who is living with a concerned family member, who clearly doesn’t understand or love her like a parent would. When the film opens, she is getting dressed up for prom – but isn’t really into it. By the end of the night, she will be hauled out of a parked car where she was caught making out with Coley (Quinn Shephard), and humiliated in front of her classmates. That’s not as bad as being sent to God’s Promise though – the gay conversion camp – that works very hard to “cure” teenagers of their SSA (Same Sex Attraction). It isn’t going well.

 

This could be heavy material – the trailers for the just released Boy Erased (which I have not seen yet) make that film look like the heavy film this could have been. But The Miseducation of Cameron Post isn’t heavy – there is tragedy and confusion here to be sure, but Cameron has a better head on her shoulders than most in the camp, and although she feels guilt and shame – it’s not for being gay. She knows, at least somewhere down deep, that she is normal. She finds two kindred spirits of a sort in Jane (Sasha Lane) and Adam (Forrest Goodluck), who have their own hard luck stories of how they ended up there – but also know, even more than Cameron, that this camp isn’t going to work. They bond, they laugh, they smoke pot – and mostly just want out. Out of everyone in the movie, they’re the three who may make it out of everything okay.

 

The same cannot be said for everyone else in the cast. The camp is run by Dr. Lydia Marsh (Jennifer Ehle), who has the same kind of calm, cruel scariness to her that defined Louise Fletcher’s Nurse Ratched. She can cut you down with a withering stare or a devastatingly cruel remark delivered in a friendly voice. Her first “success” story was her brother, Reverend Rick (John Gallagher Jr.), a sad man who tries to help these teenagers with his own story of redemption – even if it becomes clear that down deep, he doesn’t believe it (the story he tells about some of his fellow parishioners finding him in a gay bar and dragging him out, is rightly mocked by the central trio when they are alone). Rick so desperately doesn’t want to be gay, but he is, and he knows it.

 

The same is true for most of the rest of the teenagers who are there – including Cameron’s roommate Erin (Emily Skeggs), who is outwardly so chipper and upbeat. Like the rest of the campers, she has done her “iceberg” – a device where they tell their life story, and find the things that have tricked them into thinking they are gay (there is no such thing as homosexuals, Lydia tells them). For Erin, it was in part bonding with her father over football – too masculine for a woman. Cameron catches on enough to tell others what they want to hear – that she got too much positive reinforcement for sports, that she confused wanting to be Colely with being attracted to her – but never believes it.

 

There is tragedy in The Miseducation of Cameron Post – it would be odd for a movie that is about a place that tells teenagers to deny who they are not to show the consequences of that. But it also shows how Cameron and her friends navigate through that – and come out the other side. This is still 1993 – they’re years away from mainstream acceptance of them – but I have a feeling these three teenagers turned out okay. The tragedy is that the rest of the kids aren’t as lucky.