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Re-education classes turn out to be not for the good in The Miseducation of Cameron Post |
Dir: Desiree Akhavan
Cast: Chloë Grace Moretz (Cameron Post), John
Gallagher Jnr (Reverend Rick), Jennifer Ehle (Dr Lydia March), Sasha Lane (Jane
Fonda), Forrest Goodluck (Adam Red Eagle), Marin Ireland (Bethany), Owen
Campbell (Mark), Kerry Butler (Ruth Post), Emily Skeggs (Erin), Quinn Shepherd
(Coley Taylor)
In 1993 teenager Cameron Post (Chloë Grace Moretz) is dispatched
to a church-run sexual re-education camp after she is found to be in a same-sex
relationship with a classmate. At the camp, her quietly cynical attitude
quickly finds her aligned with the sceptical students Jane (Sasha Lane) and
Adam (Forrest Goodluck) as they push up against the regime installed by Dr Lydia
Marsh (Jennifer Ehle). How dangerous is the world of sexual re-education for
its students?
Not surprisingly, the answer is very. The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a rather self-consciously indie
film that sets up easy targets and then happily spends 90 minutes knocking them
down. It’s often made with sensitivity, and has an excellent performance from
Chloë
Grace Moretz as its lead, a character you really root for, but this is a fairly
empty viewing experience.
The film does get a lot of material out of the awful,
cringing re-education programmes. It lands some blows against the hypocritical
nature of the organisation, with at least one of the teachers (John Gallagher
Jnr’s earnest Rick) also barely supressing his homosexuality – and it
re-enforces the cruelty of forcing people into becoming something they are not.
But this is hardly news to any right-thinking person, and it doesn’t always
make for good drama.
This is partly because Cameron herself never feels isolated
in this re-education camp. She almost immediately falls in with like-minded
rebel friends, and several of the other students are openly struggling with
doubts. While the film perhaps wants to show that this sort of social
engineering is never going to work, it does mean that our heroine never really
feels at a disadvantage. You can’t help but feel a more effective film would isolate
Cameron among people professing they are true believers (even if it turns out later
they’ve been pretending), and show her struggling against conformity and
clinging to her individuality. Instead, there seems no threat or any danger at
all that she will ever drink the Kool Aid here at this camp – not for one
second do you feel any chance that she is going to conform.
It makes for a major weakness for the film. It also makes Jane
and Adam rather boring characters. They don’t challenge Cameron’s viewpoint at
all, but merely echo her inner views with an added spice of rebellion. It makes
for uninteresting scene constructions, and it’s not helped by the lack of
chemistry between the three characters. By contrast, her relationship with
roommate Erin, who is desperate to overcome her sexuality, makes for a far more
interesting dynamic. Two characters with very different inner struggles, trying
to find a common ground but frequently failing. Emily Skeggs is also
heartbreaking as Erin, a young woman deeply unhappy and seemingly destined to
remain so.
But there isn’t enough of this sort of thing. Nor is the
viewer really challenged to consider the viewpoints of those running the camps.
Jennifer Ehle, as the doctor running the camp, is a domineering Nurse Ratched
figure, in a role which needed more shades of grey. She’s never a woman
honestly doing what she believes is best, just a bully enjoying the power. John
Gallagher Jnr’s conflicted worker doesn’t come into focus as a fully rounded
human being, and his torment is touched on but his reasons for the decisions he
has made are never explored.
It all contributes to a disappointing viewing experience.
The film is too often shot with a self-conscious indie coolness, which gets on
your nerves after a time, with its constant moody fall backs and gloomy
set-ups. But it’s also a film that is taking a bit too much delight in making
rather obvious and safe points over and over again, and failing to invest
itself with enough drama to make for a compelling story. It’s a disappointment.
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