Boy Erased

Seen at the Westgarth Theatre, Northcote VIC

Cecil says: Another film seen at the Westgarth as part of my Vintage Victoria cinema search. So seen without Bea this time, too.

Boy Erased has had good reviews. It even got a mention at my little local film club as a film on release that we should all see. But I actually found it a bit depressing, and even made me think of a kind of LGBT version of Handmaid's Tale, seeing a dystopian America, where the religious fundamentalists rule and anything outside the very orthodox around gender and sexuality is to be not only hidden but punished.

The trouble is, unlike The Handmaid's Tale, however real that may become, Boy Erased is based on real life characters so this really did happen.

Basically it is about a gay man, whose father is a church minister preaching about moral rectitude week-in, week-out, and his Mum goes along with what the father wants.

And what the father wants, after getting advice from other awful church elders, is to send his son off for conversion therapy to help him rid himself of the sin of homosexuality.

The whole concept is deeply disturbing, as are some of the scenes both inside the 'education' centre, and in Jared's own initiation into gay sex, where he basically gets raped.

It all ends up OK, and Jared manages to come out of it - still gay, of course - with his mind and his family relationships intact, but this is not a feel-good movie. And I was dying to ask the gay couple next to me what they made of it; what their overall feeling at the end was? Depression at the oppression, or lifted up by the outcomes?

I didn't feel able to ask them and they left just before I did.

Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe are good, though I'm not sure why they cast two Aussies in these middle American roles. Lucas Hedges is excellent at Jared Eamons.

Not the most uplifting end to a lovely afternoon at the Westgarth

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