'Beautiful Thing' Film Review

Spoiler alert: this review talks about most of the film's plot

If you want a gloriously British film peeking into LGBT life, watch Pride. If you want a gentle but gritty film, watch Beautiful Thing. There’s no subdued backdrop of 1980s liberal London or Wales through a 2014 lens. This is a 1996 film in a 1990s council estate, Thamesmead, just south of the river. And two current Eastenders stars in the cast (Linda Henry and Tameka Empson) automatically reinforce its realism.

Jamie and Ste are teenage neighbours on the estate, joined by their frenemy Leah who’s obsessed with Mama Cass, sending the film and its soundtrack even further back into retroism. Amidst loud music, arguments, drink, drugs, pregnancies and part-time lovers, the film focuses in on Jamie’s relationship with his single mum Sandra, and the domestic abuse Ste suffers from his Dad and brother.

Sandra offers Ste refuge by sleeping ‘top to tail’ with Jamie in his bed. What’s been obviously on its way since the glances of the first scene happens as the pair touch, kiss and begin a closeted, tender relationship. It leads them to their first gay bar and running around the woods like the school boy lovers they are.

Amidst the observational comedy of life on the estate, homophobia seeps out at a time when finding out about gay life was smuggling Gay Times out of the corner shop. You see how Leah uses homophobia to build her own power through fear, how Jamie and Ste look for an escape from their self-shame and project it into their parents. It’s Tony, Sandra’s current boyfriend who finds the immediate words of affirmation when Jamie and Ste are outed: ‘This is… It’s… It’s cool’.

Leah, Jamie and Ste

Beautiful Thing is a simple, understated film, stemming from its stage play and then made-for-TV roots. Its writer, Jonathan Harvey, later adapted Beautiful People into a TV show that does add a camp gloss to growing up gay in 1990s Britain.

I knew Beautiful Thing was a milestone film and mistakenly thought it would be about young gay sex, not the coming of age, coming out comedic-drama it is. 20 years ago when it was released on screen, its power must have lied in that simplicity, those tender first touches that still say ‘gay is OK’. 20 years on, I smiled as Sandra realised her gay son meant she’ll ‘never have grandchildren’. Maybe she does.