Review: Love, Simon

As directed by Greg Berlanti and written by This Is Us scribes Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, Love, Simon is an appealing teen romantic drama that would be like most of its ilk were it not for the fact that it has a gay protagonist at its center. Of course, this is not the first film that has dealt with the romantic travails of a homosexual lead character - one only has to look to last year's Academy Award-nominated Call Me By Your Name to see one of the best examples of queer cinema - but it is the first to be released by a major studio, thus marking a significant milestone for LGBT cinema.

"For the most part, my life is totally normal," high schooler Simon Spier (Nick Robinson) shares in the film's opening voiceover. Indeed, his life seems an idealised version of normal. His parents are happily married high school sweethearts - Jack (Josh Duhamel) was the star quarterback and Emily (Jennifer Garner) the valedictorian. Simon and his younger sister Nora (Talitha Bateman) have such a loving relationship they can't even fake friction. Then there are his close friends Leah (Katherine Langford), Abby (Alexandra Shipp), and Nick (Jorge Lendeborg, Jr.). Yet, for all the love and support that surround him, Simon has yet to reveal his biggest secret: he's gay.

Though the film appears content to breeze along, there is a plot to be thickened and so an anonymous blog post surfaces. Under the pseudonym of "Blue," a fellow student reveals he's gay. Empathy piqued, Simon reaches out to Blue and the two soon embark on a correspondence, with the two soon falling in love. Yet neither knows the other's true identity and when another student outs Simon, Simon must deal with the consequences of being out.

For those wanting a bit more substance, the film becomes more interesting once Simon's sexual orientation is revealed to his friends and family. Their reaction is hurt and disappointment, not because he's gay, but rather because he took such great pains to cover up the fact. Yet even this discordance barely lasts. Though it's outlook might be a bit la vie en rose for its own good, it's actually what makes Love, Simon subversive in its own way. The fact that it can be so interchangeable with other high school rom-coms is the point; everyone undergoes the same base experiences and the film's conventional and sitcom-ish quality undergirds rather than undermines the tale's universality.

Love, Simon

Directed by: Greg Berlanti

Written by: Isaac Aptaker, Elizabeth Berger; based on the novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

Starring: Nick Robinson, Jennifer Garner, Josh Duhamel, Katherine Langford, Alexandra Shipp, Logan Miller, Tony Hale, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Talitha Bateman, Natasha Rothwell