Review: The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Set in the early 1990s when the LGBTQ community had yet to have any significant and accepted representation in pop culture, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, based on the 2012 novel by Emily M. Danforth, begins in a Bible study class where a group of teenagers are being taught that they are at an age where they are especially vulnerable to evil, and what feels like fun is actually an enemy closing a noose around their necks.
Amongst those teenagers are Cameron (Chloë Grace Moretz) and her friend Coley (Quinn Shephard) who, as we witness from their surreptitious make-out session, are more than friends. They're normal young girls exploring their sexuality but when they're caught making out in the backseat of a car during prom, the orphaned Cameron is sent to a Christian camp by her aunt. The camp, named God's Promise, specialises in gay conversion therapy and is run by the Nurse Ratchett-like Dr. Lydia Marsh (Jennifer Ehle) and her brother Reverend Rick (John Gallagher, Jr.), who proclaims that his sister's methods cured him of his own homosexuality.
Other "disciples" trying to pray the gay away in the camp include roommate Erin (Emily Skeggs), an earnest believer who attributes her same-sex attraction to too much sports bonding time with her dad; a girl who goes by the name Jane Fonda (Sasha Lane), who hides the weed she grows in her prosthetic leg; Adam (Forrest Goodluck), a Navajo Two-spirit whose father is trying to get into politics; and Mark (Owen Campbell), whose eagerness to change is matched by the firm belief that he can't. Jane and Adam, whom Cameron befriends and accompanies on their daily hikes, know the whole program is emotionally abusive nonsense but they advise her to just tell Dr. Lydia what she wants to hear and pretend to be getting better, but Cameron isn't quite certain if she wants to fake compliance or challenge Dr. Lydia when she says things like Cameron mistook wanting to be like Coley for wanting to be with her.
On the one hand, one could argue that there is not enough dramatic tension in the film. Cameron isn't necessarily questioning her sexuality nor does she at any point believe she might need saving. Yet that very thing is also the film's strength. At one point, Cameron says that she's tired of feeling disgusted with herself but Jane retorts that that's exactly how you're supposed to feel when you're a teenager. Indeed, those feelings of fear and confusion are at their most heightened at that age, and it is to writer-director Desiree Akhavan's credit that the film maintains a sensitivity and even-keeled temperament when it could have so easily been schematic and shrill.
The world may have come along way in its acceptance and inclusion of the LGBTQ community and their struggles in popular culture, but it bears noting that conversion therapy is still legal in 48 states. The Miseducation of Cameron Post, along with the upcoming Boy Erased (directed by Joel Edgerton and starring Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman and Lucas Hedges), will hopefully make inroads into remedying that travesty.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Directed by: Desiree Akhavan
Written by: Desiree Akhavan, Cecilia Frugiuele; based on the novel by Emily M. Danforth
Starring: Chloë Grace Moretz, Jennifer Ehle, John Gallagher, Jr., Sasha Lane, Forrest Goodluck, Marin Ireland, Owen Campbell, Kerry Butler, Quinn Shephard, Emily Skeggs
