Review: Boy Erased
Much like the recent The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Boy Erased revolves around a teen's experience undergoing gay conversion therapy. Familiar but no less moving for it, it is an excellently acted look at how one's sexuality can confuse, isolate, yet ultimately empower.
Based on Garrard Conley's 2016 memoir, the film introduces 18-year-old Jared Eamons as he prepares to start a 12-day course of conversion therapy. It seems an inevitability given that his parents are both devout Christians. His father Marshall (Russell Crowe) is a car dealer and Baptist preacher; his mother Nancy (Nicole Kidman) is a hair dresser. Both clearly love their son, but his homosexuality is a challenge to their faith and they react the only way they know how, though there are signs that Nancy is not necessarily in agreement with Marshall's way of handling Jared's coming out.
The conversion therapy program is run by self-anointed therapist Victor Sykes (Joel Edgerton, who adapted Conley's memoir and also serves as director), who preaches that homosexuality is a choice, is a result of poor parenting, and can be overcome through willpower. There are intimations that he himself may be conflicted about his own sexuality and, whilst that element may have been further explored, Edgerton's decision in keep this on the back burner is in keeping with the restraint and sensitivity in which he handles the material. That approach - treating the convictions of Jared's parents and Sykes as valid if misguided, in the case of the former, and extreme, in the case of the latter - proves a judicious one because there's a certain horror that permeates Boy Erased, one borne out of how not all monsters are evil, but rather human beings who behave in a manner they believe is right.
Where Boy Erased differentiates itself from The Miseducation of Cameron Post is in depicting Jared's evolving dynamic with his parents, particularly Nancy, who is beautifully embodied by Kidman. As she demonstrated in her Oscar-nominated performance in Lion and, to a certain extent, her brief appearance in Aquaman, Kidman does well in expressing maternal warmth and devotion. Boy Erased may primarily be about Jared finding his own voice, but it is secondarily about Nancy discovering hers. When she does, towards the end of the film, it is a startling and rousing moment.
Yet the film belongs to Hedges, who has firmly established himself as an actor capable of refined nuance and complexity. There's a wonderful naturalness about him in a way that never feels contrived, and an effortless aura that belies how precise and meticulous his performance is. Boy Erased is not a perfect film but, in many respects, an essential one that will hopefully help parents who find themselves in the same situation and also, once and for all, put an end to conversion therapy.
Boy Erased
Directed by: Joel Edgerton
Written by: Joel Edgerton; adapted from the memoir by Garrard Conley
Starring: Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Joel Edgerton, Joe Alwyn, Xavier Dolan, Troye Sivan, Cherry Jones, Flea
