BLUE JEAN - Mark Reviews Movies

Blue Jean, Magnolia Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 8, 2023

It's one thing to feel like an outsider. It's an entirely different matter altogether to have family, friends, co-workers, and the apparatus of government insinuate or bluntly state that a person is one. That's the predicament of Blue Jean, an intimate drama about a woman who cannot accept herself because she fears so few will if she does.

The backdrop here is 1988 in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne, where Jean (Rosy McEwen) works as a physical education teacher at a local public school. She mostly keeps quiet and to herself, dismissing invitations from fellow teachers to go to the local pub and spending her evenings watching some TV dating show or coloring her hair blonde.

Jean does have a life beyond work and sitting alone in her house, though. She does go out to a local bar, although the hope is that none of her co-workers will be there. There's a group of friends with whom she spends time, but none of them are part of what we'll say is Jean's public life. She has a private one, after all, that's nobody else's business.

Jean is a lesbian. It's such a simple thing to state now as a matter of plain fact, but again, this is 1988. Margaret Thatcher and her party are in control of the government of the United Kingdom, and they are ready to pass legislation that could turns Jean's particular existence as a gay woman and public educator into a crime. The fear is the notion of the "promotion of homosexuality" by public institutions, especially ones that deal with matters involving children.

The uproar in the backdrop and the undercurrent of terror of this film have somehow become a reflection of the present day, especially in certain parts of and by certain government officials within the United States. One is sorely reminded of the old adage about being doomed to repeat history for failing to learn from it. The other side of that is the unfortunate reality that some people intentionally copy history with the sole intention of repeating it.

If Jean's story feels relevant again, that's just an additional layer of significance to writer/director Georgia Oakley's debut feature. At its core, though, the film is a well-observed and well-performed character study about someone living in denial, because the fear of being rejected by family, friends, and society overwhelms the desire to simply be happy in one's own skin.

Our protagonist sets that up right near the start, as she discusses with her netball team of teenage girls the concept of a fight-or-flight response. Jean is constantly within the scope of the flight instinct of that dichotomy, and McEwen's performance, as a woman who has made it such an integral part of her personality and behavior to keep her head down and evade any scrutiny, cuts straight to this attitude of anonymity. Everything about Jean, from her outfits to the way she holds herself, feels like a performance of what she believes to be "normal" and wholly unassuming.

The story details Jean's life at work, just going along and not saying or doing anything to attract attention, and with her actual friends, including a girlfriend named Viv (Kerrie Hayes). Those friends don't hide anything, but Jean feels as if she has to. It's not just the job, which could come under threat with the passage of Clause 28, that series of overtly anti-gay laws. It's also Jean's relationship with her sister Sasha (Aoife Kennan), who insists she supports Jean's sexuality but scolds her sister for having Viv over when Sasha dropped off her young son at Jean's house unannounced. Considering that Jean no longer speaks to her mother, the obvious fear is that one wrong move or statement could escalate Sasha's obvious prejudice into estrangement.

The drama of Oakley's film, then, is in watching Jean deal with this horrible balancing act in every aspect of her life. At school, she has to be essentially perfect as a teacher and co-worker. With her sister and brother-in-law (played by Scott Turnbull), she can't say too much, either, lest they decide Jean isn't the sort who should spend time with her beloved nephew. With Viv and her other friends, she has to be as much of herself as she can, but how is that possible when Jean must constantly scan for any familiar face who might spot her at the bar or showing public affection for Viv?

That does happen, eventually. A new student named Lois (Lucy Halliday) arrives at the school where Jean teaches, and one night, the shy and regularly bullied girl turns up at the bar. Lois, who is also a lesbian and is also afraid of what the discovery of that will mean for her life, just wants some kind of role model, and Jean is a most obvious candidate. Obviously, Jean won't let that happen, because that might give her away in some way and she knows she's not the right person for the role on account of that fear. All of this mounts, until Jean has to decide what and who to betray in order to keep her secret.

It's a grim, claustrophobic tale—not only in terms of the content, but also in the way Oakley and cinematographer Victor Seguin implement close-ups and maintain a feeling of gloom over everything (When the light shines late in the film, we realize just how overbearing the dim has been). Blue Jean, though, is also bluntly honest about the unfortunate power people and society have in diminishing the truth, happiness, and hope of someone's existence, simply because of who they are.

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