A slow-burn LGBTQ+ social drama set in Thatcher’s Britain, Blue Jean is a beautifully-made ode to the queer community of the north of England in the 80s. Written and directed by Georgia Oakley (Atonement), the film stars an elegantly bleached Rosy McEwen as the titular Jean: a lesbian PE teacher in Newcastle who wants nothing more than to be normal and unremarkable.

To do this, she keeps work and pleasure strictly separate, creating an almost double identity that anyone forced to live closeted will empathise with: her work days spent as a divorced, single netball teacher and her free time with her girlfriend Viv (Kerrie Hayes) and their tightknit circle of lesbian friends. However, with the enactment of Section 28 looming, her life becomes increasingly politicised. At the same time, a student who joins the netball team threatens to bring her two disparate worlds crashing together, ruining both.

Following the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967, Section 28 aimed to create a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ environment in schools, with the goal of ‘protecting’ impressionable young minds from any non-heteronormative influence. It wasn’t repealed until 2000. Oakley’s film does a fantastic job of showing the culture of fear and paranoia this created for LGBTQ+ people living through this period in a way that feels uncomfortably real. Microaggressions, exacerbated by politics, include long stares from neighbours and pointed comments from colleagues and family members.

McEwen’s performance, meanwhile, compliments the duality of her character’s life and her response to this constant scrutiny. Most of the time she’s wonderfully understated, a barely-expressive mask buttoning a maelstrom of stress; the rare moments she unbottles her emotions feel like real gut punches as a result.

Blue Jean centres on performance, being more of a character study than a heavy political drama. But Oakley’s direction takes some interesting flights of fancy, helped by Chris Roe’s sensitive, fluttering score (peppered with era-appropriate club classics), elevating the film beyond what could have been purely televisual or for the stage.

It’s also a world that feels lived-in, from the clothing and hair to the insides of houses. Nothing is too bright and polished like a lot of 80s nostalgia-baiters, instead taking a more naturalistic approach to the decade: it’s raw, rough and dank, but there’s tenderness and warmth in private moments of intimacy and companionship. Born in 1988, Oakley couldn’t have properly experienced much of this first-hand, yet her reverence for authenticity is clear. “I wanted to create something that was inspired by the classics from the time, rather than a film that alluded to the 1980s,” she told CineEuropa.

With a protagonist torn between burying her head in the sand and doing the right thing, Blue Jean highlights, without hammering its audience over the head in doing so, what luxury it is to live a non-politicised life, as well as the dangers of inaction for marginalised communities and their allies. Today, the legacy of Section 28 can be seen in the stigmatisation of trans people, whose lives have been the subject of an often cruel and unrelenting press and political cycle. Filmmaking like this reminds us of the value of remembering history, lest we repeat it. 

Dir. Georgia Oakley (15, 97 mins)

Blue Jean is out in cinemas from Fri 10 Feb

words HANNAH COLLINS