Blue Jean (Oakley, 2024)

Written by Tom Augustine.

If there was ever a piece of modern filmmaking that underlined the importance and value of shooting on film stock, it’s Georgia Oakley’s searing and profound Blue Jean. I’ve seen innumerable modern period pieces that aim to capture what life was like in the 80s, the 70s, the 60s and further back – but the sheen of their digital photography is so clean and perfect that a layer of unreality descends over the imagery. The sets look like sets. The actors look like they’re cosplaying. There’s no authenticity to the work. Film stock, with its handmade, chemical imperfections and idiosyncrasies, feels like life, dream and memory, even if it isn’t a perfect visual replication of the human eye the way digital is. This is particularly potent in films that take us back to older eras, crafting an immediate intimacy that’s difficult to deny. Blue Jean, a film about a closeted lesbian in the cruel, cold Thatcher era, doesn’t necessarily tell us a story we haven’t heard before, but is so elevated by the presence of its 16mm film stock photography that it becomes something fresh and enthralling in a way it simply wouldn’t if it had that digital sheen of so many other period films of the modern era. 

I’ve been writing for View Magazine for some two years now, and have seen many great films come across my desk care of Rialto Channel – that said, this month might be one of the strongest in terms of new offerings the channel has had in that time. Blue Jean is one of them, but there’s also Loop Track, the extremely satisfying and electrifying horror film from Kiwi comedian-turned-writer/director/star Tom Sainsbury. It’s a film that has been made entirely off the back of Sainsbury and his team, the production company Chillbox – but the restraints of a micro-budget are barely legible in the final product, with its lean, brutal script and daring creature-feature twists and turns. Then there’s master auteur Paul Schrader’s Master Gardener, the final in his loose ‘Man in a Room’ trilogy (preceded by First Reformed and The Card Counter). The mind behind Taxi Driver and other Seventies classics’ late period renaissance has been a joy to behold, and Master Gardener serves as a fascinatingly complex capstone with a wonderful Joel Edgerton performance at its centre. There’s also renowned Australian filmmaker Rolf de Heer’s latest The Survival of Kindness, the finale of essential sci-fi export series Infiniti, buzzy profile docs Little Richard: I Am Everything and Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer, and Formula 1 documentary Jackie Stewart, about the legendary driver and team owner. Blue Jean may be the finest of the lot, however, a sensitive but never saccharine portrayal of the terrible cost of hiding oneself away and the cruelty of judging eyes.  

Arriving this month on Rialto Channel, Georgia Oakley’s gorgeous tale of Thatcher-era queer struggle and liberation is one of the strongest and most assured of Britain’s new, women-led era of cinema. Featuring a stunning lead performance from Rosy McEwan, it’s the rare modern period piece that feels utterly authentic to the time in which it is set.

Rosy McEwen, a relative unknown at the time of Blue Jean’s release, blazes across the screen as the titular PE teacher at an eighties British secondary school, who lives a life of utmost secrecy, hiding the reality of her sexual orientation from her work and her family. Thatcher’s government is about to pass Section 28 laws prohibiting the promotion of homosexuality, something Jean actively ignores out of self-preservation more than anything. McEwen rightfully won a British Independent Film Award for the performance, which offers us fragility and flintiness in equal portions, particularly as Jean’s worlds begin to collide when one of her students Lois (Lucy Halliday, impressive), also questioning her sexuality, spots her at a neighbourhood gay bar. Suddenly, Jean’s well-managed facade begins to fray as she desperately tries to keep her secrets intact – even as the fiction wears at the relationship she’s built with out lesbian Viv (Kerrie Hayes, also great). 

It’s a drama made more interesting by the fascinating paradoxes of McEwen’s character. Jean doesn’t want to be at the centre of a political firestorm, and yet her existence as a queer woman practically demands it. Rather than be a banner carrier for free expression, Jean encourages Lois to follow in her footsteps and stay in the closet, the easier to fade into the background of the accepted society. This leads to further complications as Lois’ more obvious sexuality becomes the target of bullying from other students, until the question becomes whether Jean’s well-constructed lie is worth the effort it takes to preserve it. McEwen wears this contradiction on her face, making her quiet, reserved wallflower of a character utterly magnetic with as little as a glance or a twitch of the upper lip. Director Oakley, one of many emerging female filmmakers who have ushered in a new era of British cinema thanks to government arts support (think Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, Rose Glass’ Saint Maud, Mollie Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex, Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper, and the films of Clio Barnard), wisely sees what she has in McEwen’s all-in performance and stays close to her throughout the action, while allowing for moments of queer expression to filter through from Jean’s friends and compatriots. As a drama, Blue Jean is exceptional. As a reminder of the social crises the queer community face and continue to struggle with, it is just as precise and profound. In this election year, with Britain (seemingly, hopefully) arriving at the tail end of a decade-plus of heartless Tory rule, Oakley’s depiction of Thatcherite misery and repression, and the liberation that lies beyond it, feel all the more vital, angry and hopeful.

Blue Jean premieres July 13 at 8:30pm exclusively on Rialto Channel.

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