© 20th Century Fox
Why Love, Simon is the most important film of the year
By Teo van den Broeke 17 April 2018
How a big budget, studio-released rom com accidentally became the most socially relevant movie of 2018
First things first. Love, Simon is unlikely to be remembered as a masterpiece. Its director, Greg Berlanti, isn't considered an auteur, it's not going to win an Oscar and it probably won't be included in any visual culture modules at Russell Group Universities.
Love, Simon is a big budget romantic comedy in the vein of Never Been Kissed, Clueless or 10 Things I Hate About You. It's glossy, occasionally saccharine and not really representative of life as you or I know it. Or at least not the reality of anyone that lives in my grey-tinged corner of South East London.
Despite all that, Love, Simon is, for me, the most important film to be released in 2018 thus far. The reason? Love, Simon is the first major studio-released teen film to feature a gay lead character and (admittedly slightly less importantly) it's the first mainstream Hollywood feature which has ever spoken to me, a 30-year-old gay man, in a language I fully understand.
For the uninitated, Love, Simon tells the story of a teenage American boy, Simon (played brilliantly by newcomer Nick Robinson), who, in his own words, is hiding "one huge ass secret" from his peers, his family and his friends at school. A glimmer of hope is provided when Simon (who, with his nonsibilant, baritone voice and hoody-dominated wardrobe defies traditional gay stereotypes) encounters "Blue" on a social media website used by kids in Simon's friendship group.
Blue, we soon learn, is also hiding his sexuality and struggling with the secrecy of it all. Simon and Blue embark on a digital romance, neither knowing the other's real identity, and - long story short – things start to unravel when the pair's intimate email correspondence is leaked, and Simon is forced to come out to everyone in his life.
'Robinson adeptly manages to capture the anxiety of being a gay teenager with even more dexterity than Timothée Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name'
Simon's facial expressions most affected me. With a few well-placed glances - a furtive look at the buff next door neighbour on the way to school, a pained expression at his dad's ill-judged sex jokes, a brow sorrowfully furrowed at the burden of his secret – Robinson adeptly manages to capture the anxiety of being a gay teenager with even more dexterity, dare I say it, than Timothée Chalamet in 2017's Call Me By Your Name.
It's a feeling I remember well. I too was forced to come out before I was ready, at the age of 15, when a bat-shit former friend of mine took it upon herself to start telling my friends on my behalf. I was relatively lucky, there were seven other gay guys in my year (this in a co-ed comprehensive Catholic school in Surrey where year sizes never really exceeded 180 students), all of whom came out well before me.
I was popular-ish, unathletic but tall (I was 6ft2" by the time I was a teenager) and I had a deep voice. The response to my revelation was mixed. Like Simon, I was unequivocally supported by my parents and family (though regrettably my little sister found out at school before I had a chance to tell her - much like Simon experiences in the film), dropped by some friends, taunted by others and lovingly told to shut up and stop being so attention seeking by most.
'For an expensively made "queer" film with mass appeal to offer a fairytale ending for its gay lead is remarkable'
That a film has been made which finally confronts the process of coming out – a process which up to one-in-ten young people around the world will potentially have to go through – in an accessible way (with none of the arthouse Euro-aristo elegance of Call Me by Your Name or period separation of Brokeback Mountain) is nothing short of revolutionary.
It's also important to note that this is a 'gay' movie with a happy ending. The trend, after all, has been for big hitting queer films to end in misery. In 2008's Milk the titular character's martyrdom was the point of the piece. Brokeback ended with co-protagonist Jack Twist being dragged by his genitals from a tow truck for being gay. In Philadelphia, the film ends with gay lawyer Tom Hanks dying, entirely miserably, from Aids. For an expensively made film with mass appeal to offer a fairytale ending for its gay lead is remarkable.
There are things about Love, Simon that are undeniably cheesy. The goofball vice principal who jokes with his students about his Tinder dates is a bit too "the dad from American Pie" for my taste. Simon's eerily ageless little sister, who looks like a mini Mary Whitehouse and gets up (somewhat inexplicably) at the crack of dawn every morning to cook the family breakfast, is a weird character addition (though the scene where Simon is forced into confirming the truth to her is heartbreaking). And the film's penultimate montage, in which Simon may or may not get the guy, is straight out of Disney (if Disney did gays).
For all its anodyne rom-com silliness, however, Love, Simon is also funny (Natasha Rothwell's exasperated drama teacher is a riot), sad and beautiful in equal measure. The scene in which Simon's mum, played with pitch-perfect parental angst by Jennifer Garner, encourages him to finally "exhale" is second only in the "post-coming-out parental soliloquy" category to Michael Stuhlbarg's poetic pep talk to his on-screen son Elio (Chalamet) in the aforementioned Call Me by Your Name. Suffice to say, I sobbed.
Rupert Murdoch-owned 20th Century Fox spent an extraordinary $17 million on Love, Simon (compared to Brokeback's $15 million, Moonlight's $4m, Call Me by Your Name's $3.5m and Carol's $11.8m): it's a princely sum which suggests that major studios might finally be open to fully diversifying their slates.
That being said, compared to other romantic comedies in the market returns have been relatively small for Love, Simon. Bridesmaids made $26,274,410 in its first weekend in the US in 2011, while 2003's How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days made $23,774,850. Love, Simon, on the other hand, made $11,756,244.
The solution? Go and see Love, Simon. Chances are there's a Simon in your life who'd appreciate the gesture.
**Liked this? Now read: **Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet interview
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