Blue Jean review: A striking, prescient British debut that resists all ‘lesbian drama’ clichés

Crucially, Georgia Oakley’s film may be set in 1988 but doesn’t embrace the myth that modern Britain is on a steady path of betterment

Blue Jean isn’t your typical British fare. Georgia Oakley’s striking debut places a lesbian relationship front and centre – without lacing up its leads in corsets. It’s an Eighties-set drama that’s adorned with familiar references (at one point, New Order’s “Blue Monday” plays) – but isn’t mired in outlandish grime and misery. Most crucially, it’s a story about past injustice that doesn’t gorge itself on self-satisfaction. Nor the comforting myth that Britain is on a steady path of betterment.

Jean (Rosy McEwen) is a teacher in Newcastle. It’s 1988, in the weeks and months after Section 28 has come into effect, instructing British state schools not to “promote the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”. Jean has always kept her sexuality hidden from her coworkers. But that veil of self-protection comes under threat when she spots one of her new students, Lois (Lucy Halliday), at the local lesbian bar she frequents with her girlfriend Viv (Kerrie Hayes).

This is a story ultimately about hypocrisy, in forms both cruel and tragic. Oakley and her cinematographer, Victor Seguin, tease out these ideas through a subtle visual code: the most oppressive spaces here (the school, the homes of unsupportive family members) are painted in the softest of pastels, as if a superficial attempt has been made to conceal their harshness.

For Jean herself, she is faced with the painful decision of whether to succumb to hypocrisy or risk the loss of her livelihood. She’s never wanted the life of a rebel – early on, she argues to Viv that “not everything’s political” – but the question is really whether she has all that much choice in the matter. She can’t avoid how Viv feels when she refers to her as a “friend” in front of her nephew. And there’s nowhere to hide when an incident of bullying at the school involving Lois forces her to choose between her own safety and that of another’s.

Oakley’s film ends on an ambiguous though hopeful note. Usually, this sort of conclusion risks coming across as a little mechanically inspirational. But Jean is a complicated sort of hero, full of indecision and regret. It’s something bracingly captured by McEwen, who plays her as someone in a perpetual state of fight-or-flight. There’s a beautifully acted moment when Jean, after a small act of resistance, runs outside to be alone and starts weeping. Is she moved by elation or fear? Or some overwhelming mixture of both?

Any other neatness to Blue Jean feels counteracted by stretches of dialogue that play as chilling echoes of today’s world. The nurses are on strike, while the middle-class bicker about the supposed inconvenience that’s been imposed on them. The claim that young people have easily influenced “vulnerable minds” – and the paranoia around lesbians in women’s changing rooms – feel identical to the current transphobia and anti-queer discourse rife in British media. Here, what could otherwise serve as a pat on the back feels both piercing and prescient.

Dir: Georgia Oakley. Starring: Rosy McEwen, Kerrie Hayes, Lucy Halliday, Lydia Page, Stacy Abalogun. 15, 97 minutes.

‘Blue Jean’ is in cinemas from 10 February