‘Blue Jean’ Review: A Lesbian Teacher Faces (and Perpetuates) Systemic Homophobia in a Quietly Searing British Debut

variety.com:

Guy Lodge Film Critic At the 1987 Conservative Party Conference in Britain, then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher issued one of the most grimly memorable quotes of her career: “Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay.” For many of us, it’s a line that now sounds so archaically out of step with contemporary life as to be comical — that “inalienable right” wording ironically appropriated by many a queer-rights cause — though you need only look at Florida’s recent Don’t Say Gay bill to know that Thatcher’s sentiments live among us still.

A frank, piercing debut from British writer-director Georgia Oakley, “Blue Jean” is a Thatcher-era period piece that crisply evokes that climate of politically propagated homophobia without preserving it in amber: It effectively puts the past in tacit dialogue with the present.

The year is 1988, and Thatcher’s government has recently enacted the infamous Section 28 bill, instructing British state schools not to “promote the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” Feeding off the AIDS panic of the moment, and admonishing the Labour Party for their support of gay rights, the Tories made this kind of ratified homophobia a key point of their successful 1987 election campaign; with subtle, pointed attention to social etiquette and casual conversation cues, “Blue Jean” presents a country where such hatred has been blandly integrated into the mainstream.

For most of the staff at the hard-up Tyneside state school where young divorcée Jean (Rosy McEwen) works as a gym teacher, Section 28 makes little difference to how they go about their business.