The Miseducation of Cameron Post

Chloë Grace Moretz’s revelatory performance is undoubtedly the highlight of The Miseducation of Cameron Post. Though Cameron is more comfortable nurturing a silence than speaking her mind, Moretz’ wry smile and weary eyes convey volumes of emotional turmoil.

Given that conversion therapy is still inexplicably legal in 41 states, Akhavan’s film of acceptance and optimism feels as urgent as ever.

In its own modest way, it’s one of the year’s bravest films.

This is a film about Cameron’s core personhood, and how it stands up to concentrated efforts to transform it, and it’s told with quiet steeliness and grace.

While it doesn’t land with as much impact as it should, the contradictory, heart-numbing effects of such a dehabiliting program are conveyed with a keen sense of nuance by Akhavan.

What a shame that this well-meaning look at the absurdity of gay conversion camps — it won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this year — lacks the teeth to make its points stick.

The film's refusal to produce a campy critique feels more like the product of lack of imagination than a purposeful repudiation.

For such a critical and often overlooked subject matter, one can't help but feel that the punch has been pulled. While attempting to, one suspects, highlight the banality of this particular evil by quietly underplaying most of it, the film instead comes off as distant and nearly sleepy. Even the most horrific thing in the film happens off screen, minimizing the actual damage. Even so, the cast is good, the dialogue is there and anything that can shine a light on this timely issue is helpful.

Interesting film with a strong cast. At the crux of it is an unadorned view of both teenagers and adults trying to figure out sexuality. Some of them are misguided, and most make mistakes.

After a teenager girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) gets caught making out with her girlfriend, she's sent off to gay conversion camp. There, she's subjected to religious discipline, but also finds sympathetic friends. The script delights in exposing the outrageous treatments and cruel concepts of this misguided approach, but it also presents a relatively rounded look at various "disciples" in the program. There's considerable focus on making the story earnest. The performances help, but the film never reaches an emotionally-compelling level. A personal complaint: from my limited experience, most of the people at these facilities are predictable stereotypes, but none of the males in this movie was especially effeminate nor the females that butch.

(Mauro Lanari) The assemblage of the best Breeders album ("Last Splash", 1992), the Saint Paul of 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 and the "bleach" of Nirvana's debut (1989) is as contrived as the novel of the same name (Danforth, 2012) on which the film was based, and it could have won the Grand Jury Prize only at Sundance, where they are not at all interested in such details.

With 4 States, 41 counties and municipalities plus the District of Columbia banning gay conversion therapy and others having it on their agenda it was a perfect time for a film dealing with just that subject but “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” isn’t that film to get an audience. It deals with Cameron, a teenager, caught in the back of an automobile with another girl, Coley, their panties down, and going at ‘it’ at the prom where they had been taken by their boyfriends. Nothing happens to Coley but the consequences for Cameron are that she is sent to God’s Promise camp, one of the many known ‘pray away the gay’ around the States. The topic of whether you are born Gay or learn to be ‘that way’ is discussed very briefly but since this is a ‘Christian’ place God and the Devil are part of a lot of the conversations by the adults. At 90 minutes ‘Miseducation’ moves very slowly with very little drama, except, of course, how we can have a Christian film about gays without one committing suicide! (No it’s not a spoiler.) A big problem with the movie is the stereotyping of gay people by the screenwriters Desiree Akhavan, who also directed, and Cecillia Frugiuele. One lost their parents in a crash years before and is being raised by an aunt and uncle while another, who lost a leg in an accident, was born in commune and is Black while a third is a Native American Indian who was born into a tribe that recognizes a third gender but their father has become a politician and converted to Christianity. There is a boy who is too feminine for his father and a girl who is the boy her father never had, raising her to be a sports fan, as I said, all the stereotypes, no one having a ‘normal’ background so being born gay is really a non-issue. The acting by the 12-14 kids can’t be faulted with Chloe Grace Moretz as Cameron, Sasha Lane who goes by the name of ‘Jane Fonda’, Forrest Goodluck as Adam, Emily Skeggs as Erin and Owen Campbell as Mark, the standouts with Coley acted by Quinn Shephard. Among the adults are John Gallagher Jr. as Reverend Rick, a man ‘saved and finding God’ in a gay bar whose sister Dr. Lydia Marsh, a Christian psychologist, played by Jennifer Ehle, who runs God’s Promise Camp. Possibly I expected too much from “The Miseducation of Cameron Post”, based on the YA book by Emily M. Danforth, but, in any case, I can’t recommend it. Before the film started there was a preview of a coming movie called “Boy Erased” about The son of a Baptist preacher who is forced to participate in a church-supported conversion starring Lucan Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe and Cherry Jones. I am hoping this is what I wanted “Miseducation” to be and wasn’t.