Lucas Hedges plays the lead role, renamed Jared Eamons, and he's quickly finding himself typecast as the closeted gay son to a guarded religious family. First "Lady Bird" and now here, we see perhaps the darker aspects of what such a coming out might risk. He is the only child to a preacher (Russell Crowe) and his wife (Nicole Kidman), and they live comfortably in an affluent southern suburb. They buy Jared a new car for his birthday, they allow him to invite girls over... All the while we see that something is bubbling up in Jared, and when he finally admits to being gay, it's a nail straight through the heart of this family.
The movie is told partially in flashbacks, first showing us the routine of this conversion camp, and then reverting back to those times in high school and college that, according to these "therapists," guilted him into turning towards homosexuality. It's not all fun and games. Jared's first intimate encounter with a boy in his dorm is a violent attack, and his second is a perfectly lovely night of conversation and quiet stares. At camp, that's not enough. Jared is expected to dig deep into his family lineage to find the drunks, the gamblers, the murderers, those who watch porn, etc, in order to source the root of this inherent evil. While modern doctors tell Jared he is perfectly healthy, to these fundamentals, science isn't an acceptable conclusion.
Lucas Hedges is quickly a rising star in Hollywood, and he delivers a grounded performance that is believable as a boy learning to think outside the box. Same for Nicole Kidman, ever-great as a mother who also discovers more about her own opinions along the way. The camp itself is far enough away from home that Jared and his mother drive and spend their nights at a nearby hotel (yes, Jared gets to go home after sessions). Together (and away from their demanding father), they have quiet conversations about each other over dinner and in their suite. I think Kidman deserved one or two more scenes to really flesh out this role, but her final moments prove why she is such a talent. Same for Russell Crowe, once an Academy darling and now making it by in roles here and there. His performance is one that is both horrifying and yet fully realized. By the film's end, I found myself most drawn to this man... Not his hatred, but his own personal fears of losing everything he had attempted to create with his family. As unlikely as it would appear, Crowe would richly deserve some recognition for this minor supporting part.
Ultimately, the film still feels like the work of a first-time director (writer, director, and star Joel Edgerton). It's well-written, but so often we are left with moments of melodrama if only to progress the story. There's a mention of a suicide that is all but forgotten about 30 seconds later. We also might have issue relating to Jared as he makes a sudden decision during class to rebel and end it all so abruptly. I thought he was a devote Christian who believed in this therapy? Where does this change come from? Troye Sivan, singer and now actor, has the presence of a bonafide star even in his brief moments on screen. There's an intensity that rings true for a boy going through such a process. We could have used more of his perspective.
Ultimately, is such a story the right one to tell? Minor spoilers here: in the end, Jared convinces his parents to accept him for who he is, and it seems like all involved have jumped onboard the "gay bandwagon." What does this story seek to tell us, that if you become a good enough writer that you can convince someone to change their mind? I have heard from people and met young men who have gone through conversion therapy, and it seems more likely that for survivors, their parental relationships are forever damaged. Sure, it's a nice tear-jerker Hollywood ending, but how accurate is it? People don't change. At least not to such an extreme. If it were this easy to convince a pastor to accept homosexuality as a lifestyle, one might expect world peace to be a bit easier to attain. Notice how the film mocks a therapist for observing that straight men stand a certain way, and then the filmmaker later using the same pose to indicate a character might be closeted after all. Is this a clever bit of visual storytelling, or are we led to believe that, yes, all gays stand a certain way? On the surface, the film is very strong, but digging a little deeper, there is a lot more to discuss and to pick apart.
(As a side note, the movie makes a distracting, almost fatal error when one of the characters plays a Troye Sivan song on the radio. This got me thinking - in the world of this movie, then Troye Sivan is a real musician... But he is also a character in conversion therapy... So who is he? Does this boy just happen to resemble the pop star? As I was thinking about this paradox in my head, I ended up missing about 10 minutes of the movie. Yikes.)
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