The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Adapted from the YA novel of the same name, The Miseducation of Cameron Post is centred on a group of teenagers at a conversion therapy “school” in the 1990s. Our guide (Chloë Grace Moretz) is the latest arrival, delivered by her aunt after being caught in the back of a car with the prom queen.
The environment is suitably restrictive. Cameron’s belongings are searched for contraband rock music immediately after she’s settled in her new room. “I’m guessing The Breeders aren’t singing in praise of the Lord,” chides Reverend Rick (John Gallagher Jr.) as he pulls a cassette out of her bag.
Cameron is expected to stay with the program until she’s “over” her samesex attraction and “gender confusion.” She adapts by keeping quiet and aloof. In fact, much of Moretz’s performance — one of her strongest to date — exists in her gaze.
Unlike some of her classmates, who are eager to be “cured,” Cameron seems resolute in her identity. But while the stark contrast between sex as liberating and sex as shameful is a strong through-line in the film, it also mines the subtler erosion of the students’ instincts and desires.
As so-called educators demand confessional intimacy from their wards, only to twist it against them, Cameron herself becomes increasingly unsettled. Can Jesus and straightness save her feelings of self-doubt and loneliness, or are her feelings a normal part of growing up?
The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which won the grand jury prize at Sundance, is ultimately a sympathetic and tender portrayal of adolescents struggling to be “normal” at the expense of their mental health.
One of the film’s greatest assets, however, is that it avoids easy villains. Good intentions (or damaged psyches) humanize the characters who run the school without absolving them of their responsibility in inflicting psychological wounds on their vulnerable wards. ★★★1/2
The Miseducation of Cameron Post opens in Toronto, Montreal and Edmonton Aug. 10, Saskatoon Aug. 12, Ottawa and Vancouver Aug. 24 and Regina Aug. 31.