A BAFTA nominee, the winner of both Venice Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award as well as a quartet of British Independent Film Awards, Georgia Oakley’s directorial debut Blue Jean is finally arriving stateside this June. Set in 1988 England amidst Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government passing a law stigmatizing gays and lesbians, the film follows Jean (Rosy McEwen), a gym teacher who is forced to live a double life. As pressure mounts from all sides, the arrival of a new student catalyzes a crisis that will challenge Jean to her core. Ahead of the June 9 release from Magnolia, the new trailer has now arrived.
Leonardo Goi said in his review, “The Blue Jean of David Bowie’s 1984 hit was a girl with “a camouflage face,” not unlike the singer and the two personas he splintered into for the song’s video: a djinn-like rockstar dancing onstage and his ordinary, besuited doppelganger watching from below. So it is for the young woman at the center of Georgia Oakley’s own Blue Jean. A PE teacher stranded in Tyneside, England, Jean (Rosy McEwen) is a divorcée in a same-sex relationship that no-one—least of all her pupils and co-workers—must ever know about. For the year is 1988 and Britain’s grappling with the revolting aftermath of Section 28. The bill passed by Thatcher’s government banned “the promotion of homosexuality” by local authorities, forcing people like Jean into hiding. Camouflaging—its costs and consequences—is at the cornerstone of Oakley’s frank, often quite gripping feature debut. If Blue Jean does not debunk or reinvent new tropes in its tale of self-acceptance (does it have to, anyway?) it still radiates a rebellious energy, courtesy McEwen’s riveting performance and Oakley’s ability to never make her outcasts feel like lessons.”
See the trailer and poster below.
Blue Jean opens in theaters on June 9.