When Ste has to escape from his home one night after a beating from his brother, he stays with his neighbours, single mum Sandra and her son Jamie. With space being tight in the flat, Ste has to share a bed with Jamie. They start off sleeping head to toe, but within a few days, their sleeping arrangements take on an altogether different dimension. The boys find themselves falling in love.
Hettie Macdonald's Beautiful Thing is an adaptation of a successful stage play but you'd never know it to look at it. Chris Seager's cinematography even manages to make the London council estate where it was filmed, Thamesmead, look like a magical place, overlooking a lake and bathed in sunlight. In this respect, it is quite the opposite of most other British films which, if they portray the working classes at all, certainly don't give them the luxury of falling in love over a long hot summer.
Beautiful Thing retains its original stage credits, with Hettie Macdonald directing and Jonathan Harvey contributing the screenplay. Macdonald had never directed a feature before: 'You plan a lot more in advance. Instead of saying to an audience, 'Here's a picture that tells a story,' you're now telling them, 'Here's a series of pictures that tell a story.'
'It also means you can focus an audience on exactly what you want them to look at there's no danger of them being distracted by anything else on the stage.'
The film received its UK premiere at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, where it picked up the award for Best Film. It is touching and funny and, like My Beautiful Launderette before it, certainly has the strength to cross over to a mainstream audience. As writer Jonathan Harvey observes, 'This is a play in which someone can be working class and still have their sexuality accepted. It's not what you get up to after lights out, it's about falling in love.'
Prod cos: A World Production for Channel Four
Prod: Tony Garnett, Phil Shapter
Guión (Scr): Jonathan Harvey
Foto (Ph): Chris Seager
ED: Don Fairservice
Ints (Cast): Scott Neal, Glen Barry, Linda Henry, Ben Daniels, Tameka Empson
Ventas (Int sales): Film Four
PROGRAMACION (Screening): 21.30, 21 Sept, Principal; 17.00, 22 Sept, Principe, 2
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