Love, Simon

There is something that is quietly revolutionary about Love, Simon that I knew I needed to see it right away. It's a mainstream teen comedy/drama distributed wide by a major studio, with all the notable tropes of the genre. All the angst of growing up, the highs and the lows. The type of film that was John Hughes' bread and butter through much of the 80's. Except, it's about a gay kid named Simon. And to me, that's huge. Yeah, we've had plenty of gay coming out stories in film before. But not one made by a major studio distributed wide to 3,000 plus movies screens across the country. And not one that so closely resembled my own mid-west suburban life growing up.

Simon Spier (played by Nick Robinson) is a high school senior who describes his life as just like anyone else. He has loving parents (played by Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel), and sister (played by Talitha Eliana Bateman). He has a group of friends he hangs out with everyday, Nick (played by Jorge Lendeborg Jr), Leah (played by Katherine Langford), and Abby (played by Alexandra Shipp). But he has a secret: he's gay. He doesn't know how to tell people, so he keeps it to himself, debating when the right time is to come out. Things look up when on a local website where students anonymously post gossip and confess secrets, a student posts on there about being gay, signing their post "Blue." Simon sets up an anonymous gmail account and reaches out to Blue and slowly a friendship develops between the two pen pals. Blue doesn't feel comfortable revealing his identity so Simon begins to wonder who Blue is, imagining assorted classmates writing to him as his mysterious pen pal. Things hit a snag though when an obnoxious classmate Martin (played by Logan Miller) discovers the emails when Simon forgets to log out of a school computer and uses them as blackmail to try and get Simon to help him get with Abby, threatening to out him to the school if he doesn't.  

The film was directed by Greg Berlanti from a script by Elizabeth Berger and Issac Aptaker, based on the novel "Simon vs. the Homo Sapien's Agenda" by Becky Albertalli. The resulting film is a carefully crafted, touching, deeply emotional and yet also very funny movie that is very much in the vein of the teen films I grew up with, but never felt reflected my own experience growing up as a gay kid. That's right, I am officially outing myself to the world in black and white in the middle of a movie review. Most anybody who has been reading this blog for awhile now has probably already guessed it, but now there's no doubt. Considering who I am and where my obsessions lie, I feel it's appropriate. That said, given that I have had a long standing love for these types of movies, this film was a deeply emotional experience for me. I saw all those teen movies and yet I never was able to relate to the characters on any sort of tangible level, except identifying with the female characters, like Molly Ringwald pining for Jake Ryan in Sixteen Candles. But this film was different within the parameters of the genre it fits so neatly into. I saw a character I could relate to on a deep and intimate level. I related to Simon's fumbled attempts at flirting. His insightful emails to Blue as he opened up more and more, the things he wrote about I recognized immediately as thoughts I had. First realizing you're gay, first crushes, the crushing disappointment and embarrassment of finding out that cute guy you were debating asking out is actually straight. This movie just nails the feelings of all of that so perfectly. 

The performances in the film were great. Nick Robinson was great as Simon, and perfectly captures all the emotions that his character goes through on his own journey of coming out and navigating all the feelings that entails. He just made all of it so relatable and sympathetic. I've seen him in several movies over the years, but I think this may be one of his best performances. I also really enjoyed his friends, especially his oldest friend Leah. It's established the two have known each other since they were in Kindergarten together and you can see the strong bond between the two characters. Of course, I was also able to appreciate it on a personal level too, as I have a friendship like that (although we met in sixth grade, but still counts). Alexandra Shipp was also good as Simon's newest friend Abby, giving her role a certain spunkiness that I really liked. Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel were also really good as Simon's parents balancing the more emotional moments with the funnier ones. Tony Hale has a fun supporting role as the Vice Principal of Simon's school and is quite amusing in the role as he tries a little too hard to relate to his students while at the same time habitually oversharing. It's an amusing spin on the usual authority figures seen in these types of films and I really enjoyed it. 

Love, Simon was a film I found deeply moving but at the same time very funny, romantic and endearing as well. Is everyone going to have the same response to it that I did? No, probably not. But for people like me and people like Simon who have never had their story reflected on screen before and their experiences and their feelings reflected like that, it is going to be a potently emotional experience. I have friends who were looking forward to seeing movies like Black Panther or A Wrinkle in Time because those films featured characters that were like them in lead roles in types of movies they hadn't been in before. I understood why that was important to them but I don't think I knew what that felt like until tonight. Because, as we're finding out all over the place this spring, in whatever form it takes representation matters.