Sweetheart: BBC Films
Writer/director Marley Morrison’s delightful feature debut, Sweetheart, opens with one of the most familiar notions of British family life. Driving through the countryside, the teenaged protagonist AJ (Nell Barlow) slumps gloomily in the passenger seat while her perky mother points delightedly at a field and exclaims “oh, cows!”. Morrison maintains this level of nostalgia around working-class British summers throughout the film which centres around AJ’s family holiday to a caravan park where a summer romance blooms between herself and
Isla (Ella-Rae Smith), a sociable lifeguard working on the site.
All of the best staples of the coming-of-age film are here. Self-doubt, teen angst, family conflict, and awkward sexual encounters all play out over a carefully selected alternative/indie-pop soundtrack from the likes of Cigarettes After Sex and Porridge Radio. The queer perspective which Morrison brings to the genre is an incredibly welcome one. As critics and audiences are growing tired of the lesbian period drama and coming-out stories, neither of which Sweetheart are, the film is a refreshing look at adolescent attraction with the additional layer of queer sexual identity.
AJ’s family already know and accept that she is a lesbian but her mum, Tina (Jo Hartley), and sister, Lucy (Sophia Di Martino) question her DIY chopped hair (a lockdown-relatable moment) and her tendency to dress “like a boy”. From AJ’s point of view – which the film is presented from – her family are annoyingly antagonistic, but the film grants each character isolated moments which suggest more nuance than AJ’s perceptions of them allow.
Barlow’s portrayal of the socially awkward AJ is humorous and relatable. Her voiceover adds to the intimate portrayal of youth, telling viewers “sometimes I have no fucking idea what I am”. While trying to figure it out, she hides behind a 90s bucket hat and a large pair of orange-tinted sunglasses, making her deadly serious declaration that she is moving to Indonesia to knit jumpers for elephants even more hilarious.
Sweetheart’s shoestring budget is masked by the brilliant cinematography which places a nostalgic lens on the British holiday park and first-time summer romance. AJ and Isla’s first meeting in a laundry room is accompanied by a juicy colour palette of yellow, pink, and blue. The holiday park itself provides a colourful backdrop to the film with the only time a frame is noticeably drained of colour is when a suddenly insecure AJ tries to be sexually intimate with a boy who turns the light off in the same laundry room where she and Isla first met.
A film like Sweetheart feels long overdue. With But, I’m a Cheerleader now twenty-two years old and a recent lesbian coming-of-age film yet to reach the same level of popular and critical claim as Call Me By Your Name, I can only hope that Sweetheart receives the acclaim that recent queer women-centred coming of age films such as The Miseducation of Cameron Post and Make Up seemed to miss. Clearly, Sweetheart resonated with Glasgow Film Festival audiences as it was awarded the GFF Audience Award – the only award that the festival offers each year. This is a well-deserved win, and I cannot wait to see the film again.
Words by Rosie Beattie.
Comments