This is a tender film because it deals with kids in eighth grade, just before high school, at the tender age of 14. At that age you have a certain number of kids, boys but also girls, who are cruel like devils, just because they are meeting with some difficulty in their life they cannot deal with and their pride made them take it down upon others and bully them. Cruelty is the most common goody these kids are living with and sharing.
The film is done from the point of view of a rather short guy, shy and who is used to be told by his father he did not do what he was doing well enough and having to let his father finish it. He dreams of kissing the best-looking girl in the school. And his luck or rather un-luck, though it might have been his best luck ever, was to be paired by his literature teacher with the tallest, ugliest, red-headed smartest and most bullied guy in the class, in the school.
That's the basics of the kid's story. One kid who is the friend of the main bully, is such an idiot and a racist that he panics one day because he is touched by the girl with dental braces. He then attacks her to get the curse off when the red-headed giant monster, Big G for most students, Stanley for some, gets him off his prey. That little, short small-minded imbecile just spreads the rumour that the literature teacher is a homo, as they said in 1965. His father and his mother are dumb enough not to know a rumour is nothing but a rumour and their kid has the worst possible complex imaginable. The teacher refuses to deny it and prefers leaving the school at the end of the school year to satisfy the rumourmongers. That's the gay part of the film. In 1965 the word "homo" was one of the worst accusations you could level at anyone but particularly at teachers and a rumour was just as good as proof.
Don't believe that has entirely changed. Not yet, far from it. Look at the aftermath of the most segregational law I know, DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act enacted in 1996 under Bill Clinton. One of the two anti-gay acts he had passed in Congress and he enacted. One is down DADT, Don't Ask Don't Tell, and DOMA is still there and has produced the most ridiculous segregation you can imagine in a developed country today. They can't segregate for racial reasons or national reasons, though they still go on for religious reasons, but they compensate their frustration with segregation for sexual orientation reasons. And they block the only thing they can block: marriage.
The film is eloquent about that kind of bigotry. The teacher has to run. The students can offer him a carful of flowers at the end of the year that won't change the bigots. They say homosexuality is a catching disease. But bigotry is not a disease and it is unmendable. Better reserve your place in a crematorium because that's alas the only solution. With time some may yield, but the die-hard bigots will only be satisfied with the smell of fire and grilled human flesh. Better be theirs after all since they like it.
The students of course are hardly concerned by the rumour and they carry on with their business: kissing the girls they want to kiss, singing if they want to sing, desiring a life of achievement and success. The bullies generally end badly. In this film they did and it is supposed to be a true story so it is a good thing the main bully managed to get 10-15 years of state-paid vacation in a state penitentiary.
Such stories happen everyday in schools, but unluckily a fair share of them end up badly and I am absolutely ashamed with it. We are still far away from a society of love when hatred and bigotry is still so present: Forty-one US states have banned marriage for same-sex couples in a way or another. Forty-one reasons not to vote for the Mormon Romney since the Mormon Church considers homosexuality as a disease that has to be cured with all possible means. Just like scientology by the way. Good morning all the bigots.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
