BOY ERASED (2018)

Hard to miss with a story as sympathetic (and horrifying in its way) as the journey thru ‘gay conversion therapy’ Evangelic Preacher’s son Garrard Conley survived in his late teens/early twenties.  But Joel Edgerton (writing, directing, acting) comes awfully close.  As the boy, Lucas Hedges (excellent) is miserably unconfused about his sexuality, but feigns confusion to himself to please the hopes of go-along Mom Nicole Kidman and faux-supportive Preacher Pop Russell Crowe.  So, off to a glisteningly modern facility (a sort of sanatorium/prison) run by Victor Sykes (Edgerton) like a military academy for ‘Christian Values,’ where fellow college-age gays are force-fed lessons designed to encourage self-loathing for their lifestyle ‘choices.’  (Baseball or football?  Reed or brass instrument?  Straight or Gay?)  Edgerton counts on our revulsion at the whole unregulated/untested (and profitable*) mind-altering program. The parents?  Happy to wash their hands of the problem and leave the dirty work to clean-cut uncertified amateur councilors.  But since Edgerton knows his audience is already on his side, you never get a sense that he’s working to change any minds.  Worse, visual choices are stylistically off or lazy.  None more damaging than shooting the film in hazy light with fuzzy grain, as if a scrim of lies is blocking everyone from seeing clearly (they all know exactly what's going on) when those sessions and daily routines need to be exposed, sharp and clinically bright as possible to show the very real power of lies spread with religiously joyous contempt.  Hypocrisy dies in the light, not in shadow.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:   Earlier film depictions of conversion therapy spoke in code.  None more so than TEA AND SYMPATHY/’56 where therapy comes in the form of an ‘older’ woman willing to initiate a questioning youth in the most performative manner imaginable.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/02/tea-and-sympathy-1956.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *And while parents are being financially & emotionally preyed upon, they’re not simply uninformed, but willfully uninformed.  Something Kidman’s character (to Edgerton’s credit) briefly admits to near the end.