It makes sense that as filmmakers have made haphazard progress with telling queer stories, it has been tantalizingly easy to keep exploring how LGBT people - especially queer teens - grapple with how to come out.Īnd to be sure, all of the coming-out movies this year about queer teens treat the process with empathy and sensitivity, and each of them creates an emotionally affecting story. There can be long, dark nights of the soul, tear-filled confrontations with loved ones, and moments of euphoric self-discovery and punishing self-doubt - which also happen to be fantastic material for a feature film. The very nature of it is often inherently dramatic.
The experience of coming out is, of course, something every LGBT person faces in one way or another. And like those movies, Boy Erased and Bohemian Rhapsody are frustratingly stuck in the closet. They are also the latest in a small but significant wave of well-regarded films this year with lesbian, gay, and bi protagonists, including Love, Simon (which opened March 16), Alex Strangelove (which debuted on Netflix June 8), and The Miseducation of Cameron Post (which opened Aug. Last weekend, two high-profile movies opened in theaters that feature queer protagonists: Bohemian Rhapsody, starring Rami Malek as the late Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, and Boy Erased, starring Lucas Hedges as a teenage boy who enters a gay conversion therapy program after he’s outed to his parents.īoth are based on true stories, and both arrive with awards buzz for their powerfully rendered performances.