The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018)
Directed by Desiree Akhavan
Pennsylvania, 1993. After getting caught with another girl, teenager Cameron Post is sent to a conversion therapy center run by the strict Dr. Lydia Marsh and her brother, Reverend Rick, whose treatment consists in repenting for feeling “same sex attraction.” Cameron befriends fellow sinners Jane and Adam, thus creating a new family to deal with the surrounding intolerance.
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While Akhavan – who also cowrites the screenplay with Cecilia Frugiuele, based on the book of the same name by Emily M. Danforth – is clearly criticizing the practice of reforming these teens, most of The Miseducation of Cameron Post plays more like Saved! then One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest-meets-Jesus Camp.
Rather than Ratched's vindictive streak that emerges toward the end of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Marsh (Ehle), the sister of the camp's guitar strumming 'convert' Reverend Rick (John Gallagher Jr.), uses the proximity to her first victim as a suffocating reminder that her success rate is undeniable.
Lydia isn’t in the same martinet class as Nurse Ratched of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but a streak of cruelty underscores her suppressive sternness.
Rather like 1999’s But I’m A Cheerleader, The Miseducation Of Cameron Post takes the non-conformist spirit of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and transplants it to a ‘conversion therapy’ summer camp.
Picture a lighter and LGBT version of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” or “Jesus Camp.”
“The Miseducation of Cameron Post” is a small, solid, satisfying entry in a genre perhaps best referred to as the “Help, I’ve Been Institutionalized” drama, familiar from “Girl, Interrupted,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and others.
Rather like 1999’s But I’m A Cheerleader, The Miseducation Of Cameron Post takes the non-conformist spirit of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and transplants it to a ‘conversion therapy’ summer camp.
The film, which takes place in 1993 and is based on a novel by Emily M. Danforth, feels like a Hallmark Channel version of But I’m a Cheerleader, which is to say it lacks the playfulness and sense of camp exaggeration of the Jamie Babbit film.
I could compare it to its queer cinematic matriarch — softer than But I’m a Cheerleader , the quintessential queer conversion therapy movie; sharper, too; less camp, more satire.
Such institutions still exist, and perhaps that’s why this film does, too, despite a wealth of more nuanced conflicted-orientation stories that have played Sundance over the past two decades — from “But I’m a Cheerleader,” a campy 1999 satire starring Natasha Lyonne as an all-American girl for whom boot camp backfires in a big way, to “I Am Michael,” in which James Franco played a gay activist who denounced his homosexuality and devoted himself to helping others beat the same “affliction.”
This isn’t the colorful satire of But I’m a Cheerleader, but rather an even-handed approach to what conversion therapy looks like for these specific people.
More heavyweight than But I’m a Cheerleader, the 1999 comedy by Jamie Babbit that also set its story in such a rehab camp, Miseducation benefits from Moretz in the lead.
It all reminded me of my immediate reaction to watching Stephen Chbosky’s magnificent 2012 adaptation of his own novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower for the first time, and it’s safe to say Akhavan’s effort will likely have the same sort of lasting impact and resonating staying power that one has proven to have.
“Boy Erased,” starring Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, and Lucas Hedges of “Manchester by the Sea,” comes out in early November, and while that film may have the higher profile, “Miseducation” shouldn’t be ignored.