#last week i saw a silly with lgbtq pins

[just-miru]

got em aro ace pins hell yeagh!!

[nocaptainreuben]

Everyone deserves a great love story...

Film adaptations of your favourite books can be a tricky business. They come with a great deal of excitement and anticipation, because hello? You’re going to get see your favourite characters and the story you love so much become real, on a big screen and everything! But also, knowing how some book-to-film adaptations have gone so horribly wrong, there’s a great deal of trepidation there, incase they ruin your baby. All of this is even more heightened when the book isn’t a mainstream, hugely popular franchise like Harry Potter or Hunger Games, but rather a slightly lesser known, standalone book by a debut author, with which you have a huge personal connection. So right from the moment I heard that Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda was being adapted, I was feeling an overwhelming jumble of feels.

What makes everything even more overwhelming though, is that Simon vs… is a gay teen romance. Just take that in for a second. A. Gay. Teen. Romance. Being adapted, not just into some overlooked indie movie, but by a major studio, into a proper Hollywood blockbuster, with a huge promotional campaign, and big stars involved. That has never happened before. Suddenly, this wasn’t any old film adaptation of one of my favourite books, but one of the defining moments of our generation. A chance for the existence of myself and my LGBTQ+ friends to be represented and validated within the mainstream. There was SO MUCH riding on this for me, and the months I had to wait for the film’s UK release became agonising. Every time I was at the cinema watching something else, and saw a trailer for Love, Simon, I got a simultaneous lump in my throat and face-splitting grin. I couldn’t decide between muting the Love, Simon account and all mentions of the film on Twitter because it was torturing me that I couldn’t see it yet, and mercilessly stalking it because it made me so happy. I had the digital equivalent of a big red circle around the release date on my calendar, crossing off each day until I could see it, and blanked out that week in my LGBTQ+ youth group’s year plan so I could take them on a trip. The anticipation was UNREAL. So when April finally rolled around, of course I had to go see it on opening night.

With my bookish bestie in tow, I made an effort to stop bouncing with glee long enough to drive to the local multiplex, picked up our tickets and took our seats for the movie we’d been waiting our whole lives for. The moment the lights went down, the screen grew, and the film’s title card came up I was already overcome with emotion and I felt my eyes fill up at the fact that this film even exists. It’s funny the things that affect you, and how you’re hit by them. Obviously seeing advances in gay rights and marriage equality and everything has been amazing, but having the privilege to grow up in today’s society, in the relatively tolerant area of the world I live in, has meant that I’ve almost taken these things for granted a little. I’m not saying we’re where we need to be in terms of LGBTQ+ equality yet, but I personally have never had to deal with any real persecution thanks to my sexuality, and I guess I’ve always kind of felt like things are ok. But I don’t think I ever really realised until Love, Simon just how important each small breakthrough is, even now. It may seem silly, considering the strides we’ve made in recent years, but I genuinely never thought I would see a film like this get made. And I didn’t think that bothered me; I was so used to our heteronormative world, that even though I was always aware of my otherness, I just accepted it. Even just being tolerated made me grateful, because I never thought I’d actually be accepted without question. But seeing that tagline, ‘Everyone deserves a great love story’, and watching the way Greg Berlanti and the production team treated this like any other teen romance just made me feel so seen and, for once, not other.

With all of that emotion floating around me, and the meaning the film had taken on before it even started, it was pretty obvious that I was going to be deeply affected, and most likely love it. But I’m happy to say that it surpassed my monstrously high expectations, and even without the added layer of its social significance, the film stands alone as a wonderful piece of cinema. I’m very much a nit picker, and have been known to get enraged at tiny differences in detail between films and their source material, but there was nothing in this film that switched me off!

The casting was absolutely perfect, and even Leah’s non-fatness couldn’t sway me, as Katherine Langford was such a perfect fit for her that I was in love. Every actor embodied their character so completely, and gave the most beautiful performances, with Nick Robinson unsurprisingly shining as the lead. But whilst the main cast of teenagers were all wonderful, I do want to give an honourable mention to the adults for creating some of the best moments in the film. Both Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel are incredible as Simon’s parents, and the moments he shares with them after his coming out are some of the most touching scenes I’ve seen in my (admittedly relatively short) life. Teachers, Mr Worth and Ms Albright (played by Tony Hale and Natasha Rothwell, respectively) bring some excellent comedic value in, and a particular takedown by Albright made me want to stand up and applaud there and then.

The emotional journey this film takes you on is perfection. I’ve now watched it three times, each time surrounded by an audience I could hear laughing, crying, gasping, and being completely taken in by the movie the whole way through. Every time it punched you in the feels, it would gift you with a glorious line that made you laugh through your tears. It’s full of little things which threaten to break you at any given moment, like the subtle appearance of Mr Worth’s pin badge (look out for it, you’ll choke on a sob), and the repeated symbolism in the number of iced coffees Simon picks up on his way to school. And Simon’s f-bomb when he finally explodes at Martin is one of the best placed swear words in any teen film, which thanks to Robinson’s emotive delivery, really has a huge impact on the scene. The first time I watched it, I genuinely couldn’t even speak when I came out, and I was so overwhelmed by a jumble of emotions that it took me a few days to start to unpick it and identify how I actually felt. When my Dad asked me how it was, my actual quote was ‘I don’t even have any evens left with which to even.’ The second time, with my youth group, my girlfriend sat next to me uncontrollably sobbing for the last half of the film, and we had to watch Ghostbusters when we got home to mellow her out again. I’ve seen people walking out of showings of this film grinning, dabbing at their eyes, chuckling at the unexpected intensity of their own reactions, and clutching their partners to unashamedly kiss them. It’s pure, life-affirming sweetness, and I can’t get enough of it.

There’s so many other things I could gush about with this film – the at times completely epic, yet also kind of understated and indie soundtrack, which perfectly fits the vibe of the film; the attention to detail, with all the nods to the book and nuggets of Simon’s personality shining through in his bedroom; and the repeated references to Panic! At the Disco being a few of them – but I don’t want to go on for too much longer. I don’t know what else I can say to articulate just how much this film means to me, and I think I’ve pretty much reached my limit for being even remotely eloquent for now, so I will just have to hope I got the message across somewhat, and leave you with this little slice of cheese: