UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND, JOHANNESBURG

Video title: Get Real

Get Real begins with a couple of hedgehogs having sex, and deals with a topic just as prickly: gay love in adolescence. Steve (Ben Silverstone) is a student at a British school where everyone wears classy uniforms, knows he s gay, and is pretty comfortable being so. John (Brad Gorton), a top athlete and all-around admired guy, is just getting an inkling and isn t sure how he feels about it. This, cleverly, is how the movie manages to explore coming-out issues and be over them at the same time. In fact, the whole movie is pretty clever - witty dialogue, deft direction, nimble pacing, and clean editing - in exploring the seriousness of adolescent life without taking it too seriously.

The key is in Silverstone s performance; he s a completely convincing mixture of hesitation and recklessness, all the conflicts of high school in one sweet-faced package. As the movie follows Steve and John s relationship - their evasions at school, getting picked up by the police in a park, goofing around in a heated swimming pool, grappling with coming out to the world at large - it lays out a bit of contrast with Steve s best friend Linda (Charlotte Brittain), who s as unapologetically fat as Steve is gay, and who s having an affair with her driving instructor.

Excellent performances all around, funny, sexy, charming--if only straight teen comedies were half this good. Get Real even demonstrates the proper etiquette when soliciting sex in public restrooms; what more can you ask for?

Director: Simon Shore
Time: 93 min
Country: UK
Date: 1999

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