Butler's Cinema Scene

Chloe Grace Moretz

“THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST” My rating: B-

91 minutes | No MPAA rating

Fairness and honesty are virtues in everyday life.  Not necessarily in filmmaking.

With “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” director Desiree Akhavan adapts Emily Danforth’s novel about a teenage lesbian sent to a  religious-themed boarding school where she’s expected to redefine her sexual orientation.

With a cast headlined by the reliable Chloe Grace Moretz and Jennifer Ehle, the film promises a finely calibrated acting showcase. But something’s missing.

Given the subject matter, a director could take a couple of approaches. One could play it for satire, ridiculing religious bigots who believe you can pray the gay away. If humor seems too frivolous a way to approach such a serious subject, then there’s always the moral outrage route. Get angry.

“Miseducation…” finds a more balanced third way. The film attempts to honestly present the no-win situation in which these kids find themselves (they can only please God by hating themselves) without painting the staff and teachers as hateful bigots. It assumes that as wrong as their ideas may be, these educators/indoctrinators are coming from a place of genuine Christian concern.

Trouble is, such evenhandedness makes for anemic drama. With the exception of one hair-raising scene in which a male student (a terrific Owen Campbell) undergoes a total meltdown, the film is frustratingly low keyed.

Cameron (Moretz) is an orphan being raised by her aunt. She’s a typical adolescent rebel — marijuana and boredom and passive aggressiveness.

Forrest Goodluck, Chloe Grace Moretz, Sasha Lane

Though she passes for straight, Cameron already is engaged in a romantic relationship with another girl. When they’re caught in a compromising position, its off to God’s Promise, a boarding school surrounded by wooded mountains where the students are called “disciples.” It’s a place of flashlight bed checks and mandatory group therapy sessions where students are expected to dissect their “gender confusion.”

Ostensibly Reverend Rick (John Gallagher Jr.) is in charge.  He is himself a success story — once gay, now hetero. (Though you find yourself wondering, just how “cured” is he?  Also, putting a gay kid in a school populated exclusively with other gay kids does not seem like the most efficacious way to avoid homosexual temptation.)

The real power behind God’s Promise is Rick’s big sister, psychologist Lydia Marsh (Ehle), who “cured” her sibling and now uses the students as test subjects to refine her conversion techniques. Marsh is as close to a villain as “Miseducation…” has. Most times she assumes an air of professional detachment, showing her vindictive side only when presented with a particularly stubborn case.

“Keep your hair out of your eyes,” she admonishes one boy. “There’s no hiding from God.”

Cameron attempts to fly under the radar, disclosing as little of her inner thoughts as possible. For one thing, she’s not sure she even believes in God, which pretty much renders the whole program irrelevant.

At least she can be honest with two of her fellow students, the Native American Adam (Forrest Goodluck) and the rule-breaking Jane (“American Honey’s” Sasha Lane).

But Lydia’s system has a way of forcing students to come clean, putting Cameron in the impossible position of either lying to please Lydia or sticking to her own convictions and taking the consequences.

“Miseducation…” is perceptive about the bad old days of sexual conversion therapy (the story is set in the early ’90s; nowadays the process has been dismissed by all but the most fervent fundamentalists).

But it never really takes off. Even Moritz, one of our finest young actresses, gives a muted performance.

| Robert W. Butler