The first feature from Toby MacDonald, director of two excellent Bafta-nominated shorts (Je t’Aime John Wayne, Heavy Metal Drummer) manages a curious alchemy. It takes two elements – the story of Cyrano de Bergerac and a British same-sex boarding school – that have already been mined extensively by film-makers over the years. And it somehow manages to create something fresh and distinctive.
The consistently excellent Alex Lawther (The End of the F***ing World) stars as Amberson, a gawky, arty boy who is at the bottom of the food chain in the bully-or-be-bullied environment of Caldermount school. It’s a place that wears its past so proudly that it has no need to look to the future. Absurd traditions such as Streamers, a school game that is essentially a scrap in a swamp, take priority over stuff like learning how to talk to girls.
But when a new French master arrives with an achingly cool daughter, Agnes (Pauline Etienne), the students develop a new interest in the romance languages. Amberson, too meek to admit his feelings, adds artistic soul to the messages exchanged between Agnes and popular boy and “labrador in trousers” Winchester (Jonah Hauer-King).
The 80s setting, distancing the story from the immediacy of the digital age, gives the film a lovely, scrappy, handmade aesthetic. The notes passed between Agnes and Amberson/Winchester are an outpouring of frustrated creativity. The film is a love letter to the love letter. And I fell for it completely.
