While Brokeback Mountain breaks your heart, Beautiful Thing, a tiny English movie without stars, is the most feel-good gay love story ever filmed. It may be one in a long line of coming-out stories, but the romance that unfolds between the central characters is the cure for their unhappiness rather than its cause. The movie acknowledges the difficulties that lie ahead, but it accentuates the positive, and that’s historically unusual and refreshing for gay-themed films. Beautiful Thing finds a powerful voice merely by celebrating the love between two young men. Who can resist becoming absorbed in seeing these two lads land in each other’s arms?

In addition to its delicacy as a gay love story, the film is also an outstanding depiction of first-love. The yearning, the tentativeness, and the delirium are all there. It’s as innocent and instinctive as anything Andy Hardy ever got himself into…just with two Andy Hardys. Beautiful Thing is about two teenage boys in Thamesmead (southeast London): Jamie Gangel (Glen Berry), who’s being raised by his single mother, Sandra (Linda Henry); and Ste Pearce (Scott Neal), in the flat next door, who lives with his abusive father and drug-dealing older brother. Nonathletic Jamie is picked on at high school; athletic Ste is brutalized at home. When the boys come together, and accept that they’re in love, they keep it quiet. After all, they’re young, scared, and inexperienced. But not everyone is against them.

excerpted from John DiLeo’s
Screen Savers: 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery
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