The 52: Handsom Devil
From June 2023 to June 2024 I'll be watching a lgbtqia+ film each week and coming back here with my thoughts, feelings and plenty of hopes we aren't met with the "kill your gays" trope. I call this The 52.
TW: Mentions of rape
Did I nearly scream when I saw Andrew Scott? Yes. Yes I did.
Handsome Devil is so cute. It’s a story of identity and heart and the assumptions of others- the pressure of those assumptions and the detriment they can have. It tells a story that is hardly uncommon - in lgbtqia+ cinema, guys being assumed to be gay seems to be a more common theme than girls being assumed to be lesbians, for some reason - yet it tells it with an authenticity and awareness that made me really want to follow it to the end. It made me care for the characters and feel their realness with a strength that is rare.
Ned and Conor are our protagonists, an unlikely duo as one is the assumed gay kid in the school, the quiet outcast who rebels against a place he hates, and the other the rugby star, outgoing and very much one of the lads - and, above all, assumed to be straight.
Conor is kind in a way I don’t think Ned has experienced another boy his age being, maybe hasn’t experienced anyone, ever, being, and as their friendship kindles I don’t think it would be outlandish to suggest these two are soulmates. Above friendship, aside from any romance, the way they support each other, build each other up, the way they care is full of heart and as they played music together for the first time we see both of them subconsciously realise it, and embrace it, and it is quite remarkable.
Andrew Scott plays an english teacher and he is magnificent, and burdened with his own assumptions. He contains a pressure close to exploding, the weight of wanting to live and share and exist in a community - to let others know they are safe around you, and that you see them - and being unable, unsafe, unwilling to.
Homophobia isn’t a rare sight in this one, the main tactic of Ned’s bullies being that he’ll rape them in the night (somehow their assumption of his sexuality makes him instantly a rapist), and a rugby coach who is just an irritant from the get go and somehow finds it in himself to get worse as the film goes on, and I’m disappointed that, for all the trauma he inflicted and incited, there is no retribution for the villains, especially not one who really and truly deserved it.
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