Blue Jean isn’t your typical British fare. Georgia Oakley’s striking debut places a lesbian relationship front and centre – without lacing up its leads in corsets. It’s an Eighties-set drama that’s adorned with familiar references (at one point, New Order’s “Blue Monday” plays) – but isn’t mired in outlandish grime and misery. Most crucially, it’s a story about past injustice that doesn’t gorge itself on self-satisfaction. Nor the comforting myth that Britain is on a steady path of betterment.
Jean (Rosy McEwen) is a teacher in Newcastle. It’s 1988, in the weeks and months after Section 28 has come into effect, instructing British state schools not to “promote the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”. Jean has always kept her sexuality hidden from her coworkers. But that veil of self-protection comes under threat when she spots one of her new students, Lois (Lucy Halliday), at the local lesbian bar she frequents with her girlfriend Viv (Kerrie Hayes).
