Finding your own voice can be excruciating when you're a teenager expected to conform to the conventions of your peers. If you're an outsider or gay, this process of accepting yourself can be doubly burdensome. This theme of not living life with a borrowed voice is effectively explored in the new DVD "Handsome Devil," just released by Breaking Glass Pictures. The film was screened last month at Frameline and was a big crowd-pleaser. Though it takes place at a posh Irish boarding school, its joyful exuberance gives it an almost universal appeal.
"Devil" begins with a snarky voiceover narration as part of a national essay competition by Ned (Fionn O'Shea), a 16-year-old red-haired rebel whose mother died, and father has remarried and lives in Dubai, so he has been exiled to Wood Hill, an all-boys school outside Dublin. Ned is ridiculed and bullied for being gay, which he defines as "bad, crap, different," and for disliking rugby, the obsession of all Wood Hills students and faculty. It's to the film's credit that Ned remains sexually ambiguous and we never find out for sure whether he is gay. He rejoices when he discovers he doesn't have a roommate, but later the headmaster (Michael McElhatton) assigns him Conor (Nicholas Galitzine), a transfer student who left his previous school under a cloud of inciting violence. Conor will also become the school's star rugby player, whom Ned sees as the enemy, erecting a Berlin Wall in the dorm room composed of luggage and bookcases to avoid speaking with Conor.
The new English teacher, Dan Sherry (Andrew Scott), doesn't tolerate laziness or stupidity, and exposes Ned's plagiarism of song lyrics as his essay in front of the class. He discovers Ned playing a guitar (he knows only one chord), convincing him and Conor to participate as a duo in a talent show at a neighboring girls' school. Thrown together against their will, the ice cracks, the wall comes tumbling down, and an unlikely friendship develops. Ned discovers Conor secretly entering a gay bar. Conor sees Sherry there with his "fella." They both agree to pretend it never happened. Meanwhile the fanatic homophobic rugby coach Paschal O'Keefe (Moe Dunford) resents Ned's time infringement on Conor's game-playing, especially as they prepare to enter their first final match in 10 years. He attempts to split the two guys apart, discovering the real reason why Conor left his old school, threatening to expose him if he doesn't devote himself fully to rugby. Conor needs to hide his identity and puts his friendship with Ned on hold to protect himself. Can an angry Ned (who didn't realize how lonely he was until he had a friend) keep Conor's secret? How will all this personal drama affect the outcome of the big game?
"Handsome Devil" winds up being better than it had a right to be. Much of the plot is predictable, and you would have to be mentally challenged not to see the finale coming from a mile away. The coming-of-age/coming out story is old hat, and this film uses well-worn stereotypes: the closeted jock, the gay-hating coach, the geeky outsider, the inspiring teacher who will learn from his students. Yet in spite of this emotional manipulation, the movie is irresistible. The cast is a winning one. O'Shea is spot-on as the charismatic, cynical rebel. Galitzine is quite handsome, but also conveys the sadness of always trying to be someone he's not. The openly gay actor Scott, best known as Moriarty in the hit PBS series "Sherlock," is the real star. Witty, sardonic, and compassionate, he makes believable the English teacher we all wish we had. The sensitive but self-hating Sherry's philosophy is epitomized in his challenge to his students: "If you spend your whole life being someone else, who is going to be you?"
Writer/director Butler exposes the hypocrisies of Irish masculinity and satirizes sports mania. In the excellent bonus material, a Q&A with Butler and Scott at the Krakow Netia Off Camera Festival, Butler critiques conformity in all its guises, and rejects all labels as stifling, revealing that he is 50% Ned and 50% Conor, having attended a similar school engrossed in rugby culture.
Cinematographer Cathal Watters' effective use of split-screen montages and vibrant colors, galvanized by an alternative 80s soundtrack (Big Star, The Undertones, and The Housemartins, but oddly not The Smiths' song that gives the movie its title), moves the narrative along.