Following his 2017 zombie flick with a humane twist, The Cured, Irish filmmaker David Freyne returns with a coming-of-age tale about… well, coming out – which at first, sounds like a far cry from the flesh-eating pandemonium that preceded it. Yet, there’s one thing that both films have in common and it remains unspoken – a somewhat, universal reminder for anyone who’s ever felt like an outcast for being different, that the instinctive bond they share with others who feel the same can be used as a powerful weapon in times of crisis. Admittedly, it might seem strange to make connections between the living dead and the homosexual experience, but it also suggests that Freyne has an interesting way of perceiving the world we live in, and considering it’s a time where the very concept of isolation has become quite a literal burden for us all, that should be more than enough reason to prove his voice deserves to be heard.
Out of the Closet
Lets face it, there’s no worse place to be than in high school when coming to terms with your sexuality. In a world where oral presentations are often interrupted by voices breaking mid-sentence and textbooks are the only object within an arms reach to shield uninvited erections – it would be safe to say that going against the grain any more than necessary should seem like a bad idea. And now, with the Smartphone revolution allowing those shameful moments to be publicised across the globe within the tap of a finger, that awkward chapter in our lives still proves to be just as ruthless as it ever was, reminding us that somehow everything and nothing has changed since the 90’s and the only logical way to survive it, is to blend in.
This plan of attack seems to be working for Eddie (Fionn O’Shea), a gay teenager growing up in small-town Ireland whose recent attempts at flying under-the-radar have been just enough to keep schoolyard suspicions at bay. It wouldn’t be such a hard lie to live if it weren’t for his candy-haired classmate, Amber (Lola Pettigrew), who’s also been playing the same charade and suddenly realises that Eddie’s in the same predicament. Even if she’s more than capable at challenging the daily vulgarity thrown at her from bullies at school, Amber has finally reached her wits end and proposes to Eddie that they should date until the end of the year to avoid further speculations. Grappling with the denial that’s kept him a comfortable prisoner for too long, Eddie agrees to the idea to further exercise his false identity, but soon gets tangled in the design of their master plan and the exciting freedom of living life outside the closet starts to take over.
While this kind of conundrum would usually support something in the realms of traditional satire, every moment of glee that Eddie and Amber experience is almost always painted with a shade of latent anxiety, and we slowly begin to learn that this is a story that could only be told through the eyes of someone who’s dealt with the misfortunes of gay adolescence firsthand. Between convincing the parents of their newfound puppy love or resisting the urge to ‘shift’ at a gay bar after one too many swigs from a whisky bottle, the youngsters start to realise that there’s still plenty of hoops to jump through, but it’s precisely those situations that catapult them into some much-needed moments of clarity and ultimately strengthen the ties of their friendship.
Time is of the Essence
If a show like Rupaul’s Drag Race can manage to hold the same viewer ratings as a live debate between Trump and Biden, it would be easy to assume that we’re living in very different times compared to those, say, twenty years ago – which is precisely one of the things that makes Dating Amber standout. It’s not that queer culture has always struggled to find an audience, but it’s only now that we’re beginning to see it represented and appreciated on a much bigger scale. This is a positive shift, no doubt, but as filmmakers start to tackle stories outside the realms of ‘coming out’, there’s also a danger in forgetting about the hard work it took to get us this far.
Inspired by Freyne’s own experience growing up as a gay teenager, we understand the emotional foundations of his story as those struggles from the past are brought to the surface. The director never shies away from exploring the heteronormative behaviour responsible for causing such damaging degrees of sexual repression at the time and even goes outside the realms of homosexuality to show it. While most of the straight characters in the film contextualise this idea, it’s mostly shown through Eddie’s parents, Hannah and Ian (Sharon Horgan & Barry Ward), who are both unhappy in their marriage but are forced to stay together due to the anti-divorce laws in place at the time. This causes Ian to step-up as a father figure to regain his sense of purpose in a ‘traditional’ male role, and he does so through hyper-masculine activities, such as training Eddie up for the army. On the other hand, it’s easier for Amber to take control of the future she wants for herself, because her mother’s parenting skills are slightly subdued from the lingering grief of losing her husband.
Because the primary narrative is split between Eddie and Amber, it reveals the various obstacles that both homosexual males and females were faced with and emphasises how much those old-fashioned expectations of one’s gender have since been debunked in today’s social climate. In lesser hands, a lot of this could have translated as preachy wrist-slapping targeted at straight audiences, but Freyne‘s approach is much smarter than that and he chooses to show his battle scars in much subtler ways, instead, finding the ironic humour in how much the tables have turned over time.
The End of the Rainbow
Just like that awkward feeling of watching sex education videos with a class full of hormonal teenagers, Dating Amber takes those uncomfortable moments from adolescence and highlights just how difficult growing up can be when we’re forced to think and act like everyone else. Even if the direction Freyne takes sometimes feels familiar, there’s a cultural charm woven into his screenplay that elevates the material above what’s expected of the genre and it’s brought to life by an irresistible chemistry between O’Shea and Pettigrew, which is sure to melt even the coldest of hearts. While we’re left with no easy answers, the film instead chooses to leave us with a comforting sense of hope with its profound message about importance of friendship in times of uncertainty and how the things we learn about ourselves from hiding who we really are, can sometimes give us an inner strength that we never knew existed.
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Dating Amber was released in the UK and Ireland on June 4. The film’s official worldwide release was on November 10, 2020.
Watch Dating Amber
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