Last year, the runaway success of Love, Simon felt monumental. Hollywood’s first major studio-funded comedy to focus on a gay teen romance, and it outperformed box office expectations? The film stood as proof that audiences were ravenous for queer stories on the silver screen.
But as a movie built around the idea that a high school student’s world would implode if his sexuality ever got out, it’s unsurprising that some criticized it for feeling a bit outdated. After all, these days, “coming out” is far from the kind of essential queer experience it once was, and younger generations are far morelikely to identity as queer and sexually fluid than their forebears. That means that old paradigms surrounding the closet are quickly evaporating, and a film like Love, Simon might look dated more rapidly than you’d expect. But on the independent circuit, a number of films are taking a more clued-in approach to what queer sexuality actually looks and feels like in 2019, and they’re telling more interesting stories about their protagonists as a result. Read more via them.us