Euros Lyn | Heartstopper: Kiss / 2022 [Season 1, Episode 3]

another version of me

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alice Oseman (screenplay), Euros Lyn (director) Heartstopper “Kiss” / 2022 [30 minutes] [Season 1, Episode 3]

 

How to explain to the heteronormative world when you are a young man growing up in an environment that utterly encourages one’s own feelings for the opposite sex, what it feels like when you suddenly begin to perceive and gradually have to admit to yourself that you’re different, that the attraction you now feel for other boys is disparaged by most of your peers for political, religious, or reasons that are simply borne out of fear. Not only disparaged, moreover, but are often mocked and dismissed as their mouths spit out words of absolute hate? There is no explanation possible of course. It is something simply to suffer alone in your bedroom late at night.

     Before the days of the internet, it was far worse.

     In schools throughout the world, young gay boys not only felt totally removed from the “normative” community but were thrown into a so-called normalized society that forced them to feel they were failed human beings justifiably left alone and apart.

     At least Charlie, a Brit who has gone through a year of coming out has posted a large cover jacket of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited upon the wall. Forget the fact that after he played around with boys throughout his “university” days that Waugh’s character Charles Ryder gave up the young boys such as Sebastien in order marry and to retreat back into rigid Catholicism very much in the manner of E. M. Forster’s Maurice’s friend Clive Durham, who abandoned his youthful lover in order to live a life of pretended heterosexuality. If nothing else, Charlie has an entire history of British boarding school buggering to help qualm his sense of isolation.

      In this work, the truly gentle public school rugby player Nick, having presumed in his own attraction to women that he was just like everyone else, is suddenly put into the predicament of an American high school queer, with no concept of what his sudden feelings of attraction to Charlie might mean to himself or others.

       As I suggest, at least he has a computer to help him through the process. Imagine what someone like me in the terribly homophobic early 1960s felt—or which in utter self-protection I even refused to think about.

       Nick is lost in a world in which he reads about people who may share some of his feelings but who also truly appear to be demanding that he share entirely other version of himself. Nick, however, also has Charlie, who has gone through these same experiences and is perhaps even oversensitive to what Nick must be experiencing, apologizing throughout this first season of Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper for even making his new friend suffer through the pain of it all.

     The bullying issues which later blow up in full force in Episode 7 begin back here in Episode 3, without Nick quite being able to comprehend where his emotions are carrying him. Invited to a party for Harry Greene’s (Cormac Hyde-Corrin) birthday party, his locker room mates discuss his current relationship with Imogen Heaney (Rhea Norwood) along with his earlier relationship with a black girl Tara (it’s truly a relief of how non-racist this series is), who we now know is in a lesbian relationship. This conversation, going on in front Charlie as well, is difficult for the both of them.

      But the next morning Nick makes a leap, inviting Charlie to Harry’s party as his “date”—although neither boy can yet possibly describe it as that. In his constantly self-deferential manner, Charlie declares “I don’t know. It doesn’t really sound like my sort of thing.”

      But Charlie truly wants him to be there and begs him to come, Charlie finally agreeing to attend. Elle is pleasant astounded that he might now be able to attend what she, somewhat cynically describes as an “important people’s party,” while Tao dourly notes that his friend was supposed to come over for movies that night. This battle will be repeated throughout the series, Tao attempting to keep his only deep friend close and protect him, while Charlie begins to move off into a new territory where neither of them have ever before been.

      Charlie’s father drives him to the party, telling him that he’ll be back at 10:00, his son begging for another hour without success. But his father, who’s also worried about the well-being of his gay son, tells him to call if he needs help. What you quickly realize is that both Charlie’s parents and Nick’s mother are caring, loving people who openly accept their sons even if they are worried for them, another important generational difference from this third decade 21st century series compared with almost anything that came before it.

       Imogen, wearing a new dress, is delighted to be there, but Nick is only on the watch of Charlie. But when Charlies finally does show up, as one might have expected given this party is celebrating the existence of the most homophobic boy on the rugby team, things do now work out well.

       In an intercut to another scene in this multi-celebratory party, Elle shows up at Tao’s house, his mother so joyfully happy to see her again that Tao feels almost envious of his mother’s affections. As Tao and Ellie argue over film titles, Isaac calls saying he can’t make it, and they realize that it’s just the two of them sharing whatever movie they can agree upon—as well as what he also begin to perceive as a loving relationship of their own.

       Meanwhile, back at the party, Harry announces that Tara has shown up, a purposeful invitation aimed at breaking up Charlie and Nick’s couch tête-à-tête. Charlie, watching their reunion from afar, cannot imagine that what the two former school mates are telling one another is that they don’t really feel sexually interested in one another. “All of this could have been avoided,” Tara tosses out, “if I just told him (Harry) I was a lesbian.”

      Nick, the true innocent, responds, “But that’s not something you’d wouldn’t want to lie about.” Her direct, almost off-hand response is what makes their series so very different: “Wouldn’t be a lie.”

       And that understated confirmation helps to open up Nick to realize that he’s not the only one facing a version of the self that he has never previously imagined. Darcy and she no longer feel it necessary to keep it so quiet, although perhaps they’re not ready yet for a public announcement. But even Tara cannot imagine how sharing that fact with Nick gives a permission he is still not ready for.

       Nick, it turn, confesses that Charlie Spring, the known gay boy of the school, is probably his best friend right now.

        Things are shifting here without anyone even quite acknowledging it. Admissions are never that easy, but both Tara and Nick have shared something with one another that they are not quite ready to announce to the world.

        Nick turns back, however, to find Charlie missing. How might Charlie know that he hasn’t been yet again betrayed?

        Once more Harry tries to stop Nick on his search of Charlie, “that nerdy year 10,” who Nick once more describes as being his friend. Harry, of course, can only presume that he feels sorry for him for being gay. When finally, Nick calls out Harry’s accusations as being “homophobic,” he also declares something he will have to reiterate later all over again: “I don’t really like you. Happy birthday!”

         Back in Tao’s bedroom with Elle, he apologizes for his “weird” behavior, but admits he misses how things used to be with just the four of them. But the far wiser, and increasingly perceptive Elle, beginning to recognize her love for Tao, comments “But sometimes change is a good thing,” a maxim with which even Tao must agree.

         At Harry’s fiasco, as Charlie attempts an escape, a bit like and escaping Cinderella, down a long mansion hall, he runs into his old abuser Ben Hope, Charlie compulsively uttering his famous apology for even living “I’m sorry” for even accidently having running into him. When Ben attempts to once again kiss him, Charlie pushing him off, demands that he shouldn’t touch him. This is a new Charlie, an angry young man for the moment we’ve never before seen in the passive, frightened cute gay kid.

        While Nick looks for him, the endless storm of the party catches up with him, as Imogen grabs him, demanding he dance, even though he declares he cannot. Nick attempting an escape admits that he was just looking for someone, but Imogen, desperate to keep him beside her, insists he should stay imploring him as desperate young girls often do with the meaningless phrase: “I want to hang out with you!” She also begs him to like her, he pulling away to “find his friend.”

       As Nick passes through the hall of mad dancers he spots Tara and Darcy dancing and openly kissing and a smile absconds with Kit Connor’s otherwise worried face, realizing that there are, after all, quite positive alternatives to the dilemma he faces.

       In the midst of the chaos he discovers Charlie, quietly cowering upon another couch, who still cannot resist his endless apologies for having disappeared: “Sorry, I felt I was in the way. Your year 11 friends are kind of intimidating.”

       Nick says something that he will repeat even more emphatically in Episode 7, “I don’t know if I want to hang out with those guys anymore. I’d rather hang out with you anyway.” A vaguely shocked look of appreciation takes over Charlie’s face, one you better get used to if you now love Charlie as much as I do. He simply can’t believe his luck, that someone might really want to be with him for who he actually is.

      The two rush up several stories to an unoccupied room, where Charlie finally confronts Nick:

“So was Harry being serious? Do you like Tara?”

      Nick quickly denies any relationship with her.

      “So you don’t have a crush on anyone at the moment.”

      Nick, always honest, responds: “Well…I didn’t say that.”

   “What’s she like then?”

      “You’re just going to assume they’re a she,” a very interesting grammatical mistake that we will have to later on analyze.

      Again the plural: “Are they not a girl?”

      “Um….”

      “Would you go with someone who wasn’t a girl?”

      “I don’t know. Maybe.”

      “Would you kiss someone who wasn’t a girl?”

      Their feet move closer, as do their hands. We already know the answer.

      “Would you kiss me?”

      “Yeah.”

      And indeed they kiss, a kiss which I have to admit I already thought must have happened.

      Then they really kiss. Oh, we know the result. Somebody knocks on the door, calls out Nick’s name. It’s not going to be easy. But it was as lovely as any series of first kisses ever brought to screen, even with the cutesy fluttering flowers and crackles of romantic electricity which this teen romance believes to be required.

      Even if Nick has to leave Cinderella’s ballroom to face the music, so to speak, Charlie’s 10:00 carriage arrives to speed him off, and for the one and only time Nick does somewhat betray his friend by agreeing with Harry that he was “just in a mood,” leaving poor Charlie to sob on the shoulder of his fairy (god)father, we still know everything’s going to be all right when Nick shows up in a rainstorm the very next morning at Charlie’s front door totally soaked to apologize and surely, even though the credits interrupt it, to kiss him all over again.

 

Los Angeles, October 10, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (October 2024).