paris is for lovers
by Douglas Messerli
Alice Oseman (screenwriter), Euros Lyn (director) Heartstopper (Season 2) / 2023 [TV series]
The second season of the now fabled TV series starring Kit Connor and Joe
Locke consisted of eight more episodes, in order titled “Out,” “Family,” “Promise,”
“Challenge,” “Heat,” “Truth/Dare,” Sorry,” and “Perfect.”
It begins where the season left off with
Nick (Connor) and Charlie’s (Locke) growing love being challenged, in this case
by Nick the ruby player’s difficulty in coming out, despite the fact that he
has done so to Charlie’s closet friends and his own mother (Olivia Colman). As
with any such gay relationship, difficulties immediately arise. In this case Charlie
has been letting his studies go, and when he tells his parents about his new
relationship they are anything but sympathetic given the fact that he has not
turned in a major history paper and his grades are slipping. They ban him from
seeing Nick in their own house, particularly with the clause of no “sleepovers.”
Nick, meanwhile, has been pulled out of
his classroom position next to Charlie to study for his General Certificate of
Secondary Education (GCSE) exam, and the boys encounter each other less than
previously in their classroom situations.
Both Elle (Yasmin Finney) and
Tao (William Gao) continue to be attracted to one another, but also face
problems, in part because of Tao’s resistance in expressing his feelings and
Elle’s consideration of attending Lambert Art School—a distance evidently from
the communities in which her friends now live—and her involvement there with
other lesbian couples.
Throughout this series of episodes, we
also get a glimpse of some of the problems arising between the Higgs School lesbian
friends of Elle, Tara Jones (Corinna Brown) and Darcy Olsson (Kizzy Edgell). In Tara’s
case it is still a problem, in part, that she is coming to terms with being “out,”
but also for now being concerned about Darcy’s inability, despite her seemingly
open acceptance of herself and her identity, to be able to actually say the
word “love.” Tara has also never yet met her lover’s mother.
As the series proceeds, we
also discover that Darcy’s mother is perhaps the least open-minded of all the fairly
liberal parents in this series, and Darcy has not even been able to tell her quite
vicious mother about her sexuality, representing an extreme contradiction of
her behavior at school.
Meanwhile, Isaac Henderson (Tobie
Donovan) begins to receive attention from the Truham School’s other gay boy, James
McEwan (Bradley Riches), which he first accepts but with whom has difficulty
when it comes to true intimacy, as he gradually discovers that he is asexual.
Other barriers arise when
Nick’s brother David (Jack Barton) returns home. He’s definitely homophobic,
and when he discovers his younger brother has a boyfriend, he’s more than a
little vindictive. Nick is also quite disturbed about his former girlfriend
Imogen dating Ben Hope (Sebastian Croft), knowing that eventually she will
suffer the truth of Ben’s confused sexuality.
If so far, this sounds like the makings
of a grand soap opera, so it is. But writer Alice Oseman has several solutions
up her sleeve, sending most of her characters off to a school trip to Paris
accompanied by the wonderful school Art teacher, Mr Ajayi (Fisayo Akinade) and
the far stricter disciplinarian Mr. Farouk (Nima Taleghani).
Of course, in the city of romance everyone
falls in love. Charlie and Nick get to spend some lovely time together, despite
having the share their beds with Isaac and Tao. Tao and Elle finally come
together as a couple, Darcy and Tara become closer, and even Isaac appears to
become friends with James. In a truly unnecessary plot hookup, even Ajayi and
Farouk hook up for a hot sexual night. Who’d of guessed that Farouk was a somewhat
closeted queer?
But there are still problems. In Paris
Charlie and others begin to perceive that Nick is quite fluent in French, only
to discover that his father, who has long ago left the family (Thibault de
Montlembert) is French and lives in Paris, but can hardly be bothered by his
own son’s telephone calls in an attempt to set up a meeting. He eventually
plans a lunch, when Nick plans to come out to his father, but again the father
is distracted and leaves his son and Charlie, before Nick is able to say
anything.
Charlie, meanwhile, is still suffering the previous
year’s bullying, finally having to deal with his own anorexia, as in faints in
the Louvre, and later admitting to Nick that he cut himself during the earlier
period in his life.
Back at home, Nick invites
Charlie and his family to dinner at his mother’s house when his father Stéphane
shows up for a rare visit. At the dinner, suffering the taunts of his brother
David, he finally speaks out, revealing his brother’s homophobia and his father’s
inability to care about his own son, and in the process opening coming out to
his entire family.
But Charlie’s family are
impressed by his clear devotion to their son. And now even Charlie, when Ben,
his former lover, attempts to a confession of his wrong behavior, speaks out
against the selfishness of his behavior, recognizing that even now he is merely
seeking self-validation.
And although Tao and Elle are now very
much in love, she admits that she has been accepted to Lambert.
At the school prom, Darcy
does not show up after having a show-down with her unloving mother. The “group”
leave the prom to join Darcy and find themselves all back in their comfort zones
and each other’s intense love.
Yes, Heartstopper, is
a kind of teen romance soap opera, but as one observer suggested, almost every
time it seems about to fall into sentimentalism, the writer and director move
it off into a new situation, a problematic dilemma which leads the series into
new dimensions. One might might wish, however, for a few less stock youth and gay
situations.
Los Angeles, November 24, 2024
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2024).
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