The character of the transvestite Michael in particular seems based more on wishful thinking than on plausible reality would a gay boy of his age in this neighborhood of this town in 1984 be quite so sure of himself? Julie Walters, a 1984 Academy Award nominee for " Educating Rita," is spirited and colorful as the ballet teacher, and Gary Lewis is somehow convincing as the dad even when the screenplay requires him to make big offscreen swings of position.
WATCH BILLY ELLIOT MOVIE
Still, the movie is as much parable and fantasy as it is realistic. I can believe a coal miner supporting his son's dancing dreams, but anyone who believes he would become a scab to raise the money doesn't know much about union miners. Billy's dad, a supporter of the strike, not only begins to understand his son's dream, but actually becomes a strikebreaker to get money for Billy to attend an important audition. The movie is sort of awkwardly cobbled together, and there are big shifts in character without much explanation.
Michael is attracted to Billy, who doesn't reciprocate, but seems unusually sophisticated about the implications for a boy his age. Billy's best friend Michael (Stuart Wells) is gay, however-a cross-dresser who reaches the high point of his young life by putting on one of the tutus.
Soon he is shyly joining her class, the only boy in a crowd of tutus.īilly's father equates male ballet dancers with homosexuality, but Billy doesn't seem to be gay, a fact he discovers to his sudden embarrassment during a pillow fight with his friend Debbie (Nicola Blackwell).
One day, at the other end of the village hall, he sees ballet lessons being taught by a chain-smoking disciplinarian ( Julie Walters), and his eyes grow large. Life at home is tense because his father ( Gary Lewis) and brother Tony ( Jamie Draven) are striking miners. The movie takes place in a British coal mining town, where Billy ( Jamie Bell) trudges off to boxing lessons for which he is ill-equipped.
0 kommentar(er)
