Movie review: The Miseducation of Cameron Post

[rocky41_7]

Last night I watched The Miseduation of Cameron Post, a film about an 11^th grader whose aunt sends her away to a Christian conversion camp after she gets caught hooking up with a female friend. The film is set in 1993.

It’s a heartfelt film about Cameron’s resistance to being changed and her developing identity (Asked early on at camp when she started to think of herself as a homosexual, Cameron asserts “I don’t think of myself as a homosexual. I don’t think of myself as anything, really.”), but it doesn’t differ meaningfully from other conversion camp films I’ve seen. Boy Erased made me cry and this one didn’t, if that’s worth anything.

The film swings between the current moment, and flashbacks to Cameron’s relationship with Coley, the friend with whom she was caught, in ways that both show us the line of Cameron’s thoughts and also become somewhat confusing. It was unclear to me for much of the film what actually happened that resulted in Cameron getting caught. Both that experience and the letter Coley sends Cameron later make it seem like that was their first hook-up, but the flashback sections suggest they had been together several times before, which makes it unclear of those are actual memories or just Cameron’s fantasies of what could have happened (further complicated by a couple of actual dream sequences). It was not helped by the actors frequently dropping into whispers and mumbling; I missed entire exchanges because I couldn’t hear.

Either of Cameron’s two buddies at camp—Jane, a Black girl who grew up on a free love commune but whose mother recently married a conservative man whose decision it was to send Jane away (and who has been at this camp for over a year); or Adam, a Lakota two-spirit whose father recently got into politics, converted to Christianity, and demanded his child follow suit—would have made for more interesting protagonists. Cameron comes off pretty nondescript, which is exacerbated by how internalized she is, rarely speaking or expressing herself. It’s not until the end of the film where she really starts saying anything.

One thing The Miseducation of Cameron Post does do differently is that the staff at the camp lack the total, violent conviction of other conversion camp narratives I’ve seen. Some staff have that attitude, but others visibly doubt if they’re doing the right thing, particularly after some exchanges with the campers (and I maintain there’s a scene at the end where one staff member chooses to be passive in a way that helps Cameron and her pals, when he could have done otherwise). This adds an interesting tension, where it’s not just the campers asking themselves if what’s going on here is right or wrong.

The ending is pretty open in a way that’s not totally satisfying (one of those “Okay…but what now?” kind of endings) but it is a sweet final moment and it’s so easy to root for Cam and her friends, even though we just got a reminder of how little the rest of society cares about what’s happening to the kids in these camps.

This film is based off the book of the same name by Emily M. Danforth, which I haven’t read. Turns out it’s a bit of a chunker, at 500 pages, and reviews say Cameron doesn’t go to camp until halfway through, with the first 250 pages just backstory on her relationship with Coley. The film cuts out almost all of this to focus on the conversation camp narrative, which I think is the right choice, because it’s where the real story is.

On the whole, I enjoyed it, but it doesn’t stand out to me in any way.

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

Oh, too bad this seems like a bit of a muddle -- I read the book some years ago and was impressed by Cameron's narrative voice, which is always hard to translate to film. The first half I recall as setting the stakes and establishing Cameron's character in such a way that the sudden descent into the camp felt like the shock it was. Would recommend.

[isabrella]

I think it's really interesting that you didn't particularly like the camp but think that the book should've cut out the first half. I read (and very much enjoyed, so I'm biased perhaps) the book and the first half is infinitely more interesting than the second. I was bummed that they adapted into a movie the way they did instead of a miniseries that could've given the first half the airtime it deserved.