The trailer for Joel Edgerton’s second feature film, Boy Erased, just dropped, and it looks like it’s going to be intense and emotional and leave me a sobbing wreck, so that’s great.
The film stars Lucas Hedges, of Lady Bird and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri fame, as the child of Russell Crowe, who plays a Baptist pastor, and Nicole Kidman, who send him to gay conversion therapy after admitting he thinks about men.
Australian pop star Troye Sivan also features in the film, and contributed the original song ‘Revelation’, a collaboration with Leland and Jónsi, to the soundtrack.
The film is based on a memoir by Garrard Conley that was published in 2016 to widespread acclaim. The trailer shows that the film will cover some pretty heavy content, and inevitably be quite upsetting, but there are positive moments too.
Everyone’s favourite lesbian aunt, Cherry Jones (who you might remember from Transparent or her recent appearances on Handmaid’s Tale), appears in the trailer, telling Hedges’ character, Jared, that he is a “perfectly normal, very healthy teenage boy”, and thank god for her, tbh.
Jared meets a boy (played by a delightful Sivan) at conversion therapy, and Sivan’s character encourages Jared to “tell them what they want to hear; play the part. Unless you really think you can change.” Thank you, Troye, for being the antidote we all needed.
The trailer for #BoyErased is finally here. Starring Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Joel Edgerton & myself. Featuring ‘REVELATION’, an original song written by @LelandOfficial, Jónsi, & I. Couldn’t be prouder to be a part of this. In theatres this November! ❤️ ❤️ pic.twitter.com/TQhY4hcoAu
— troye (@troyesivan) July 17, 2018
Boy Erased is the follow-up to Edgerton’s feature film debut, The Gift, which was released in 2015. It will be released in US cinemas in November, but the Australian release date has yet to be confirmed.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post, starring Chloë Grace Moretz and released earlier this year after winning the Grand Jury prize at Sundance in January, also tackles the issue of gay conversion therapy. Cameron Post is also based on a book, albeit a fictional one, by Emily M. Danforth.
I for one am ready to feel all the feelings, and I truly hope Edgerton has done Conley’s story justice. The fact that gay conversion therapy is still taking place in 2018 is abhorrent, and if this film does his story justice, it could go a long way to raising awareness of the brutal realities of conversion therapy.