Although director Daniel Minahan draws achingly persuasive performances from the five core characters in this bittersweet melodrama, it’s hard to be satisfied with a story that concludes as this one does.
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| Lee (Will Poulter, left), his bride-to-be Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and his brother Julius (Jacob Elordi) anticipate an upcoming move to California ... but nothing will work out as planned. |
That said, Minahan and Kass deserve credit for treating gender issues and uncertainty with the same respect and sensitivity that highlight Pufahl’s book.
Events begin in the mid-1950s, as brothers Lee (Will Poulter) and Julius (Jacob Elordi) have returned from Korean War service. They gather in the small-town Kansas house that Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) inherited when her mother died. Lee, having long been sweet on Muriel, proposes; she accepts.
The long-standing plan — driven by Lee — is that the three of them will move to San Diego, get jobs, and make enough money to eventually buy a house; Julius will be welcome in a second bedroom.
However...
As this sequence unfolds, the glances that pass between Muriel and Julius are laden with unspoken intensity: hungry, yearning and forlorn. Edgar-Jones and Elordi’s body movements are flirty; the air drips with sexual tension. The snap assumption, at this early stage, is that Muriel will be torn between the two of them.
But no; things aren’t that simple. For starters, Julius is gay ... but perhaps not entirely. He’s also much too free-spirited for such a conventional life; he’s a thief and card cheat — which Lee has long known — and thus heads to what he imagines will be a more exciting time in Las Vegas.
Yes, this is another story that decisively punctures the surface “wholesomeness” that many people naïvely assume the 1950s represented. Much of what follows takes place within all aspects of the decade’s closeted gay community.
