Film: Were The World Mine

Reviews, By davidb, 18th March, 2009

About half way through Were The World Mine, the film’s hero notes “That’s the pansy talking…”, and he could be describing the sweet-natured, mildly subversive and rampantly queer-positive film itself.

Director Tom Gustafson has fleshed out his earlier short Fairies into a fantastically queer feature that appropriates the teen coming of age genre for its own purposes. Referencing John Hughes and massive chunks of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the opening act establishes lead character Timothy’s daily exposure to homophobic bullying at an elite boys school and subverts the mainstream paradigm that usually relegates the assumedly queer character to sidekick or comic relief.

The undeniable and unavoidable campness of it all is clear the first time Timothy breaks into song, and the film becomes a kind of inspirational mash-up of Mean Girls (well, mean boys) and a Bronski Beat video. With sly nods to the burgeoning High School Musical phenomenon, it also acknowledges a tendency to fetishise and transfer our own desires onto pretty boy heroes with long lashes and a good set of pipes, arguably as a response to being marginalised.

It’s drama class that allows Timothy to feel a sense of empowerment and belonging for the first time, and the drama teacher Mrs. Tebbit functions as both Greek chorus and an almost other-worldly figure, gurning and holding forth like a benevolent drag queen. She’s a catalyst and voice of reason as it becomes clear that, as ever and regardless of the genders involved, the course of true love will not run smoothly.

To say too much more risks spoiling some of the film’s abundant pleasures, a rich vein of queer truth informing the dialogue as our hero confronts the inevitable arguments invoking religion, family values and recruitment. Corporate pressures often force queer directors to sublimate large chunks of their/our stories, but Were The World Mine was clearly made for a fistful of change and, while occasionally looking like a home video of an eisteddfod performance, it’s ultimately better and truer for it. It does falter a little in the execution of its final act, and a lot of the song and dance numbers seem clumsy (although perhaps deliberately so); its message, however, is lovely – “feel good about being gay and yourself.”

If the world were mine, it would screen on a loop in place of Degrassi Junior High and The Footy Show and be compulsory viewing in every high school. It’s truly some kind of wonderful.

Were The World Mine is the Opening Night Film of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, and screens at the Astor Theatre on 18th March at 6:30pm, but is also available on DVD through FQ Films.