324. Bloomington

During this summer there is the annual LBGT film tour.
From July to October nine movies are being shown across the UK and I'm fortunate to have been sent screeners to review.
So, firstly, thanks to Simon at Peccadillo Pictures and Lee at TLA Releasing for their help on this.
The latter are distributing Bloomington, a story of love between a teacher and her student, which is being screened in Newcastle next week.
I'm afraid this was nowhere near the standard of Blackmail Boys, the TLA movie I reviewed earlier this week.
Bluntly, Bloomington made me think of a bad episode of Beverly Hills 90210.
This is the land of the beautiful people but a desperately predictably storyline and jerky direction mean it fails to elicit any sense of drama.
The plot is simple. Teenager Jackie (Sarah Stouffer) is a former TV star who is taking time out from acting to attend college.
She is seduced by her equally beautiful teacher (Allison McAtee).
And that is pretty much that.
The secrecy and the inappropriate nature of the relationship inevitably causes problems but director Fernanda Cardoso fails to ratchet up the tension when these moments arrive.
In fact, she moves too quickly from scene to scene so, at the key points, any sense of drama rather leaks away.
Stouffer and McAtee are fine but give the impression of being straitjacketed by the script.
Of course, I open myself out to the comment that I am the wrong person to be giving a critique of a lesbian movie.
But I'd say a disjointed movie is clear for all to see whatever its genre and that is precisely what Bloomington is.
On its DVD cover there is a quote from Shewired.com proclaiming it as "One of the best movies I've seen this year.''
I can only question how many films that author has seen
In my view it is worth 3/10.