Beautiful Thing

Beautiful Thing is set on the Thamesmead Estate in southeast London during a long, hot summer, and follows three teenagers edging towards adulthood. Jamie is quiet and withdrawn, dodging school to escape the classmates who torment him, while his mother Sandra juggles her job, her boyfriend Tony and her son. Their neighbour Ste is a sporty boy who does not want to go home, where his father and brother beat him. Sandra takes him in, and since there is nowhere else for him to sleep, he ends up sharing Jamie's bed. What begins as friendship turns into something more, and the two boys have to work out what they feel for each other. Leah, their classmate, has been expelled and retreats into music of her own choosing.

The film is Hettie Macdonald's directorial debut and her earliest feature, followed much later by The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Jonathan Harvey wrote the screenplay, adapting his own stage play, and Tony Garnett and Bill Shapter produced. Glen Berry plays Jamie, Scott Neal plays Ste, Linda Henry plays Sandra, Tameka Empson plays Leah, with Ben Daniels and Meera Syal also appearing. It runs 92 minutes.

Released in 1996, Beautiful Thing took around two million dollars worldwide. It holds a 7.6 rating on IMDb from about 27,000 votes and a 7.2 on TMDB from a much smaller pool of 359, while the critics' rating stands at 6.9 from 25 reviews. The pattern suggests a film that general viewers have embraced rather more warmly than critics did.