Tea and Sympathy

Initially, I thought that John Kerr looked just a bit too old to convince as the seventeen year old "Tom" but as his character unfolds in front of us, I concluded that actually his extra years helped him to add quite a degree of maturity to a role that proves a lot more complex than the title might suggest. He arrives at his new all-boys school and, like any newbie, is on the periphery of it's community. Luckily, he is befriended by the kindly "Laura" (Deborah Kerr) who has recently married his new housemaster "Bill" (Leif Erickson). It's not that "Tom" is in any way effeminate, but his complete lack of interest in contact sport or girls and his obviously more theatrical and creative, tennis playing, bent quickly earns him the disparaging nickname of "sister boy". "Laura" becomes aware of this more subliminal form of bullying and decides to try to offer him some support - but when he lands a part in the school play of a feminine character, his distant and largely absent father "Herb" (Edward Andrews) forbids him from taking part and his inner frustrations begin to emerge. From amongst the student fraternity, it's only "Al" (Darryl Hickman) who tries to reach out to "Tom" but even he begins to feel that he is ill-equipped to assist as his friend exhibits much less of the "manly" attributes expected of him. Meantime, it becomes quite clear that "Laura" has problems with her own marriage and that perhaps there is some surrogacy going on with her relationship with "Tom" possibly replacing one that might be absent elsewhere in her life. Deborah Kerr is probably most famous for her more lightly comedic roles, or for "The King and I" (also from 1956) but it was films like this and "The Innocents" (1961) that remind me just how unafraid she was to tackle issues that were borderline taboo in cinema at the time. Whilst this doesn't directly address any thorny issues of homosexuality, it's implication and the delicate portrayal by both Kerr's and from Hickman proves uncomfortably provocative - especially as Erickson, Andrews and Dean Jones present us with differing aspects of a toxic masculinity only barely veiled behind some semblance of educational tradition. Whether intentional or not, there is cruelty on display towards the young man on display here, too - and by the end it's the sublety of the exposure of behavioural patterns that gives this a poignancy worth noting.