Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Andrew Durham
Starring: Scoot McNairy, Emilia Jones, Nessa Dougherty, Adam Lambert, Geena Davis, Maria Bakalova
We've all been embarrassed by our parents at some point in our younger lives, but I can't imagine what it must feel like to feel ashamed of a parent. Based on a memoir by Alysia Abbott, Fairyland tells the story of a young woman who came to be ashamed of her gay father in the intensely homophobic atmosphere of the AIDS era 1980s, only to eventually accept him when it was tragically too late.
Scoot McNairy is an actor who has too often found himself relegated to supporting roles, in danger of becoming a "that guy." He's gifted a rare lead role here by debut writer/director Andrew Durham. McNairy plays Steve, a closeted gay poet who bursts out of said closet when his wife dies in a car accident in 1974. Along with his young daughter Alysia (played initially as a child by Nessa Dougherty and later as a teenager/twentysomething by Emilia Jones), Steve relocates to the most accommodating place in America (and perhaps the world) for a gay man in the 1970s - San Francisco.
Mainstream movies about gay men tend to paint them in a patronising light. As Steve and Alysia live in an overwhelmingly gay milieu, Steve's sexuality is largely irrelevant here; well, until it later becomes very relevant. Fairyland doesn't give Steve a pass for his bad parenting simply because he's a gay man. Though well-meaning, he is an objectively terrible father, neglecting his daughter as he pursues his long withheld sexual desires. At one point young Alysia is almost abducted in the street when her father leaves her to find her own way home from school.
It is no surprise that when we later catch up with a now teenage Alysia she has grown resentful of her father. After years of slumming it, Steve has now become a somewhat successful poet, but the personal nature of his work makes Alysia uncomfortable. Steve seems to find it easier to discuss his life with strangers through his work than to speak with his daughter. As homophobia rises with the onset of AIDS, Alysia finds herself in the curious position of defending her father's lifestyle while also resenting how it impacted her childhood.
McNairy and Jones have an appropriately tense chemistry that provides the film with a much needed layer of depth that is otherwise absent in its sterile storytelling. They aren't together on screen enough though, and I couldn't help but wonder if a non-linear structure that introduced us to the angry teenage Alysia and detailed the source of her pain through flashbacks might have made Fairyland a more compelling watch. The narrative here is of the "and then this happened" variety, and it often feels like it is simply checking off story points rather than developing its plot and characters.
Fairyland functions best as a reminder of how prejudice is something we develop as adults, and how it's often a result of trying to fit in. The young Alysia arrives in San Francisco and takes to its non-binary world like a duck to water. It is Steve who feels initially out of place in this setting, where men and women refuse to hide themselves in the way he has taken for granted until that point. When the Jones' version of Alysia begins to hurl slurs at her father and his circle, it is inspired by the crude language used by her friends, and the more subtle bigotry communicated by politicians. If Alysia never quite forgives her father's selfishness, the inevitable tragedy of AIDS helps her to accept his choices.
Fairyland is in UK/ROI cinemas from May 29th.
