Gregory’s Girl – An 80s Teen Film that Gets the Awkwardness of Youth Right

Time and again audiences decry how unattainable and unusual “Hollywood romance” is and yet, films that were celebrated for their nuanced and realistic portrayals of love are often the ones that get forgotten in favour of over-the-top affection. In the early 1980s Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl (1981) was a sensation home and abroad thanks to its idiosyncratic and realistic view of young love. The film delighted audiences, won a Best Screenplay BAFTA award, and not only brought light to the Scottish film industry for the first time in decades, but also established Forsyth as a unique voice in humanist comedy.

Gregory’s Girl Starts with a typical image from an 80s American teen movie with nerds playing peeping tom on a woman changing, but Forsyth quickly sidesteps expectations when the boys are emotionally overwhelmed by what they see and leave, quickly followed by two younger boys walking by and mocking their elders for falling apart over “a bit of tit.” That juxtaposition is what really makes Gregory’s Girl unique. It’s not a film necessarily about coming-of-age or horned-up teen, but instead a deep examination of the kind of weirdos teen boys become at a certain age when sex and hormones drive their entire lives.

Forsyth’s skill at mining realistic and idiosyncratic teenage behaviour is really what sets the movie apart. The teens are indeed driven by sex but they’re also obsessed with trying to crack into every part of the world from drumming to baking. John Gordon Sinclair as the titular Gregory has all the impish charisma of his Hollywood counterparts but a certain befuddled cluelessness that makes him much more recognizable. When Dorothy (Dee Hepburn), a star football player, takes his spot on the team it’s easy to see that though he’s the big man on campus, his aloof attitude will get him nowhere when it comes to desiring a confident and mature young woman.

The other wonderful thing the film does is not have a laser focus on Gregory’s hapless pursuit of Dorothy, but instead, its camera roves through the many romantic travails around the school from the abortive flirting of two boys with any girl they see, to their equally feckless football coach. In fact, the most charming romances exists entirely on the periphery of the film with Gregory’s “wise beyond her years” younger sister Madeleine and the boy who gives the kind of well-worn affection you’d expect from a 60-something divorcee. Add to that a confused child in a penguin suit and the local stud’s obsession with pastries and you get the unique alchemy that makes the humorous spirit of the film really stand out.

Beyond Forsyth’s wonderful script, much credit has to go to his use of members of the Glasgow Youth Theatre. He’d worked there before and here he brilliantly utilizes the fact that they present as much more ‘real’ teenagers than any teen in an American film. They not only have the gawpy, strange looks of real teens, but are skillful actors who walk the cringing line between false bravado and utter confusion that most teen boys tread. Their absorbing portraits of boyhood also do a better job of letting some of the sexually aggressive moments age better than many of their Hollywood contemporaries because it’s quickly obvious the women have the upper hand here and any boy is always moments from disaster.

Roger Ebert said of Gregory’s Girl, “The movie contains so much wisdom about being alive and teenage and vulnerable that maybe it would even be painful for a teenager to see it,” and perhaps it’s true, but the nostalgia and memory of teenage love have never been portrayed better. Your distance from teen-dom as a viewer and the distance today from the early 80s or Scotland only add to the film’s enduring appeal. If you are tired of the falsehoods of Hollywood’s teen romance, Gregory’s Girl provides the antidote with hormonal courtship represented in all its intense and messy glory.

Find the next play times for Gregory’s Girl (1981) on Hollywood Suite