I was one of those girls who was nostalgic for high school before it ended. I sobbed my way through Simple Minds’ Don’t You (Forget About Me) at the end of The Breakfast Club when I watched it for the first time aged 16, already thinking about all the friendships I was likely to leave behind and the boys I wouldn’t kiss. My diary was an attempt to hold on to those memories in the only way I knew how.
US high school movies are my bread and butter – and the latest Netflix offering, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, is a positive progression of a genre that has been stilted by less exciting films in recent years, such as openly fattist The Duff (about high-school misfit Bianca, who believes she is the “designated ugly fat friend”) and Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, which, despite its attempts at subverting high-school romcom tropes by hamming up its early-00s kookiness, left me cold.
To All the Boys ... focuses on a relationship between strong-willed Lara Jean Covey and her love interest, the adorable Peter Kavinsky, which develops from a make-believe affair, to make Peter’s ex-girlfriend jealous, and ends in a kiss. It is a wistful, charming film.
It is not the perfect feminist fairytale. For someone like me, who went through school with a few snogs but nothing resembling a boyfriend, a narrative that centres on a beautiful white boy will always seem problematic. There are more important things than falling in love with a handsome man who reciprocates that love, such as falling in love with yourself. Men other than beautiful white ones deserve love stories, too.
To All the Boys ... ’s characters are refreshingly uncompromising in their friendships and shows of sisterhood. It is one of the first movies of its calibre with a non-white protagonist, whose Korean heritage is referenced in small gestures and who tears down the racism of high-school movies past (take Long Duk Dong in John Hughes’s Sixteen Candles, for whom a gong is sounded every time he appears).
That Jenny Han, the author of the books that became the movie, struggled to find a production company willing to keep Lara Jean’s character Asian–American, rather than make her white, is an even more compelling reason to keep on streaming. While high school may have ended, the battle for representation is still being fought.
Chitra Ramaswamy is away
