Directed by Vincente Minnelli. Written by Robert Anderson
Tom’s not like his preppy boarding school classmates.
He knows how to sew and cook, and he’s a skilled hand in a flowerbed. He prefers his own company, reads for pleasure, and listens to records by himself. Much to his father’s chagrin, he’s hung patterned curtains in his dorm room and keeps it neat. On the more obscure list of reasons why his peers side eye him: when he plays tennis, he favors the avoidant slice over the hard drive of the forehand.
That makes him not a “regular” fellow and what he is, is something no one really wants to say out loud, and that includes Vincente Minnelli, who nonetheless helms one of Hollywood’s earliest and most sophisticated outreached hands to the queer community by showing us the devastating effects of social ostracization and the insidious system of toxic masculinity that seeks to other those who don’t conform to its fickle definitions, definitions that no one has a firm grasp of – because how could they?
Tom’s sensitive to others and knows how to listen, which endears him to Laura, a lonely housewife. In turn, Laura looks to help Tom in any way she can, if not to change him, then at least take some of the scrutiny off of him. Easier said than done once the public consensus casts a certain light on you in the small ecosystem that is a school campus .
Tea And Sympathy is a velvet-clad iron glove squeezing the breath from you. Compassionate and wrenching, it’s an exquisite bit of filmmaking as well as an astute and incisive critique of a sick culture and how it perpetuates itself.
Minnelli’s movie is full of boneheaded bros to be sure, but it also features boys and men who could be sensitive and thoughtful if the world would let them, who have felt the corrosive pain of isolation, but can’t bring themselves to break the cycle. Minnelli has patience for these men and boys, adding a layer to what is already a shining portrait of a single person’s struggle to feel included.
It’s a lush melodrama that does try to tug at your tear ducts but it has an elegance to it. As gut-punchy the bullying that Tom endures is, the frustrated circling of Laura and Tom is all the more fraught because you know a missed cue from the one person Tom trusts is likely to do more damage than schoolboy barbs ever could.
As Tom, John Kerr delivers a performance both raw and mindful, never elevating Tom to some transcendent youth who’s wise beyond his years. He’s angry, full of the frustrated and nameless anger that teenage boys feel, struggling to accept that the world can indeed be this mean and senseless for no good reason. It’s therefore a parting of the clouds when Kerr does light up Tom’s face and show us the thoughtful and sensitive youth behind it all.
Deborah Kerr, always great, is perfectly cast as Laura. Kerr straddles this fine line between vulnerable and resilient, appearing as a resourceful beacon of hope for Tom while despairing in private over the isolation she feels from her husband and her life in general. It might seem dumb to suggest Kerr is underappreciated when she’s been nominated for an Oscar six times, but looking at her work here, or in Black Narcissus, Separate Tables, The Innocents, Bonjour Tristesse, Night of the Iguana – take your pick, honestly – you begin to feel any list of acting greats that doesn’t have her name on it is incorrect.
A bracing experience at the time, a shining gem now, Tea And Sympathy is a mature, engrossing, and moving depiction of one of the most relatable but dreaded feelings that can befall anyone, showing us a beautiful but cold world wherein a warm hand is all that keeps people from falling into the cracks.
Mikkel Frederiksen 