Beautiful Thing by Stephen Farber An English working-class film that turns a potentially controversial family situation into cozy, accessible drama is Beautiful Thing, written by Jonathan Harvey and directed by Hettie MacDonald. The teenage protagonist, Jamie (Glen Berry), lives in a dreary London housing project with his mother (Linda Henry) and her boyfriend (Ben Daniels). Jamie is a misfit at school, and when he begins a fling with a neighbor (Scott Neal), he blithely ignores the shock waves that this affair elicits. This movie has a sharply observed sense of family and community and astonishingly natural acting. Berry and Neal are so expert at conveying the pain of adolescent loneliness and the joy of sexual discovery that only the most hard-hearted bigots could begrudge them their stolen moments of tenderness. Jamie feels little guilt about his homosexuality; he trusts his own pleasure. The other characters eventually take their cue from him. Linda Henry gives a marvelously earthy performance as his angry but loving mother, and Tameka Empson is enchanting as the black girl who dreams of being Mama Cass. At the end the two boys dance openly in front of all their neighbors, and they aren't shunned or ridiculed. In England this movie has been compared to My Beautiful Laundrette, but it's not quite as edgy as that. It's a sweet-natured fantasy of gay teenagers accepted into a larger community; the fantasy lulls. What did you think of this movie? Sound off in the Movie Forum.