Beautiful Thing

Two teenage boys in a British housing project — where the walls are thin and everybody knows your name — come out and fall in love in Beautiful Thing, an optimistic little movie...

...[the] peripheral characters are the real life of the film. They're quirky, funny, and unpredictable.

...is grounded in a realistic sense of adolescent agony and how it gives way to the rapture of new romance that.

It all sounds horribly grim and depressing, but director Hettie Macdonald manages to put a cheery spin on everything without making it all ring saccharine and false.