BFI: Contemporary in its subject matter and style, Beautiful Thing (1996) offered a multicultural perspective of post-Thatcher Britain. The film was written by Jonathan Harvey and marked the debut of young director Hettie MacDonald, who had emerged from a theatre background, having directed her first West End play at 24.

Known for race riots, high unemployment and social deprivation in the mid-1980s, the South-East London council estate Thamesmead is transformed, thanks to Chris Seager’s cinematography, into an almost magical place, overlooking a lake bathed in sunlight. In this respect, Beautiful Thing is unusual among British films, which, where they portray the gay community or working classes at all, rarely offer such a positive portrait of love developing over a long sweltering summer.

Touching and funny in a way comparable to My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and Young Soul Rebels (1991), Beautiful Thing manages to appeal to a young mainstream audience. The narrative easily encompasses difficult issues of racism, homophobia, violence, sex and drug use within the disenfranchised underclass of a two-tier Britain, while lightly but acutely depicting a teenage gay romance.

As an urban love story, Beautiful Thing wears its politics lightly, but it is subversive, nevertheless. The central romance is one between two 16-year-old boys – then well below the age of consent – making this a light-hearted film steeped in socio-political significance.