NPR

A Gay Teen Romance, Sealed With A Peck: 'Love, Simon'

Come for the rom-com elements, familiar and dutiful though they are. Stay for the film's sensitive, specific and closely observed coming-out storyline, which feels new — and important.
Nick Robinson starts in <em>Love, Simon — </em>a high-school-set tale of social media, first love, and coming out.

"I'm just like you," says gay seventeen-year-old Simon Spier (straight 22-year-old Nick Robinson), by way of introduction. We assume, at first, that he's just getting his Ferris Bueller on and introducing himself to the audience, but it turns out he's instead replying, via pseudonymous e-mail account, to an anonymous blog post written by one of his schoolmates. A correspondence ensues between their respective, most secret selves, as both Simon and the young man he calls "Blue" are still in the closet. Their sweet, sincere e-mail exchange, full of nervous confessions, mutual support and music playlists, makes up the epistolary backbone of, a mainstream gay high-school romance that's causing some people — both within and without the 20th Century Fox PR department — to call it "groundbreaking."

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