Boy Erased

Conversion therapy is such an absurdly antiquated concept that it might have been played for laughs in Boy Erased, until the closing credits remind us that it’s still legally practiced in more than 30 states.

That’s a more gut-wrenching revelation than anything else in this thought-provoking drama from director Joel Edgerton (The Gift) handles the delicate subject matter with the right balance of sensitivity and outrage.

“Our family is so normal,” boasts Nancy (Nicole Kidman) of her devoutly religious Arkansas clan that includes her Baptist preacher husband, Marshall (Russell Crowe), and her teenage son, Jared (Lucas Hedges).

But we first glimpse Jared at a gay conversion facility operated by a tough-love therapist (Edgerton), where he’s subject to all types of humiliating exercises ostensibly aimed at exorcising his homosexual tendencies. As we later learn, he was sent there by his parents, who practically disowned him after a secondhand tip about some alleged queer behavior.

Jared finds only modest comfort in his fellow patients, many of which likewise shun this ruse, and gradually becomes more outwardly defiant while instead seeking a path to acceptance for himself and his family.

Boy Erased is bolstered by its top-notch cast. Hedges (Manchester by the Sea) again showcases his versatility in a role that, due in part to the unsettling nature of the material, makes Jared an easy target for audience sympathy. Kidman and Crowe also modulate their performances effectively.

Edgerton’s character-driven screenplay, based on a memoir by Garrard Conley, confronts its central moral conflict with more depth and complexity then you might expect at first, although the nonlinear narrative structure is somewhat awkward.

The film isn’t content to merely rehash familiar themes in coming-of-age stories about sexual identity, whether it’s outsiders who argue the validity of nature or nurture in terms of installing someone’s orientation, or those who pass judgment for religious reasons.

On a broader scale, the film is a powerful examination of belief systems, and social status through a form of torture that says more about the parents than the children. After all, Marshall and Nancy aren’t trying to “cure” their son as much as attempting to justify their own intolerance.

Through it all, the film doesn’t offer an easy path to catharsis for its characters, yet it also avoids heavy-handed pleas for moviegoer compassion.

Rated R, 115 minutes.