It happened in a taxi. Blue Jean writer-director Georgia Oakley and her producer Hélène Siffre were on the way to work, chatting to the driver for a cool 45 minutes, when it happened. “So, when is your husband coming to visit?” he asked. Oakley froze, and her heart sank. “I will talk about who I am until the cows come home, but sometimes I don’t really want to have that conversation,” she told me. “I know what the response is going to be. It’s going to be awkward; it’s a bit of an uncomfortable thing.”

Oakley is adamant that not every queer person should have to fly a flag—because not every queer person wants to—and so began her process in writing a character that spoke to both a very real moment in history as well as a timeless sense of being that many queer folks might relate to: enjoying the job you want, the home you want, the relationships you want, while dodging the damaging and harmful restrictions of the society you live in. It’s hard to be the hero in a life like that.

Jean, played by Rosy McEwen in Oakley’s BIFA prize-winning and BAFTA-nominated debut feature, is a PE teacher in Newcastle navigating the dangers of Section 28 while just wanting to go about her life. The series of laws, brought in from 1988 to 2003 initially under Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, prohibited “the promotion of homosexuality” by local authorities. “We wanted to tell a story that was a bit more intimate than a grander ensemble piece about the wider politics of Section 28,” says Oakley. “But it was a juggling act—we didn’t want to make a portrait of a teacher without involving some of this amazing reactionary movement that arose as a result of Section 28.”

Siffre acknowledges the differences between a protest picture, and psychological and emotional drama set against a political backdrop. “We wanted to explore the relationships between Jean and [her student] Lois, Jean and [her girlfriend] Viv, and the complexity of that,” she explains. “It was about the internalized threats as opposed to the more obvious external threats at protests and marches, and the obvious struggle. We wanted to dive into the psychology of the characters, instead of making another protest film like Pride or Milk.”

McEwen still immersed herself in the historical reality of the time to understand Jean, as did Kerrie Hayes, who plays Jean’s more confident girlfriend Viv. McEwen names Sarah Squires, a netball teacher in London during the ‘80s, and Catherine Lee, who worked in Liverpool doing the same thing at that time, as her two guiding forces for the process. “It was such a privilege to speak to them, because your ego can’t be part of that conversation. This isn’t about me. The story has to be authentic,” says McEwen. “They’re both extras in the film, and their energy just spurred us on while they were reminded of this tricky time.”

Hayes went even further, becoming a fly on the wall in places that could almost instantly take her back in time to the kind of sexual confidence she needed to telegraph. “I took myself out to this notorious lesbian bar in Liverpool called The Lisbon,” she says. “I sat in loads of bars like a weirdo, sat in the corner watching the way these women were behaving, the way they carry themselves physically and interact in this safe environment where being a lesbian is celebrated.” These two different types of immersion create lived-in, tender performances from both actors—McEwen shuffling in her sports sneakers and avoiding eye contact, Hayes exuding self-assurance and defiance with a firm grip.

Safe to say, it’s easy to dislike Jean. As Siffre puts it, our protagonist is “not a hero” but could be a fighter. “It was about how she could be promoting or not promoting who she is … how she could be fighting in her day to day life as opposed to marches.” McEwen suggests this more begrudging platforming gives audiences a different kind of lesbian cinema; in the wake of the beauty of Portrait Of A Lady on Fire and Carol (two influences on the film), Blue Jean veers closer to Rebel Dykes.

“A lot of lesbian portrayals on screen are very much based in desire, and women coming to terms with their sexuality,” says McEwen. “It’s very beautiful and wispy and lovely, but ours is about a couple who happen to be women. And Jean is, in all senses of the word, an antihero. She gets it wrong; she is a product of the society that she’s been born into. It’s not her fault, but everything that we’re shouting at her, she’s shouting at herself. It’s a neverending battle.”

Blue Jean rarely shouts outright, per se—Oakley is a keen observer of simmering frustration, depicting Jean always keeping watch of society’s nagging threat around her. It manifests in her student, Lois, who turns up at the bar where she just wants to be with Viv, and in the policies infiltrating every part of her life and conversations.

McEwen agrees: “I would have needed one way more on other jobs, as Kerrie and I are quite close, and with Georgia too.” Describing the mechanics of the conversation with Odell, which many filmmakers could take notes from, the actor reveals: “You get on set, and the intimacy coordinator asks everyone to leave. You talk about what you feel comfortable with—whether you’re on your period, whether you don’t want to show your nipples but will show your bum—all these things that are hard to say with a whole set of people. She gives you a safe space to set your boundaries, just you and her. It’s very calming.”

So much of Blue Jean was about finding a safe space and neutral ground to address transgressive feelings and states of being, while still maintaining your day-to-day. Jean doesn’t actually want to quit her job, nor hide her sexuality. Both these truths are contradictory, but coexist in who she is. That doesn’t make this true-to-life portrait, set away from the big city of London (“There were fewer safe spaces, just one bar,” says McEwen of Newcastle), any less affecting in its humble settings.

You might not place Oakley’s film alongside languorous lesbian love stories like your Portraits or your Carols; it exists in the realm of something more prickly, perhaps more contemporary. McEwen nods to TÁR—thrilling from someone whose performance might prompt a few Google searches for “real-life Blue Jean” beyond David Bowie lyrics—as a comparable queer drama that frames “someone slowly experiencing life through the perspective of their own mind, as opposed to life happening to them”. A woman’s career isn’t everything, but neither is her sexuality. She can be hateful (across a vast sliding scale between these two films), but still perversely loveable. These films, and these women, speak for themselves.