Chloë Moretz's New Movie Is A Female Sexual Coming-Of-Age Tale Like No Other

The Miseducation Of Cameron Post is one of those films that’ll linger with you long after the credits roll. There’ll be a moment that strikes you, a reality that’s driven home or an echo of an experience that you didn’t realise you shared. In a nutshell, it’s a damn good film. Let's not forget its grand jury win at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.

It’s one of the few recent queer movies (though if you can think of any more, send them our way) that gets up close and personal with female sexuality in a way that’s intimate, accessible and unashamedly honest. No doubt the film’s sincerity is largely down to the treatment by director Desiree Akhavan, who adapted the film from the novel of the same name by Emily Danforth. "It’s so rare that you see stories of female sexuality told, ever," she tells Refinery29. "There’s a lot of fear against women’s perspectives of sex and women's desire, and I am really proud to make a film about female sexual coming of age."

In it, we’re thrown back to a vaguely familiar America in 1993. Adidas tracksuit bottoms, shabby grunge haircuts and Breeders cassette tapes all feature. Chloë Grace Moretz stars as Cameron Post, a teenager who is caught fooling around with a girl called Coley in the back seat of a car on prom night. Her religious aunt swiftly ships her off to God’s Promise, a gay conversion camp where she and the other kids who have (involuntarily) wound up there are taught that with prayer, counselling and regular 'Blessersize' (a legitimate exercise programme that really existed), they can be "cured" of SSA – Same Sex Attraction.

Though it's a moving film, watching Miseducation is a relatively calm ride for such weighty topic matter; perhaps its brilliance is in the normality that frames the story. Needless to say, it's planted itself as a crucial signpost for conversations about female sexuality, desire, coming out and understanding yourself as a young woman, in a relatively sparse Hollywood landscape. We met Akhavan and Moretz ahead of the release to talk about just how important their film has become. Watch the video below.