
Many of you will know who Mark Kermode is. You know, glasses, quiff, The Exorcist and Silent Running? (Ed: also the nations best film critic and writer.) Yeah, that’s the guy! Well anyway, if you do know him you’ll be aware of his love the hidden seventies film, Jeremy.
After all of his talk about it, I was very excited to see it and thanks to the man himself, I was able to at the Cinema Museum in London.

This is a beautiful simple first love story of any young souls. The moments, the stalking, the emotions, the happiness – everything is depicted in its simplest and truest form. There is not much coming in the way of their love – which is a relieving part of the story. It is straight forward. The supporting cast – especially Jeremy friend, his musical teacher and Susan father – give a very understated but human character. Their responses to this teenage love stay with you in formulating your own responses in life.
Both Robby Benson and Glynnis O-Connors have gone on to become pretty big stars, but this role will remain their most loved and well-remembered. Both are so comfortable with each other – especially in those delicately filmed love making scenes – that it surely must be hard for the director and acting to film that successfully.

This is the way you make a film on little money. You put confidence in your stars, you write a tight script (the film is rounded off at a perfect 87 minute running time) and you run with it. Filmed on 16mm, this is budget filmmaking at its finest.
If you can get your hands on a copy, I strongly urge you to watch it. To all adolescence now, I believe it would be a great part of your growing years and after over thirty years, that is mightily impressive. Sure, the film has aged a lot – I mean look at Robby Benson’s hair for crying out loud – but it’s still relatable and that’s the sign of a mightily impressive film.
It’s not without its flaws – Barron's reliance on shaky, hand-held camerawork gives the film a documentary-like feel, though his overuse of the device eventually becomes an annoyance – but Jeremy is an eminently likable film which portrays one of the most realistic and memorable relationships the big screen has seen. Amicable, amiable, affable, and adorable, the film is in every way to us what Susan is to Jeremy: beautiful; irresistible; unforgettable.