After loving Local Hero so much, adding this equally highly regarded earlier film by director Bill Forsyth to my watch list was a must. This is a really low budget production, so cheaply made that the actors apparently just wore their own clothes. Yet this back to basics production values actually heighten its sense of authenticity and provinciality. I can’t say that I always get the film’s sense of humor but I really loved its charm and especially appreciated how it treats the subject of teenage infatuation and horniness with kindness and sweetness.

Gregory is neither the most diligent of students at school nor a terribly good football player but he seems content enough in his life. One day his coach, tired of the team always losing, decides to hold a trial for new players including one to replace him. Gregory is incredulous at first but then a girl Dorothy shows up and is clearly better than just about anyone else. Dorothy talks the sexist coach into accept her into the team and Gregory declares that he is in love even though she has taken his position and he is forced into the goalkeeper position as a result. When Dorothy leads the team to success, she becomes a minor celebrity at school making it harder for Gregory to approach her. His younger sister Madeleine who seems far more mature than her age gives him some advice on how to talk to her and after a football practice session, he awkwardly asks her out and Dorothy surprisingly accepts.

Gregory is so complacent and unreasonably cheerful that I couldn’t make up my mind at first about whether or not we’re expected to sympathize with him. The film only won me over when I became convinced that it doesn’t have an ounce of meanness in it. The coach sputters with excuses to keep Dorothy off the team but is eventually so impressed by her dedication and talent that he passes his own skills onto her. Gregory’s friend Andy spends the entire film grousing about how everyone is hooking up and they need to find girls of their own but he does it without the entitled toxic masculinity that infuses the American discourse on the subject. Gregory himself is hopelessly naive and clueless not just about how to talk to girls but also about his own hormone-fueled attraction. Yet he genuinely cares for his younger sister and takes her advice seriously. The innocence and rosiness of this film may not be quite realistic but it works wonderfully with the small town Scottish setting and especially as a period piece set in the 1980s. It’s the kind of film that perfectly exemplifies looking back on kinder, gentler times.

Alongside this gentleness, the film encapsulates key insights about the psychology of young love. Gregory’s dreamy and one-sided infatuation makes us shake our heads but we can recognize this hopeless naivety in our own past selves. When he instantly switches his affections to another girl, it isn’t surprising to us either. Andy keeps trying pick-up lines and dumb factoids to impress girls with and naturally gets nowhere. But as Gregory learns for himself, when there is genuine attraction between a couple even just spouting numbers at each other is enough to feel endlessly fascinating. The girl power theme too is endearing and welcome though I have my doubts about the truthfulness of the network of girls helping each other out like that. But I concede that it’s true that girls of that age are more mature than boys.

With its astute observations on the psyche of school kids in love and its uniquely local charm, this is an easy film to recommend to just about anyone. Some 18 years after its release Forsyth made a sequel with lead actor John Gordon Sinclair called Gregory’s Two Girls. Unfortunately it was considered mediocre at best and quickly forgotten. Forsyth has not made another film since and I’m not sure that there is much else in his filmography that is worth watching.