17. Beautiful Thing (1996)

What? — Beautiful Thing was marketed as "an urban fairytale," and for once, the fairy side of things didn't get the cold shoulder. A sweet tale of burgeoning adolescent love set in a working-class area of Southeast London, Beautiful Thing sets up the classic "opposites attract" pairing.

Jamie (Glen Berry) is an unpopular young bloke who regularly skips gym class to avoid being tormented by classmates, while Ste (Scott Neal) is a charming and well-liked athletic lad who nevertheless frequently bears the brunt of his father and older brother's drunken aggression. When Jamie's caring mother takes Ste in to protect him from his family's erratic outbursts, the two boys' budding friendship grows into something more, and they must come to terms with their awakening sexual desires while avoiding outing themselves to those around them.

Why? — The '90s saw Hollywood studios embrace the coming-of-age and coming-out tale as a reliable recipe to lure gay patrons into theaters. But very few of these pictures had anything of substance to contribute to the genre other than locker room eye-candy, poorly conceived story lines and gratuitous crotch shots under the guise of alternative cinema.

First-time British film director Hettie MacDonald steered clear of contemporary queer filmmaking conventionalities such as a posh setting, a hustler's tale or a tragic romance. Beautiful Thing was groundbreaking precisely because of its simple, unpolished and touching story of a blossoming attraction between two real-looking young men who do not live glamorous lives and yet discover that being gay and working class aren't incompatible.

The entire cast is convincing, and the script, adapted to screen from the stage, tackles gritty realism in a refreshingly lighthearted tone. It took second place on Adam Mattera's list, who adds that "finally, here comes a gay love story where nobody dies … a revelation!"

Almost Made the Cut: My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985)

A British art house hit that gave momentum to Daniel Day Lewis' career, this Thatcher-era, London-set flick follows two marginal youths: a working-class, white punk (Day Lewis) and a man of Pakistani descent who is given a run-down laundromat by his wealthy uncle. The plot unfolds around the two men as they spruce up the joint and struggle in their futile attempts to pay no heed to their growing mutual attraction. This sweet yet forceful film touched upon existing socioeconomic and class disparities between native British and immigrant communities by way of a first-rate script.

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