The first thing to say about the British boarding school comedy St. Trinian’s (currently playing in the U.K.) is that it really isn’t a good film. Inspired by a series of British film comedies from the 50s and 60s, which were themselves rather uneven in quality, this tale of an anarchic girls’ school trying to save itself from closure suffers from a feeble script and lack of good jokes, squandering its cast’s considerable talents.

Which is a shame, because the film has several aspects that might make it of interest to gay viewers. It was co-executive produced by Rupert Everett, who also stars in two roles: louche heterosexual bachelor Carnaby Fritton, and his toothy sister Camilla Fritton, the headmistress of St. Trinian’s. In drag as Camilla, Everett gives one of the best performances of the film, although unfortunately the script just isn’t good enough to allow him to deliver a standout comedic performance.

Presumably part of what attracted Everett to the project was the chance to be part of an iconic British institution. Although it's unlikley that the fierce and fictional schoolgirls of St. Trinian’s are really known in the U.S.A., they have been a huge hit in the U.K. ever since cartoonist Ronald Searle first published his original drawings of them in the 1940s. (It was these drawings that would inspire the early films.)

Everett may also have been attracted by the fact that, from the beginning, St. Trinian’s featured an element of gender subversion that might make it particularly appealing to a queer audience. Much of the joke of Searle’s cartoons came from the fact that the girls, instead of being delicate, honorable English roses, were aggressive, violent, gin-swigging and cigar-smoking hoodlums, with all the destructive energy that is usually supposed to belong to boys.

In later life, Searle explicitly added subversive sexuality to this mix, saying of the school that “the staff, behind an extremely old-fashioned facade, conceal equivalent excesses [to the students] and plenty of lesbianism. ”

Although they did not feature any openly gay characters, the early films had sufficient camp value for one installment to be screened at this year’s London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, with the tagline “Gymslips and Alastair Sim in drag”. Alastair Sim was the (heterosexual) actor who played the early versions of the parts Everett has taken upon himself: dragged-up headmistress Millicent Fritton, and her brother Clarence.

This drag performance was seen as perfectly acceptable by the British audience of the time, since it was in keeping with the British theater tradition of the pantomime dame. Everett may have seen the chance to extend the joke — and the franchise’s queer quotient — by giving his modern headmistress, Camilla Fritton, a lover.