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Nothing completely unexpected happens in Flirting. At times, it plays like a slightly sunnier gloss on the rueful experiences Morrissey described in The Smiths' classic song "The Headmaster Ritual." (The first sounds in Flirting are the cracks of swatch against skin as a succession of boys are reprimanded for the latest infraction they've committed.) What Duigan gets absolutely right in his construction and from Danny's narration (brief but important interjections just as in My Voice) is the avoidance of nostalgia for the era in and of itself. He doesn't treat these events as moments to be soundtracked with hit songs that do all the emotional work. There are choice tunes in Flirting (The Troggs "With a Girl Like You" being one) and they show up at the dances and in the rooms of the students but never, as Ebert once coined, for a Semi-Obligatory Lyrical Interlude.

The characters and the performances are at the heart of the film and are so persuasive, so perfectly matched that they achieve the tricky task of defining what happens to them rather than plot points sweeping the characters along. Danny, again played by Taylor, has grown into his awkwardness and wears his outcast status like a badge of honor. He may have to suffer the indignities of boarding school life and receive teasing for his stutter but when he begins a romance with a new student at the girls' school, there is the undercurrent of awe from the other boys, never explicitly rendered by Duigan, because Danny is treading where they would all like to. Taylor's notes of wry amusement and quiet exasperation (it's hard to imagine Danny getting "worked up") even as he prepares to enter the boxing ring to defend his beloved's honor make him ingratiating and admirable.

Danny's attraction is to Thandiwe, born in Uganda but raised in London for part of her life and because of her nationality, an outcast in her own right. Duigan finds the perfect balance of their attraction to one another's mind/intellect (that most wonderful of erogenous zones) and their physical youthful lust for one another. Flirting is an appropriately chosen title because this isn't a sex comedy where everyone's getting laid (although Danny and Thandiwe are heading in that direction) but a tale of two people getting to know one another, falling into "love" (?) and deciding how to unravel together the mysteries of first base, second base, third base and what lies beyond.

Thandie Newton made her film debut as Thandiwe and is so perfect in and for the role that it makes me reflect on how there aren't enough good roles for an actress like her with stunning beauty but a refusal to buy too deeply into Hollywood formula filmmaking. Her most underrated performance remains as the title character Beloved in Jonathan Demme's criminally dismissed - by audiences, critics and awards groups - 1998 film adaptation of the Toni Morrison novel (alternate viewing choice #5). I thought it was the best film of its year.

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