Originally a play, the storyline is based on experiences in the playwright's life. Alan Bennett who is gay wrote this play which is full of gay references and in fact the main storyline is related to the gay teacher. A somewhat surprising aspect is that the straights depicted seem so incredibly gay curious or at least gay friendly. The boys' camaraderie and friendships even between straight characters are intimate, yet without the fear and homophobia that usually comes with such close male relations. In this respect, it's such a fun, hopeful and friendly world (with a few ugly exceptions) that the movie was so heartening for me to watch.
And yet there are dangers too. A gay man's love of a straight man can be very painful, and having an object of affection willing to go just halfway might be terribly confusing, disappointing, and humiliating -- it's just not worth going too far down that road, it seems to me. (And so a love like this happens at least once to a gay man in his life, and after going through that probably he learns to avoid this pain in the future...) The movie does skillfully avoid such toxic fallout as was portrayed in Notes on a Scandal, but I could see this movie skating on the edges of it.
The movie has a fine demonstration of one of my new favorite Brit words: "Oi!", exclaimed to mean: "What the hell are you doing?!", "Pay attention!" or something similar.
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