John Eby

Set in 1984 in Sandusky, Ohio, "Edge of Seventeen" follows the coming-out of a naive 17-year-old teenager at exactly the moment when gender-bending pop stars like Boy George and Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics were flaunting androgynous images. As the youth, played with a heartbreaking sweetness by Chris Stafford, goes through his first rites of gay passage (after being callously used by the slightly older boy who brings him out, he tries to retreat to heterosexuality with his closest female friend) he emerges as a poignant gay everyman. Lea DeLaria is wonderful as his butch lesbian boss at the amusement park restaurant where he meets his first boyfriend.