Set against the backdrop of the Troubles, Neil Jordan's The Crying Game (1992) focuses on the triangular relationship between an IRA volunteer, Fergus (Stephen Rea), a Black British soldier (Forest Whitaker) and his girlfriend, Dil (Jaye Davidson). Jane Giles's compelling study of the film explores how it tackled issues of political conflict and terrorism, race, sexuality and gender. She traces its fraught production history, drawing on exclusive interviews with director Jordan and producer Stephen Woolley, and provides a fascinating account of the very different ways the film was promoted in Britain and America. The film was a huge hit in the United States, where its distributor Miramax's campaign focused on its genre-defying story and surprise plot twist, with the slogan "Nothing is what it seems to be". But The Crying Game's box office success and its nomination for six Academy Awards, winning one for Best Adapted Screenplay, was not enough to save production company Palace Pictures from bankruptcy. Discussing the permutations of sexuality and politics the film unravels, Jane Giles argues that its most obvious surprise is not its crucial feature.
In her afterword to this new edition, Jane Giles looks back on The Crying Game from the vantage point of a very different political and cultural landscape, changed irrevocably by the Good Friday Peace Agreement, Brexit, #MeToo, and a radical rethinking of trans identities and representation.