tederick | 14 Dec 2011 | 892 Views | 3 Likes | 0 Dislikes

Review: Tomboy

We open on a shot of absolute freedom, though we will not fully understand it till later – we are on a tight close-up of the back of a child’s head. The hair is short, and the summer leaves are beyond, and sunlight is pouring through the trees. The child is Laure, ten years old, who moves with her family to a new apartment complex, and upon emerging from her apartment, introduces herself to the pretty girl on the neighbouring stoop as Mikael, and asks where the other boys are.

Tomboy’s premise was not a secret to me walking into the theatre, but the film leans successfully on the commonplace androgyny of most boys and girls under the age of ten. With her (newly?) short hair, and tomboy clothes, and having never been introduced onscreen as anyone other than Mikael, we can be lead to believe that Laure is a boy, right up until she finishes taking a bath with her little sister, stands up, and reveals herself.

Director Céline Sciamma made Naissance des Pieuvres (the title was butchered into English as Water Lilies, from a literal translation which is far more tantalizing: “Birth of Octopuses”). That film screened at TIFF in 2007, and also dealt with LGBT issues in a group of young people. There, it was tweens and very early teens; in Tomboy, we are into another category of gender-identity altogether: what if your little girl just, y’know, isn’t one? The notion of gender displacement among the very young is getting good stead in the documentary world lately, and now here’s Tomboy, a skillful drama on the subject. There is nothing in Tomboy to suggest that Laure is going through a phase, or is momentarily confused; she (or, I suspect more fairly, he) seems uncannily aware of what sorts of clothes he wants to wear, and what sorts of games he wants to play, and who he wants to kiss.

Sciamma’s direction is observant and quick, catching beautiful moments from her actress, Zoé Héran, who seems to be using her crystal blue eyes to chart out all the boundary lines between Laure’s sex and his gender. When the boys begin a game of shirts vs. skins, there is a moment of longing from Laure, until he can have a good look at his chest in the mirror and confirm that – for now – he can pass for one of the guys. This beat is mirrored more sadly a few scenes later, when the boys go to engage in the centuries-old ritual of boys-peeing-standing-up, to which Laure can arrive at no inventive solution.

With certain practical realities aside, however, masculinity is largely learned behaviour in Tomboy, and watching Laure learn is one of the principal strengths of the film. Zoé Héran is nothing short of revelatory in a tricky lead role that would confound any number of older actors. She and her onscreen sister, Malonn Lévana, nearly walk away with the picture with their fluid, graceful performances – a standard unfortunately not matched by some of the other child actors in the film, who shuffle awkwardly before the camera rather than capturing the naturalism of Héran.

For the degree to which the desires may not match the genetics, we might be called upon to pity Laure, but I don’t. Tomboy is a surprisingly upbeat film, even under difficult circumstances; I return to that opening shot, where (with the added context of how much that haircut must mean to Laure) we seem to be witnessing a character’s unadulterated bliss. There is (and this might sound strange) an almost Batman Begins-ish glee about how Laure’s circumstances present him a series of increasingly complicated challenges, which he must solve by increasingly clever invention. The sequence in which, confronted with a swimming date, Laure manufactures a Play-Doh falsie is a scream – though a kind-hearted one. There is a pleasing matter-of-factness to Sciamma’s writing, staging, and direction. The film deals in not-insignificant amounts of nudity and body-specifics, but never seems to be drifting beyond the basic pragmatic realities of its own scenario. If you’re a 10-year-old girl who needs to go swimming with boys while wearing a Speedo… well, of course you’re going to need a falsie!

The majority of the drama is pulled from what we, as adults, know about Laure’s future that he, for now, is content to ignore. School is coming, and no one named Mikael is registered for the fourth grade; there will be locker rooms, and dresses, and breasts, and all the other things. Laure’s little paradise of self-determination is bittersweet in its transience.

Tomboy does not, unfortunately, have anything to land on in its final act, besides paying off this reality of Laure’s situation. The conclusion of the film is thematically muddy compared to Sciamma’s earlier film, and other stories about gender displacement. It’s an unfortunate misstep, but it doesn’t erase the pleasure of the process, and the time we’ve spent with this child. As a director, Céline Sciamma is charting brave territory and telling new stories. I look forward to the next.

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