Tomboy
Tomboy, by French director/screenwriter Céline Sciamma, takes a huge risk and negotiates it with deftness and taste. The result is a very satisfying, heart-warming piece of cinema and one that comes with a serious recommendation.
Now, what will follow in this review is a major story spoiler and there is a school of thought among those who have seen Tomboy that going in cold, without any background information, might enhance your experience of the first few minutes of the film. If you think you would prefer to have the film’s situation unfold gradually without spoilers, stop right now. Don’t read another word of this review.
Right. I can go for my life, safe in the knowledge that no one will stop me in the street and complain that I gave the game away.
Laure (Zoé Héran) is the 10-year-old elder daughter of loving parents. The family has just moved to an apartment building on the outskirts of Paris to await the birth of their third child, a son. Laure appears slightly boyish and, when Lise, a friendly girl in the new neighbourhood asks her what her name is, she replies “Mikael”.
Choosing to identify herself as a male when she is away from home seems both liberating and potentially oppressive for Laure. She begins to integrate herself into the group of children in the neighbourhood: playing football, swimming and absorbing the mysterious rituals that are wrapped up in childhood games. There are strict gender roles in the children’s play and Mikael’s friend Lise is pushed to the margins at times because she is a girl. Laure’s assumed gender leads to some awkward situations and she is inevitably “outed” as a girl. Her playmates react in that instinctive, primal way that packs of kids can. Lise, who is attracted to Mikael, finds it hard to forgive her/him, and we are left at the end wondering whether the two will be able to begin a new year at school as classmates, and perhaps friends, despite the deception and ambiguity.
In her own home, Laure has continued to play the role of big sister to the adoring (and adorable) Jeanne (Malonn Levanna), who is six. The everyday interactions between the two sisters are a real highlight. They are depicted with subtlety, restraint and wisdom. I enjoyed the beautiful close-ups of hands and feet. The girls’ loving parents are unaware that Laure is pretending to be a boy but it is clear that she has done it before. Little Jeanne - every centimetre a girly kind of girl in her frilly tutu - finds out what is happening and tries desperately not to let on.
So, director Sciamma works with some challenging material about self-image, identity, gender and family. It is the context in which she does her work that makes the finished film such a stand-out. The cinematography in the broadest sense is superb. The children’s dialogue feels absolutely authentic (even in subtitles) and the way their games - simultaneously trivial and totally absorbing - are allowed to play out makes everything seem genuine. Though the setting is urban, the action takes place in a balmy, leafy suburb where the children roam freely.
Tomboy is intimate and frank without ever being salacious. The director has drawn such convincing performances from her cast of child novices and demonstrated such a light touch that I couldn’t help but be charmed by the film’s warmth.
Neil Wilson
