C�line Sciamma’s film is titled Tomboy, but the gender issues it delves into are more complex than any supposedly unfeminine preferences for sports and pants-wearing and other associations that linger around that antiquated term.
Laure (Zo� H�ran), the film’s young protagonist, is an androgynous sprite of a 10-year-old who, having recently moved to a new town with her family, impulsively passes herself off as male to the neighborhood children. Mikael, as she renames herself, spends the lazy end-of-summer days getting comfortable inhabiting this new identity, playing soccer with the boys and navigating a tentative prepubescent romance with the pretty Lisa (Jeanne Disson). She’s obviously thrilled at the reinvention she’s accomplished, though she hasn’t thought it through beyond the moment. The start of the school year lurks on the horizon, and with it guaranteed exposure of Laure’s secret, and the film grows increasingly tense as our happy hero(ine) continues obliviously toward disaster, the frisson of dread coming not from whether she’ll be exposed but when.
Sciamma’s first feature, the 2007 Water Lilies, attracted attention for its explorations of budding female sexuality, competition and friendship among three 15-year-old girls competing in synchronized swimming. It was a Catherine Breillat film without Breillat’s uncompromisingly (and often uncomfortably) sharp edges. It offered some dead-to-rights observations about the way friendships between teenage girls can include the same depths of emotion and drama as romantic relationships, even as that distinction blurs between two of the characters. Yet it seemed to me just as interested in gawking at its central trio as offering them empathy, holding…
Ana Paula Lemes Ananda Lewis Angela Marcello Angelina Jolie Anna Faris Anna Friel Anna Kournikova
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