Tomboy

This review dates from a while back and isn't about a book, but this beautiful film deserves a wide audience and I hope this might inspire you to go and look it up..

I missed Celine Sciamma’s film ‘Tomboy’ when it was released, and only got round to seeing it thanks to a later screening at a local cinema. I had high expectations: after watching the trailer a couple of times, as well as an interview with Sciamma, it is no exaggeration to say I longed to see this film. One reason for this is that I often enjoy understated, naturalistic films; but something in the story of Laure, a 10-year-old girl who moves to a new area with her family and introduces herself to the local children as “Mickael”, felt very close to my heart. I dislike the word ‘tomboy’ and would never have used it to describe myself; but I think anyone who knew me as a child will understand why Tomboy resonated with me.

I was not disappointed. Sciamma skilfully avoids any heavy-handedness, both in allowing the children to act very naturally and play in an unscripted way, and in declining to make this a film about an Issue. The film does not deal with or speculate on why Laure (played by newcomer Zoé Heran) decides to pass as a boy, but only how she does it. Her struggles with practical problems, such as how to construct a plausible penis to fill her (also home-made) swimming trunks, are documented unobtrusively and largely in silence. When, finally, reality has to be confronted, and her mother asks in bewilderment “Pourquoi tu as fait ça?”, there is no response.

Tomboy is about games of make-believe, from the games Laure plays with her little sister to the bigger game of pretending to be a boy. There is no reason for us to think that Laure really wants to be a boy – it is simply a game she enters into, and has to see through to its inevitable end. The game is not even begun by Laure but, unwittingly, by her neighbour Lisa, whose initial mistake (“Tu es nouveau?” – an important detail that would be lost in English translation) sets up Laure’s response.

The film is partly a study in how we perceive and copy one another. Laure’s painstaking efforts to walk and spit correctly appear to be rewarded: the children do not find her out. However, we cannot always control how others see us. Lisa sees a boy “pas comme les autres”, and delights in “Mickael’s” ambiguous gender. In a beautiful scene where Laure’s younger sister Jeanne is drawing her, a long close-up of Laure’s striking blue eyes is followed by a decided statement from Jeanne that she will give her brown eyes.

Adults have little presence in the film until the final scenes. The summer-world belongs to children, and its soundtrack is mostly the sounds of their games; but school is looming, and with it reality – and adolescence. Laure is at a point of physical grace and confidence between the child’s lack of coordination and the adolescent girl’s awkwardness. Before daring to remove her T-shirt to play football, she examines her torso in the mirror and decides that it will pass.

Unhurried in its story and cinematography, Tomboy is lent a touch of suspense by our knowledge that the game must end. When it does, Laure’s mother is initially distressed, and immediately forces her daughter to put on a dress. Yet she later tells Laure that she has no problem with her passing for a boy – but that others will. In the closest the film comes to any sort of commentary, this line portrays gender demarcations as arbitrary but somehow necessary – reality cannot be avoided.

One of the most delightful aspects about this film is the tranquillity of Laure’s family environment. The scenes between Laure and Jeanne, and the benign presence of their parents, portray an atmosphere of tenderness and total acceptance, in contrast to the exciting yet dangerous world of freedom that Laure has entered as Mickael, where she must be a little on her guard. It is this tranquil acceptance that makes Laure’s mother’s reaction slightly shocking. It is at this moment of reckoning that the film moves closest to Issue territory, but it resists the temptation and we are allowed the space simply to watch the trees in the woods where Laure throws off her dress for one more moment of freedom.