TOMBOY – The Review

A coming-of-age story about gender identity set in those awkward prepubescent years, TOMBOY is a well-intentioned, but slight and forgettable French drama. It’s the story of 10-year-old Laure (Zoe Heran), the new kid in a small town, who with her scrawny physique and cropped hair, passes as a boy among her new peers. At first life is good for Laure, who now goes by “Mikael”. She fits in, excelling at soccer, fighting, and spitting. Her younger sister goes along with the charade, excited about having a tough and protective older “brother”. Suspicions soon arise amongst her new friends and Laure must face the consequences of her deception.

TOMBOY does not have much interesting to say about sexuality, or even about adolescence. It won the Teddy Award for the Best Gay or Lesbian film at the Berlin Film Festival yet it’s not at all about budding lesbianism. It’s more about a girl who wants to participate in  boy’s sports than it is about some sort of journey of sexual awakening into young womanhood. Laure may be somewhat androgynous in appearance but so are a lot of 10-year old girls. Most of the drama in TOMBOY comes from observing Laure/Mikael’s day-to-day struggle of maintaining the ruse to her increasingly suspicious friends, sort of like a serious and slow French version of that ’80s chestnut JUST ONE OF THE GUYS. She sculpts a penis out of Play-dough to stuff into her swimsuit and sneaks off behind a tree to pee alone when all the guys on her soccer team go on the field. There’s the predictable first kiss with local girl Lisa (Jeanne Disson) and the eventual unveiling of Laure’s secret.

Insightful and sensitive, there are things to like in TOMBOY. Zoe Heran’s lead performance is brave and real and is to be commended. She’s got a natural quiet quality that Hollywood child actors don’t seem to possess. At 80 minutes, TOMBOY is pretty to look at and not exactly dull but it never engages either. With a minimalist approach, writer-director Celine Sciamma has made an amiable but inert film with an excess of silent closeups that drag out a whole lot of nothing in a way French films are known for. If French cinema is your bag, you may dig this TOMBOY, but I can’t recommend it to the casual moviegoer.

2 1/2 of 5 Stars

TOMBOY opens in St. Louis today, January 27th, at Landmark’s Tivoli Theater