Humans are inherently social creatures, and the manner in which we each form a perception of our place in the world around us — and how our ego takes shape and form from our id — certainly relates as much to our interactions as any ingrained or telegraphed sense of social acceptance and duty. Capturing the fickle progress of that individual transformation, however, is a difficult task.
A tender and perspicacious look at the toddling steps of adolescent character and personality, writer-director Celine’s Sciamma’s French import Tomboy assays the gender confusion and willful but not malicious deceit of a 10-year-old girl. Against a backdrop of overly programmed “issue dramas,” this movie is notable for its strong foundation in character and wholesale investment in psychology, rather than salacious plotting.
Tomboy centers on a family with two daughters who moves to a new suburban neighborhood during the summer break. At home with her parents (Mathieu Demy and Sophie Cattani) and bouncy, six-year-old sister Jeanne (Malonn Levana, quite good), 10-year-old Laure (Zoe Heran, above) is content, if reserved. With her Jean Seberg haircut and gangly physicality, however, Laure is mistaken for a boy by the local kids, and decides to pass herself off as Mikael. Standing out from the other rambunctious guys, Mikael catches the attention of Lisa (Jeanne Disson), and a tentative, stilted courtship ensues. As the end of summer and the start of a school year looms, however, it seems that the expiration date on Laure’s fib is finally approaching.
For a film about the complex representations of childhood identity and burgeoning adolescent desire — pre-sexual, but still hormonally oriented — Sciamma’s sensitive and engaging movie remains largely apolitical and nonjudgmental, in ways that it’s certainly hard to imagine any mainstream American studio effort matching. Tomboy doesn’t shortchange its gender identity issues, but neither does it whip them up into a cheap, frothy tizzy, wherein opposing camps are merely given platforms to argue “pro” and “con” positions for Laure’s benign deceit.
In canny fashion, the film also retains a certain layered ambiguity about the honest degrees of Laure’s impulsivity in assuming Mikael’s identity. When she gazes at herself in the mirror, and starts mimicking the manner in which boys spit on the playground while playing soccer, is it born of pre-existing gender confusion or a sense of displacement from within, or rather a curiosity about the way that boys strut and pose? Saying much more risks spoiling the film’s delicate beauty, but when Laure’s secret unravels, the manner in which her family also reacts is interesting and thought-provoking — on an intellectual plane rather than some axis of perfunctory conflict. Tomboy is heartily invested in its title character, but Laure’s deception also impacts Lisa, young Jeanne and the rest of her family as well, and Sciamma (Water Lillies) hearteningly pays careful attention to those characters as well, coaxing wonderful, naturalistic performances out of her mostly young cast. Tomboy is definitely a highlight of last year’s foreign film crop.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Tomboy comes to DVD with Dolby digital 5.1 or 2.0 stereo audio tracks, a trailer for the movie and a couple other releases, and a brief but engaging behind-the-scenes featurette that includes subtitled comments from Sciamma about her inspiration for the material and the production process. For more information, visit Wolfe Video’s website. Or to purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) B- (Disc)
NOTE: SharedDarkness is proud to be sponsoring a DVD giveaway for Tomboy. For a chance to win a copy, simply email your name to editor@shareddarkness.com. After a winner is chosen, we will be in touch to collect your mailing address, and ship out the DVD. One entry per email address. Best of luck!
Daily Archives: June 15, 2012
Julie Delpy, Chris Rock Spend 2 Days in New York
If one is of the opinion that Julie Delpy is a delight, which is very much the correct opinion to have if one is an open-hearted person rightly familiar with her flirty, thoughtful collaborations with Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke, as well as 2 Days in Paris, then the trailer for the latter’s sequel, 2 Days in New York (Magnolia, August 10), co-starring Chris Rock, will bring a smile to your face, if only for the deliciously oddball pairing it seemingly augurs. Cultural differences, unwitting racism and uncomfortable sexual candor get a comedic workout in this tale of a radio deejay and the visiting family of his live-in French girlfriend. Again, the trailer is here for those wishing to take a gander.
That’s My Boy
The gleeful, stunted-maturity idiocy at the heart of Adam Sandler’s Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore and Andy Samberg’s Hot Rod is the target at which That’s My Boy, their new comedic collaboration, is aiming. Unfortunately, if a wild, anything-can-happen philosophy permeated those delightfully warped offerings, the same thick, indolent haze of self-satisfaction that characterized 2010’s Grown Ups, Sandler’s previous latter-day nadir, is manifest here, in a laboriously programmed vulgar comedy of air-quote outrageousness.
Director Sean Anders, who in 2008’s Sex Drive delivered as fun, lived-in and casually assured a teen sex comedy as since the original American Pie, here serves as a pace-master and little more. There’s no frisky independent personality to this tale, only an inexorable slog from set piece to set piece, and scenes written to seemingly fold in as many friendly cameos as possible. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Sony, R, 116 minutes)
The Tortured
A stupendously inane and pointless slice of revenge-based horror whose title might as well describe the audience watching it, The Tortured chronicles the story of a young married couple’s capture and torment of the man convicted of kidnapping and murdering their five-year-old son. Told in hammy fashion and marked by a pair of hysterical, uneven lead performances, this inept genre entry is an embarrassment to almost all involved.
A mass of expository set-up opens the movie, which centers around suburbanites Craig and Elise Landry (Jesse Metcalfe and Erika Christensen). Craig witnesses their son being snatched from their front yard, and a feverish search ensues, along with glimpses of the psychotic abductor, John Kozlowski (Bill Moseley, adding another demented jewel to his crown of leering, morally detestable reprobates), terrorizing and presumably molesting the boy. The police finally nab John, but not in time to save the Landrys’ son. When he’s convicted with the possibility of parole, Elise and Craig, a doctor, hatch a plan to extricate John from police custody and extract their own systematic retribution, keeping their victim alive for as long as possible. As a detective (Fulvio Cecere) works to locate the presumably escaped John, the couple hole up in an abandoned house, but soon find their own moral compasses put to the test.
Other films, including Dennis Iliadis’ recent remake of The Last House on the Left, have with some success delved specifically into parents pushed too far, and/or confronted with harm to their child. So the failings of The Tortured do not lay with its conceit; instead, they’re a matter of vision and execution. The movie, penned by Mark Posival and directed in stirringly bungled fashion by Robert Lieberman, stumbles out of the gate, never seeming to come up with a good “in” for its story. From its first panicked scene, The Tortured starts off at such a high emotional pitch that it renders nearly everything that follows almost neutered by comparison.
For a movie in theory about the warping, darkly transformative power of parental grief, there’s a striking paucity of intellectual application or even basic ideas here. The film clocks in at a meager 82 minutes, but its first 20 minutes could easily be collapsed to but five or six. After plodding along and setting up its torturing-the-monster conceit, the third act stupidly hinges on poorly reasoned flip-flops in intestinal fortitude between Craig and Elise. There’s an almost obligatory end twist, of course, but the movie doesn’t even see this through to the end, instead wrapping things up in a manner almost as tidy is it is risible.
Metcalfe and Christensen most bear the weight of this problematic narrative; they’re not particularly convincing as parents, and, individually and collectively, their interpretations of grief chiefly exist in volume. This film is a mess, and not in a campy, entertaining way. Avoid the torture. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. NOTE: In addition to its theatrical engagements, The Tortured is available on a variety of VOD and digital platforms, including iTunes. (IFC Midnight, R, 82 minutes)
Mark Duplass Talks Your Sister’s Sister, Jean Shorts
The Chinese calendar may state otherwise, but 2012 is most assuredly the year of Mark Duplass. After all, the multi-hyphenate extraordinaire has four films in theaters as an actor and two others, Kevin, Who Lives at Home and The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, which he co-wrote and directed with his older brother, Jay. In director Colin Trevorrow‘s Sundance Award-winning Safety Not Guaranteed, Duplass stars as Kenneth, a troubled guy who, convinced he can travel through time, is looking for a partner to go back with him. In Lynn Shelton‘s Your Sister’s Sister, he’s a damaged guy, still grieving the loss of a brother from one earlier, who gets caught in between his longtime friend (Emily Blunt) and her sister (Rosemarie DeWitt). I had a chance to sit down with Duplass one-on-one recently, and chat about those delightful films, the differences in his working relationships with each of the two directors, the perils of bicycle-smashing and… jean shorts. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the lively, considerably awesome read.
Red-Band Trailer Debut: For a Good Time, Call…
If one is over 18 or can figure out a way to lie about their age and peg it to a phony email account, the new red-band trailer for For a Good Time, Call… (Focus, August 31) is online now, over at YouTube. The trailer sells the concept and nicely spotlights a few naughty bits, but, having seen the movie, I can say it doesn’t fully get at and convey the effervescent charm and chemistry of Lauren Anne Miller and Ari Graynor, which is its true strongest selling point.