Tomboy
Tomboy
Format: Cinema
Release date: 16 September 2011
Venue: Key cities
Distributor: Peccadillo Pictures
Director: Céline Sciamma
Writers: Céline Sciamma
Cast: Zoé Héran, Malonn Lévana, Jeanne Disson
France 2011
84 mins
Ten-year-old Laure moves to a new flat with her parents and little sister. When the neighbourhood kids assume from her clothes and haircut that she is a boy, she doesn’t correct them, and introduces herself as Mikaël. In its aesthetics, this film is primarily about childhood, and the instinctively tactile, visual and direct way that children interact with the world: cuddling with their parents or tumbling about together in physical play, sensitive to the shapes, colours and textures of their stuffed animals, dress-up clothes, markers and modelling clay. Outside the apartment, when Laure plays with children of her own age, adult concerns of gender begin to intervene: the boys playing football look like miniature men, with their shirtless swagger and high-fives. While Laure does her best to adopt these mannish mannerisms, the point is not that she is a garçon manqué. It is that society focuses on the unimportant trappings of gender, like make-up and dresses, forgetting that more important human qualities are not unique to either gender. Laure’s father, for instance, is kinder and gentler than her mother. In Sciamma’s world, everyone should have the opportunity to play, be creative and show affection, whatever their sex.
Alison Frank
