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Tomboy (2011)
Directed by Celine Sciamma
Distributed by Arte France Cinema and Hold Up Films
http://pro.arte.tv
84 minutes
After exploring teenage lesbian desire in her first feature, Water Lilies (2007), Celine Sciamma rewinds the biological clock back to childhood in her second film, Tomboy. In her latest installment she navigates through the growing pains of the uncharted gender identity of a pre-pubescent girl. Ten-year-old protagonist Laure (Zoé Heran) moves to a suburban neighborhood in France with her father, mother and younger sister. A different environment and adventurous friends set the stage for Laure to construct a new identity under the alias Mickaël. Sciamma does not directly attempt to explain or justify the reasons why Laure longs to be a boy. There is no explicit dialogue regarding biological determinism or discernable study of the psychological make-up of the protagonist. Sciamma states that Tomboy shifts the question away from "why does she do that?" to "how does she do that?" The director definitely makes an effort to remain impartial and apolitical. She constantly negotiates a balance between making a natural, light film about coming of age that avoids blatantly focusing on the pathos of Laure's situation while maintaining an underlying sense of mystery and suspense surrounding her secret. In an interview for Arte Television, Sciamma explained that childhood is a period in life where we play dress-up, becoming someone else; it is the time of roleplaying games such as cowboys and Indians. She felt that the questions surrounding identity construction in general are more important than the concept of gender identity in her film. Sciamma claims her film is about the universal mysterious world of children rather than gender/sexual identity issues per se. However, she avoids acknowledging the queer implications inherent in Tomboy. It would seem unlikely that the recurring themes of sexual marginalization and body dysmorphia would merely serve as peripheral bystanders during a child's summer of exploration. If not the director's focus, then, ours will be to contemplate queer issues such as lesbianism, transexualism, and homophobia found in Tomboy.
The film opens with a shot of the child protagonist's neck that conceals his/her visage and obstructs their ambiguous gender. Neither the short haircut nor the dark blue t-shirt s/he is wearing gives one any...