UK Premiere / Features – International

Showing @ Cameo 1, Thu 16 June @ 17:45 & Tue 21 June @ 21:15

Celine Sciamma / France / 2011 / 81 min / French with English subtitles

Oh for the endless summers of childhood, when the sun shone every day and the whole world was ready to be explored by our limitless imaginations. Such is the setting for Tomboy, a film that follows Laure (Zoé Héran) as she enjoys her first summer holidays in a new home surrounded by new friends.

But Laure isn’t an ordinary girl. Extremely boyish, she has short hair and wears boy’s clothes which is even more extreme when compared to her girly girl little sister with her long hair and ballet outfits. She introduces herself to her new neighbours as a boy called Mikael, none of the other children doubt a thing. Carefully keeping her family and friends separate, she even cuts up her swimsuit and wears it with a custom-made Play-Doh penis to avert suspicion. Needless to say it’s a lie that’s bound to unravel sooner or later, and when her mother finds out, Laure is humiliatingly frog-marched from flat to flat so she can rectify things before school – and no doubt adolescence – starts.

Only a few adults feature in Tomboy and their roles are minimal. Everything focuses around the children and all of them seem incredibly natural, the only hint of stiffness coming from Jeanne Disson as Lisa, Mikael’s love interest. Malonn Lévana as Jeanne, Laure’s sister, is enchanting with what seems like a genuine affection and gender-blindness for her older sister, epitomised in a charming scene when Jeanne tells her parents about her new friend Mikael between bursts of hysterical, joyous giggles at the secret she and her sister are sharing. And of course the star of the film is Héran, who shows not only courage to be shown naked on the big screen, but a masterful balance between being a girl and being a boy; between the world of truth and the world of her lie; between comfort and discomfort.

This film is overflowing with issues surrounding sexuality, identity and childhood innocence. When Laure’s mother finds out that she has injured another boy in a fight, her concern is not with the fight but with the fact that Laure has been pretending to be a boy. She is distraught, angry and tearful, and it transpires that she is happy for Laure to ‘play’ at being a boy, but not to be considered as one. Are her fears, that her daughter will become transsexual? A transvestite? A lesbian? Interestingly, the children seem equally disgusted by Laure’s lie, especially as she and Lisa kissed, before the storm in the teacup quickly cools and childhood forgives and forgets. But whether or not an adult could do the same is a question that remains uncomfortably knowingly unanswered.