Release CalendarDVD & Blu-ray ReleasesTop 250 MoviesMost Popular MoviesBrowse Movies by GenreTop Box OfficeShowtimes & TicketsIn TheatersComing SoonMovie NewsIndia Movie Spotlight
    What's on TV & StreamingTop 250 TV ShowsMost Popular TV ShowsBrowse TV Shows by GenreTV NewsIndia TV Spotlight
    What to WatchLatest TrailersIMDb OriginalsIMDb PicksIMDb Podcasts
    OscarsBest Picture WinnersBest Picture WinnersEmmysLGBTQ+ Pride MonthSTARmeter AwardsSan Diego Comic-ConNew York Comic-ConSundance Film FestivalToronto Int'l Film FestivalAwards CentralFestival CentralAll Events
    Born TodayMost Popular CelebsMost Popular CelebsCelebrity News
    Help CenterContributor ZonePolls
For Industry Professionals
  • All
  • Titles
  • TV Episodes
  • Celebs
  • Companies
  • Keywords
  • Advanced Search
Watchlist
Sign In
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
  • Trivia
IMDbPro

Tomboy

  • 20112011
  • Not RatedNot Rated
  • 1h 22m
IMDb RATING
7.4/10
21K
YOUR RATING
Tomboy (2011)
Settling into her new neighborhood outside Paris, a 10-year-old girl decides to introduce herself as a boy.
Play trailer2:12
1 Video
13 Photos
  • Drama
A family moves into a new neighborhood, and a 10-year-old named Laure deliberately presents as a boy named Mikhael to the neighborhood children.A family moves into a new neighborhood, and a 10-year-old named Laure deliberately presents as a boy named Mikhael to the neighborhood children.A family moves into a new neighborhood, and a 10-year-old named Laure deliberately presents as a boy named Mikhael to the neighborhood children.
IMDb RATING
7.4/10
21K
YOUR RATING
  • Director
    • Céline Sciamma
  • Writer
    • Céline Sciamma(screenplay)
  • Stars
    • Zoé Héran
    • Malonn Lévana
    • Jeanne Disson
Top credits
  • Director
    • Céline Sciamma
  • Writer
    • Céline Sciamma(screenplay)
  • Stars
    • Zoé Héran
    • Malonn Lévana
    • Jeanne Disson
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 59User reviews
    • 204Critic reviews
    • 74Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 10 wins & 6 nominations

    Videos1

    U.S. Version
    Trailer 2:12
    U.S. Version

    Photos13

    Zoé Héran and Malonn Lévana in Tomboy (2011)
    Zoé Héran in Tomboy (2011)
    Zoé Héran and Jeanne Disson in Tomboy (2011)
    Tomboy (2011)
    Tomboy (2011)
    Tomboy (2011)
    Tomboy (2011)
    Zoé Héran and Jeanne Disson in Tomboy (2011)
    Zoé Héran and Jeanne Disson in Tomboy (2011)
    Zoé Héran in Tomboy (2011)
    Zoé Héran and Malonn Lévana in Tomboy (2011)
    Zoé Héran and Jeanne Disson in Tomboy (2011)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Zoé Héran
    Zoé Héran
    • Laure…
    Malonn Lévana
    Malonn Lévana
    • Jeanne
    Jeanne Disson
    • Lisa
    Sophie Cattani
    • La mère de Laure
    Mathieu Demy
    Mathieu Demy
    • Le père de Laure
    Rayan Boubekri
    • Rayan
    Yohan Vero
    • Vince
    Noah Vero
    • Noah
    Cheyenne Lainé
    • Cheyenne
    Christel Baras
    • La mère de Lisa
    Valérie Roucher
    • La mère de Rayan
    • Director
      • Céline Sciamma
    • Writer
      • Céline Sciamma(screenplay)
    • All cast & crew
    • See more cast details at IMDbPro

    More like this

    Water Lilies
    6.7
    Water Lilies
    Girlhood
    6.9
    Girlhood
    Petite Maman
    7.4
    Petite Maman
    Portrait of a Lady on Fire
    8.1
    Portrait of a Lady on Fire
    Pauline
    6.6
    Pauline
    Max
    7.0
    Max
    La Coupe Bernard Tapine
    5.4
    La Coupe Bernard Tapine
    Ivory Tower
    6.7
    Ivory Tower
    Shiva Baby
    7.1
    Shiva Baby
    Heartbeats
    7.0
    Heartbeats
    Carol
    7.2
    Carol
    With the wind
    6.2
    With the wind

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Script written from April 2010. The main actress was found on the first day of casting. The film was shot in twenty days in August 2010 with a crew of fourteen.
    • Goofs
      After the fight over the attack on Jeanne - which Laure wins, we see Laure attentively dressing the graze on Jeanne's knee, and adding a blue-coloured sticking plaster (Band-Aid). In the next scene, when (the un-named) mother finds out that Laure has been passing herself off as a boy, she demands that Laure wear a dress, when they both go to the neighbour to apologise. Laure is sitting on the bed with Jeanne, but all traces of Jeanne's knee injury, and even the sticking plaster, have disappeared.
    • Quotes

      Lisa: [subtitled version] Are you looking for the others? I noticed you looking at them. They already left. Are you new around here?

      Laure: Yeah, we got in yesterday.

      Lisa: I'm Lisa. I live here.

      [pause]

      Lisa: You're shy.

      Laure: No, I'm not.

      Lisa: Won't you tell me your name?

      Laure: Mickäel. My name is Mickäel.

    • Connections
      Featured in Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema (2018)
    • Soundtracks
      Always
      Written by Jean-Baptiste de Laubier and Jerôme Echenoz

      Published by Because Editions/Copyright Control



      & © 2011 Para one & Tacteel

    User reviews59

    Review
    Top review
    10/10
    Remember?
    Tomboy is a feel-good movie of a type we're unaccustomed to seeing: it doesn't end with killings or sex or a pile of money. It's a movie about children where the children aren't effigies of the adult audience, with knowing wrinkles and smart-aleck sneers carved on ten-year-old faces. It is the opposite. It's a movie that can help the hardened and scratched-up adult carapace melt away for 80-odd minutes. Through layers of paperwork and grime, we watch and we imagine remembering what it was like to feel protected and loved by two tall and wonderful beings. What it was like to come home to dinner. What it was like not knowing who you were.

    The Tomboy is Laure, a 10-year-old girl whose family just moved to a leafy suburb. She has a summer to spend before school starts, and for reasons unclear even to herself, decides to fake it as a boy. Zoé Héran, the actress, is a remarkable performer and will be a remarkable French beauty in another decade, but in the film appears as a wiry, scrawny child who wears feminine clothes only on pain of motherly torture. She runs in the forest, scraps around with boys, and can get away with being on the "shirtless" team in the soccer game.

    Here's something amazing about Héran's performance: I kept having to remind myself that she speaks. In fact, she probably has more lines than anyone else in the movie, but they seem ephemeral compared to the great work that silently goes on in her mind. The camera watches her think with such intensity and expression, and since this is not a dumb movie, we don't get a voice-over that explains the obvious. We know what she's thinking: how will I continue the deception on the field and in the lake? How will I prevent my family from finding out? And, in quieter moments, other thoughts, other sensations, attempts to understand things that she can feel but hasn't yet learned the words for.

    Her self-discovery is framed by a supporting cast that includes tender and attentive parents, a cute little ball of energy for a younger sister, a neighborhood girl who's attracted to the mysterious stranger, and a colorful group of rambunctious but good-natured boys.

    Tomboy was made for peanuts, and there's no telling what it would have looked like with a few million dollars to spend, but the feel and sound of it are perfect. In the day, the hiss and rustle of trees; at night, the taps and groans of the house in the wind. I watched it in a dark, dusty room on a New England January, and I could almost feel the sunlight on my own skin.

    In the end, despite Laure's anxieties, this is a movie that shines with joy. A wide-open world of familial love, summer play, first romance, none of which is packaged to be bought or sold. None of that first-world paranoia, no fences and kidnappers and card readers and metal detectors. It's a picture of the days when half an hour of homework was a jail term, three months of summer were a lifetime, and childhood itself was a sky-blue eternity of invented games, skin-deep catastrophes and ineffable comfort at the steady hands of the people who wish us best.

    P.S. Then again, we adults have our own joys, such as the dismal, acrid laughter at the stupidity of others. This movie didn't go unnoticed on the arch-conservative website The Free Republic, which claims that the main character is a lesbian (the word doesn't actually appear once in the script, and the director is on record saying she specifically wanted to avoid pigeonholing her protagonist). Of all the extraordinarily strong opinions expressed in the forum thread, not one appears to be informed by an actual viewing.

    The discussion starts out by claiming that the movie "exploits small children to advance progressives' bizarre sexual agenda;" it takes a detour through gender reassignment surgery, underage sex and ends in a starkly pornographic debate about bestiality.

    It's a trope that guardians of morality often have infinitely filthier and more disturbing minds under their helmets than the people whose work gives them shrieking fits. The debauched French have made a serene and charming movie about family and friends, whereas our self-anointed protectors of children's minds and bodies used it as a springboard into bottomless perversity. The moral: if you have a choice between reading a dour political site and watching a French children's movie, go with the movie.
    helpful•56
    14
    • proterozoic
    • Jan 30, 2012

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • April 20, 2011 (France)
    • Country of origin
      • France
    • Official sites
      • Official Facebook
      • Official site (Japan)
    • Language
      • French
    • Also known as
      • Giới Tính Thứ Ba
    • Filming locations
      • Seine-et-Marne, France
    • Production companies
      • Hold Up Films
      • Arte France Cinéma
      • Lilies Films
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • €1,000,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $129,834
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $7,078
      • Nov 20, 2011
    • Gross worldwide
      • $1,437,501
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 22 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby Digital
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

    Related news

    Contribute to this page

    Suggest an edit or add missing content
    Tomboy (2011)
    Top Gap
    What is the Hindi language plot outline for Tomboy (2011)?
    Answer
    • See more gaps
    • Learn more about contributing
    Edit page

    More to explore

    View list
    List
    Editors' Picks: What to Watch Now on Netflix
    See the full list
    View image
    Photos
    Hollywood Romances: Our Favorite Couples
    See the full list

    Recently viewed

    Please enable browser cookies to use this feature. Learn more.
    Get the IMDb App
    • Get the IMDb App
    • Help
    • Site Index
    • IMDbPro
    • Box Office Mojo
    • IMDb Developer
    • Press Room
    • Advertising
    • Jobs
    • Conditions of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • Interest-Based Ads
    IMDb, an Amazon company

    © 1990-2022 by IMDb.com, Inc.