When ten-year-old Laure moves to a Parisian suburb with her parents and younger sister, Jeanne, it is a difficult transition with a new neighbourhood to make home, new friends to find and a new school with which to contend. Although her parents clearly love her and Jeanne looks up to her as the ultimate big sister, Laure has issues of her own that isolate her from the world. Laure resists the stereotyping foisted upon young French girls and is content to run free in shorts and t-shirt as a tomboy and her parents seem at ease with her choice.
However, when she makes her first foray into friendship with a group of children who will soon be her peers at school, she introduces herself as Mickäel and they happily accept that she is a boy. Welcomed as part of the group of boys who swim and play football, Mickäel also forms a bond of friendship with Lisa (Jeanne Disson), a 'regular' girl, who sees in him a gentleness and sensitivity that is absent in the boys with whom she, too, has kicked around.
While never actually stated, the probability of Laure/Mickäel being (unnoticed, undiagnosed or just ignored) transgender is evident but writer/director Céline Sciamma prefers to take the gentler approach of studying social norms of gender types rather than a no-holds-barred sexual exploration.
Tomboy is a beautifully subtle film that is dialogue-light but filled with the language of silence and unarticulated glances. The three young principals are confident and natural in their performances and Sciamma appears content to sit back and let them play their parts fluidly and without strict direction. The relationship between Laure/Mickäel and Jeanne is particularly sensitively handled with the role of big sister meandering between the two according to circumstances.
There is little input from the parents, and they are credited simply as La mere and La père, but when the girls' mother steps into the scene her impact is immediate and stirs both judgment and understanding in the viewer.
While Tomboy suggests questions that could be asked, it stops short of dictating the answers and, instead, makes a suggestion that we may accept or condemn and, though some may find the subject matter uncomfortable, one hopes those very few who are attracted to this lovely film are not of the camp given to prejudice and fear-inspired anger.
Tomboy is a gentle film that deserves to be watched quietly and savoured in the company of gentle people.
