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BOYS DON'T CRY
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Last night, before Hilary Swank won her well-deserved Oscar for Best Actress, we went to see BOYS DON'T CRY.
In many ways, this is an archetypal independent movie: gritty story, real-life context, implied gender-bending, very good acting from people you mostly have never heard of (except Chloe Sevigny, from THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO), and a downer. From the beginning, we know that Brandon Teena is biologically a girl named Teena Brandon, so from inception we are in on the ruse, lending otherwise static scenes (light plots are another common feature of indy films) heavy with effective Hitchockian suspense -- how will he get out of this one?
Branden is *not* a lesbian, a point he makes emphatically: he sees himself as a boy trapped in a girl's body, and his sexual attraction to women is simply one of several expressions of being a boy. He wants to *be* a boy -- he turns violent when he is in danger of being outed, and he steals tampons rather than break cover -- he wants to drink with boys, play pool with them, go bumper skiing with them. He walks and smokes and fights like a boy (albeit like a skinny, meek boy). He will endure male hazing dominance so he can hang out with boys, but at the same time he pursues the girls, with more success than the other boys. Here the film misses an issue -- Brandon is more successful than the other boys are with the girls, precisely because his behavior is informed by him being biologically a girl. He is polite, and kind, and does the chores, and doesn't grope the girls, and he is physically but non-sexually familiar with them (head on shoulder, hugs) in a way that a 19-year-old girl would be and a 19-year-old boy would not be. But because Brandon is a boy, in all relevant aspects, the sex scenes -- kissing, groping and Other Things -- come across as straight teen love rather than lesbian.
All of which is evidence that the actress, Hilary Swank, has pulled off a tour de force -- she has made you believe in the character. Not that the character is taken completely for a boy. We have none of that Shakespearean Viola invisibility which is always so hard to credit. People remark on Brandon's pretty features and thin wrists, not to mention lack of beard, all of which I had at 19, not the hip-swing and jeans shape, which are a more reliable indicator if you are looking for those things. Rather, we believe that Brandon *thinks* himself a boy and acts according to boy metrics throughout. It is a tremendous performance, mesmerizing without being self-conscious (and thank goodness the Academy voters took her over the flamboyant-but-easy performance Annette Benning delivered in the much-overrated AMERICAN BEAUTY).
The movie is a Serious Downer. You know it has a grim context, and it gets progressively grimmer as Brandon's lies lead him ever deeper into jeopardy, and even to disregarding the common sense which has gotten him out of near-miss scrapes in the past. Don't go unless you're feeling in a cheerful mood beforehand and prepared to be depressed afterwards. But do go -- the performance is gripping -- and go at the movies, where there is no escape from the scenes, no fast-forward button, no commercials to distract you from the drama.
P. S. And in a curious cognitive dissonance for the majority of its audience, the film is, perhaps unintentionally, probably the best argument for the death penalty of any indy film ever made.