A pre-pubescent "Boys Don't Cry" with a much sweeter tone, this thoughtful French comic drama follows Laure (Zoé Héran), a 10-year-old girl who yearns to be a boy.
Tomboy
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
France · 2011
1h 22m
Director Céline Sciamma
Starring Zoé Héran, Malonn Lévana, Jeanne Disson, Sophie Cattani
Genre Drama
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Laure and her family have recently moved to a new neighborhood. One day, she meets Lisa, who assumes Laure to be a boy. Frozen, Laure accepts this new identity, calling herself Mikäel. But when Laure's secret begins to leak out, her friendship with Lisa, along with her social status, are put to the test.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
A tender, sensitive French drama rich in hazy atmosphere.
Tomboy may add little to conversations about gender or sexuality. It has everything to say, however, about that period of childhood when identity is at its most malleable.
Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene
Tomboy is one of those little big films whose simplicity and concision suggest the excess of meaning that language (cinematic or otherwise) could never account for.
New York Daily News by Joe Neumaier
Its young heroine is proud to be herself; there's just not much for her to do beyond that.
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
The startling power of Tomboy, a beautiful, matter-of-fact French drama about a young girl who wants to be a boy - and for one singular summer around her 10th birthday passes as one - begins with the one-of-a-kind natural performance by Zoé Héran as Laure.
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
The story that emerges is programmatic and largely unsurprising, but these children give it messiness, joy and life.
Village Voice by Melissa Anderson
Tomboy astutely explores the freedom, however brief, of being untethered to the highly rule-bound world of gender codes.
It's so much fun that as Tomboy moves toward its conclusion, the inevitable end of Héran's days as Mikael feels like watching someone die.
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