Tomboy
Céline’s
roles: Screenwriter & Director (& costume designer, uncredited).
Year
2011 (Released in France 20 April 2011)
Editor
Julien Lacheray
Director of photography
Crystel Fournier
Song Credits
Jean-Baptiste de Laubier, Jereome Echenoz
(Para one & Tacteel)
Executive Producer
Bénédicte Couvreur
Form
Feature film (78mins)
Synopsis
Laure
is 10 years old. Laure is a tomboy.
On
her arrival in a new neighborhood, she lets Lisa and her crowd believe that she
is a boy.
Truth
or dare? Dare.
Summer
becomes a big playground and Laure pretends to be Michael, a boy like the
others… different enough to get the attention of Lisa who falls in love with
him. Laure takes advantage of her new identity as if the end of the summer would
never reveal her unsettling secret.
Trailer
Available
https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Tomboy?id=c0vyxoXCAgw
Honours/Awards
- Berlin International Film Festival – Teddy Jury Award
- Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema – FIPRESCI Prize
- Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema – SIGNIS Award
- Prix Jacques Prévert du Scénario for Best Original Screenplay
Excerpts from reviews
96% score on Rotten Tomatoes
“This exquisite film is as pure as you can
get, it’s observational, it’s minimalist, there’s no intrusive music except
where it is part of the action. That fragility of a young girl, despite her
boyish behaviour, is so painful, it’s been really beautifully and
compassionately presented by writer/director Celine Sciamma. The performances
are a knockout, they’re truly believably naturalistic. All the kids are great
but Zoe Heran is just stunning, as is Malonn Levana as her little sister. This
is just a wonderful gem of a film. Makes you glad some people make movies.”
At the Movies, ABC Australia
https://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s3461276.htm
“…the film is still a great celebration of
the excitement and freedom of childhood, that also explores the confusion of
growing up and terror of being and finding out who you are. With insight and
focus, Sciamma’s sophomore effort largely captures the complexity of
adolescence.”
“Sciamma renders visual some of the most
complicated and elusive structures at work in the constitution of personhood
(i.e. desire), and never in a sentimental or manipulative way. The film’s ideas
brew effortlessly before our eyes, as if it were too invested in its
characters’ experiences to worry about “selling” us its story or “teaching” us
its messages. Sciamma’s sensibility as a director along with the masterful
performance by Zoé Héran (as well as Malon Léavanna, who plays her little
sister) keeps Tomboy from making any overreaching or
generalizing claims about gender, identity, or the sexuality of children. And
yet we certainly “learn” from the film just as much as we “like” it. The kind
of sensuous apprenticeship borne out of the aftershock of an experience so
emotional, so delicate, it refreshingly eludes us.”
Slant Magazine
https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/tomboy/
“This is the whole miracle of this film,
sublimated by the summer light: showing through a half-open door that children
are complex beings that adults will never understand. Except Céline Sciamma.”
Metro
(translated
by Google)
Notes
An important element in this film is missed
by those of us who do not understand or speak French—when Lisa meets Laure for
the first time, Lisa uses the French pronoun that indicates that she believes
that she is speaking with a male. It is this error on Lisa’s part that launches
Laure on her journey that the film takes us on.
Another language-related aspect of the film
is that the title of the film for the French release was the English word ‘Tomboy’.
The French word for an outdoorsy girl is garçon manqué, which roughly
translates literally as a ‘lacking boy’. THis seems a much more negative and judgmental term (to this English-speaker, at least...)
Much has been written in scholarly journals about this film (as with Naissance des Pieuvres). I will not try to add to this scholarly work, as I am not a scholar of films, but they can be found here, or via a search of scholarly databases.
The DVD extras (on some versions of the DVD!) include an interview with Céline in French (with English subtitles) and one in English, and includes 'behind the scenes' footage showing the director working with the child actors
Casting
Zoé Héran (Laure) was cast on the first day
of casting, and her real friends were cast as Laure/Mikel’s friends.
Céline did not go through a casting process
for role of Laure’s parents Sophie Cattani & Mathieu Demy), rather, she
offered the roles to the two actors who played these roles.
Mathieu Demy (who plays Laure’s father) is the son of the
legendary director Agnès Varda and Jacques Demy.
From the Director about the film
“Tomboy was made incredibly fast. I started
writing the script at the end of March 2010 and we were shooting in August. It
was shot in 20 days with an initial budget of 500,000 euros and a crew of 15
people.
…
I
wrote the script in three weeks. I designed it so that the film would be easy and
simple to prepare in such a short time frame. Two main sets, 50 sequences. I
built it around a very simple and strong argument, the story of a lie, an
undercover character, so that it would produce a powerful narrative with
suspense and empathy. The character has a strong goal in a double play dynamic.
This efficient story allowed me to take the time to relate a vivid chronicle
about childhood, with documentary aspects, and unpredictable accidents. I was
also very committed to the subject surrounding identity and the question of
gender. Childhood is often referred to as the age of innocence. But I think
it’s a time of life full of sensuality and ambiguous emotions. I wanted to
portray that.”
Céline Sciamma, Director’s Notes, Tomboy Press
Kit.
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