Get your own Free Home Page
Much more challenging to discuss is the visceral first film from writer/director Kimberly Peirce, which netted Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress nominations for Hilary Swank (who also won the Golden Globe) and Chloe Sevigny. Maybe you remember seeing something in the news a few years back about the story it's based on: a young woman who was raped and murdered by a couple trashneck buddies when they discovered she had been very effectively pretending to be a guy. Softcore, tabloid "Springer" stuff, sure, but compelling in a way that can generate much interest in artier circles thanks to the trendy topic: "I'm having a sexual identity crisis."
Swank brims with nervous energy as Brandon/Teena, a compulsive liar, thief, and forger coping with gender confusion in the teeming cosmopolis of Lincoln, Nebraska. Trying to outrun her rap sheet and a lynch mob, she winds up in an even less open-minded little burg, where she figures it's simpler to pursue Lana (Sevigny), the latest girl of her dreams, by stuffing a sock (among other things) in her pants (her own, not Lana's) than by admitting she's a lesbian.
As the film begins, with Brandon getting a very butch haircut, it's difficult to imagine anyone could mistake the high-cheekboned, statuesque Swank for anything but a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model hidden in baggy jeans and flannel shirt. But as Brandon perpetrates another lengthy, elaborate ruse, enthusiastically overcompensating with such masculine rural entertainments as fistfighting, heavy drinking, and "bumper-skiing," she becomes to us the thing she would like to be. It's fascinating, and eerie, to watch, the flip-side of all the drag-queen scenes from things such as Birdcage and Too Wong Foo... where a swarthy hunk morphs into Claudia Schiffer. More intriguing, actually, since the deception was carried off for weeks, in real life, face-to-face, without benefit of makeup and lighting.
What could have been a sympathetic portrayal is derailed by overly graphic sexuality (Boys... initially got slapped with the dreaded NC-17 before re-editing). Some of that can be written off to simple titillation (to convince Lana she was a guy, Brandon enlisted some, how you say, prosthetic help), but not the extended, brutal multiple-rape scene; the most telling gender lesson here may be that, if the film had been directed by a man, you can bet the critical reception would have been less favorable. But perhaps worse, we're given virtually no clues or background to Brandon's behavior. Was she driven to lousy judgment by stress, or was it merely a matter of, as she admits more than once, "I'm an asshole"?
Still, Swank, who was previously best known from "Beverly Hills 90210" and the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is enthralling. But as for giving the movie a grade, I'll have to pass. Boys Don't Cry falls into the same personal category created a few years ago for Leaving Las Vegas; the story may be well-told, but that doesn't mean I want to sit through it.
Get your own Free Home Page