Tomboy

Celine Sciamma's Tomboy (France, 2012) - The politics of gender get an unusual exploration in the world of pre-teen kids in Celine Sciamma’s Tomboy, a simple conceit blessed by the same naturalistic performances and fluid camerawork that marked out her feature debut Water Lilies. The story of a 10 year-old girl, a tomboy, pretending to be a boy in a new circle of friends is one built on deception and it could easily have travelled on a doom laden road towards discovery and tragedy. Instead Sciamma avoids the obvious and takes a more gentle route, honing in on the details of interactions between children, the joyful playtime, the rituals and the arrival of preconceptions which will shape their prejudices as they grow older. 2011BERp, 2011EDI. RATING: 7