Critics reviews

Tomboy provided vital representation for queer audiences, lending its subjectivity to those who do not identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. It is undeniably a love letter to the queer community, validating the unique and oftentimes confusing childhoods that gay and trans children experience.

What pervades Tomboy, in particular, is the sense that Sciamma’s camera truly takes on a human quality, transgressing what is expected from minimalist filmmaking with colour, framing and editing to truly represent the audience, not just on-screen, but inter-spatially.

Perhaps most poignant is the oppressive aura of psychological violence when Laure’s mother asserts her sense of what’s right, or practical: Laure must return to dresses, she must be Laure, if she is to start school, keep the family in place and social ties in order, no matter what’s at stake. There’s real heartache in this decision.

Sciamma's capturing of children at play is disarmingly accurate, perfectly showing the freewheeling nature of prepubescence in all its glory.

As a director, Sciamma is beginning to plough her very own furrow of child-accessible cinema, able to successfully put her adult conceptions of the world aside in order to present a number of heart-felt, at times painfully truthful illustrations of childhood.

Sciamma is deft at shifting between these safely domestic and more unruly outdoor environments. This is high-concept filmmaking without the fuss that usually accompanies it.

Extremely empathic, Tomboy isn’t simply an earnest plea for tolerance, though: Its detailed, nuanced observations about kids’ capacity for cruelty and understanding suggests divisions more complicated than just bullies versus victims. Childhood itself, the film intimates, is full of ambiguities (if not as extreme as Laure’s), of sorting out what you are drawn to and what repels you—all subject to change by the minute.

As in her previous feature, “Water Lilies,” about teenage girls discovering their sexual selves, Ms. Sciamma displays an obvious talent for working with young actors, who, by virtue of their age, bring a natural pathos to the screen. The story that emerges is programmatic and largely unsurprising, but these children give it messiness, joy and life.

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. Films like this, and De Sica’sThe Bicycle Thieves comes to mind, seem to know and accept the inadequacy of complexity, or spectacle, of form and style when the task at hand is expressing the unspeakability of the human condition.

Kudos to Sciamma’s refusal to indulge in the same old as various instances avoid overfamiliar outcomes or beginnings in favor of different, more understated moments that don’t spoon-feed the audience. They’re much more powerful that way

There’s something remarkably refreshing about a film where the central family are functional and caring towards each other. Tomboy has a restrained style that results in something very touching and beautiful.

Promising French auteur Celine Sciamma follows up her noteworthy debut, Water Lilies, with another sharply observed story of youths grappling with awkward bodies and budding hormones in the lighthearted pre-teen drama, Tomboy.