Boys Don't Cry (1999) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov http://www.ultimate-movie.com/ Member: Online Film Critics Society
Starring Hilary Swank, Chloë Sevigny, Peter Sarsgaard, Brendan Sexton III. Directed by Kimberly Peirce. Rated R (Warning: This movie is on the outer boundaries of the R rating. Don't take aunt Helen).
Boys Don't Cry is a brutal, often painful to watch the biopic of Teena Brandon, a teenage girl who dressed up as a boy, lied to a girl, mixed in with the wrong crowd and got brutally raped and murdered. In a year when Hollywood adaptations of true stories -- some truthful than, controversially, others -- dominated critics' top ten list, this may have been the only one I truly liked, though "enjoyed" is the wrong word to use here.
This is a situation movie, where there is a set-up and then events are allowed to progress on their natural course without an honest-to- goodness storyline. In what is easily the year's most lauded performance, Hilary Swank plays Teena Brandon who, as I've mentioned, dresses up as a boy and makes friends with a group of trailer-trashy folk with family problems and what seem like outgoing personalities. Specifically, Teena falls in love with Lana (Chloë Sevigny), a beautiful young woman stuck in the middle of a dysfunctional family and trapped in a town where she has no future.
Teena and Lana form a nice relationship, but they have to deal with Lana's family, who will not stand for the idea of a boy pretending to be a girl should they ever find out the truth. In real life, of course, they did find out the truth and the results were tragic.
For better or for worse, depending on the viewer, Boys Don't Cry does not spare us the details. The final scenes become painful to watch -- we want to turn away but we don't dare. Director Kimberly Peirce portrays the final event in all its crushing realisticity, refusing to soften things up for those who can't stomach them. Many reviews have had this caveat and I will say it again: Boys Don't Cry is not for the squeamish. It is rated R but could easily have received an NC-17. Use caution.
Not surprisingly, the movie has received uniformly bad reviews from the wacky, inimitable Christian Right. Hardly surprising, considering the film's liberal good intentions. It is decidedly pro-homosexuality, though I hate to put such a simplistic label on a movie as good as this one. Reading some reviews for it, I was surprised that people can hate it so much just because they disagree with it.
The reason that Boys Don't Cry has received so much media attention is simple: Hilary Swank. She is, indeed, phenomenal -- not only successful in playing a girl-turned-boy but also in lodging her character deep in our hearts, a place she will remain in for a long time. What's less fortunate, perhaps, is that she casts a long shadow on her equally amazing co-star Chloë Sevigny. At once gorgeous, approachable and, in the end, powerfully poignant, Sevigny was nominated for an Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Despite the awards recognition, when people talk about Boys Don't Cry, the name Hilary Swank always comes up; her co-star is all but forgotten.
The film is, in some ways, expressing rage against intolerance but it's too good a movie to act as a propaganda machine. In the end, of course, it comes back to this central theme but rather than preach through the whole movie, the filmmakers take us on a journey through a world we may not realize that we live in. Indeed, in a perfect world, this movie wouldn't had to have been made. Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world and the absorbing, daring Boys Don't Cry points out one of its flaws.
Grade: A
©2000 Eugene Novikov
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