Boys Don't Cry (1999)

Review by Erin Walker

Boys Don't Cry is the true story of Brandon Teena (Hilary Swank), also known as Teena Brandon or "the woman who disguised herself as a man" and took the town of Falls City, Nebraska by storm, only to wind up raped and murdered at the hands of those she had befriended. The film reconstructs Brandon's unbelievable journey, from first appearance as a charismatic boy/man, to budding romance with the cool and reckless Lana (Chloe Sevigny), to the tragic outcome that ultimately drove this disturbing tale from America's heartland into the headlines all over the world. At its core, this is the story of one person forced to live an incredible, dangerous double life in an attempt to find unconditional love.

Kimberly Pierce, the director, has constructed a film with an uncanny ability to represent different points-of-view and themes simultaneously, like a three-dimensional puzzle that you can look though and observe from varying perspectives. In one scene, Brandon looks up at Lana, taking a smoke break by hanging out of a second-story window of the factory where she works. "It looks so different from the outside," Brandon observes. This line compliments the film so well in its ability to delicately show multiple angles of a complex story without passing judgment--contemplating the roots of violence, the power of desire, and the inevitability of fate as easily as the clouds float over the Nebraska countryside.

Peirce has created an absolutely fascinating meditation on the contradictions of identity and gender, as well as a powerful study of human desire.

Rating:

Trivia:

This is Alicia (Lecy) Goranson's second film since she portrayed Becky Connor on Roseanne. Her first was How to Make an American Quilt (1995).

Peter Sarsgaard and Brendon Sexton also appeared together in Desert Blue (1998).

This makes Allison Folland's fifth film. Not bad for someone who had never acted in a play or movie before auditioning (as a joke) for To Die For (1995), which turned out to be her first film.

Links

The Official Boys Don't Cry Website

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