Boys Don't Cry Review
by Scott Renshaw (renshaw AT inconnect DOT com)March 25th, 2000
BOYS DON'T CRY
(Fox Searchlight)
Starring: Hilary Swank, Chloe Sevigny, Peter Sarsgaard, Brendan Sexton III, Alison Folland, Alicia Goranson.
Screenplay: Kimberly Peirce and Andy Bienen.
Producers: Jeffrey Sharp, John Hart, Eva Kolodner and Christine Vachon. Director: Kimberly Peirce.
MPAA Rating: R (profanity, sexual situations, nudity, drug use, adult themes)
Running Time: 114 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
It took five months for BOYS DON'T CRY finally to make its way to Utah. Five months of bumped release dates (at least partially due to an attitude, voiced by an unnamed Fox Searchlight representative, that "gay films don't play there"). Five months of growing hype over the remarkable transformation in the performance of Hilary Swank, who became a Best Actress nominee as expected. Five months of building expectations for one of the best-received independent films of the year, based on a compelling true story. And after five months, plenty of opportunity for the film itself to fall dangerously short of everything I wanted it to be.
BOYS DON'T CRY is not a great piece of film craftsmanship. It's a performance showcase, and a very effective one. The surprise, however, is that the real showcase performance isn't the most talked-about one. Swank stars as Teena Brandon, a native of Lincoln, Nebraska whose sexual identity has always been a source of trouble for her. After numerous run-ins with the law and fellow residents outraged by her behavior, Teena flees Lincoln for the small town of Falls City. There she re-invents herself as Brandon Teena, a young man travelling through town who falls in with a group of aimless young people, including ex-cons John Lotter (Peter Sarsgaard) and Tom Nissen (Brendan Sexton III) and John's sort-of-girlfriend Lana Tisdel (Chloe Sevigny). Brandon instantly becomes attracted to Lana, and finds her receptive to his interest. But secrets have a way of coming out, and when they do, Brandon faces dangerous repercussions.
At the center of the story, of course, is the mystery of Brandon/Teena -- who he was, how so many people were fooled, what Brandon's transformation represented as both threat and promise to the other people involved in the story. Swank's physical performance is superb, made even more effective by co-writer/director Kimberly Peirce's decision to introduce Brandon already in male guise so the switch doesn't become a showy trick. But it's hard not to be more impressed with the physical performance than with what's going underneath it. There are moments when you see the awkwardness of a girl trying to be one of the guys, and moments in the harrowing final half hour when you see her peering in terror through the cracks in her reality. More often, Brandon is an enigmatic catalyst. It seems as though Peirce is more interested in what Brandon stands for than in the person that was Brandon Teena.
The upside to that perspective is that one of those people is Lana, played with unnerving effectiveness by Chloe Sevigny. Lana is in her way a more fascinating character than Brandon -- she engages in just as much self-delusion, but her motivations are more complex. Sevigny plays the small town girl with a dissolute resignation that gradually becomes faint hope for a better life. It's the sort of role most actresses would play initially with hard-edged bluster before unveiling the heart of gold beneath; Sevigny shows a slightly different perspective of Lana every time she turns around.
Sevigny is part of a superb supporting cast, with Sarsgaard and Sexton similarly refusing to play their parts for easy interpretation. The entire milieu of the Falls City youth has a heartbreaking genuineness to it -- particularly noteworthy is how Lana's mother becomes "Mom" to everyone in their desperation for any family relationship -- and Peirce does a fine job of using Brandon to explore the effect of a nonconformist on a place where reality is assumed to be static. It's the idea that Peirce uses Brandon at all that dampens the power of BOYS DON'T CRY, however. The chilling resolution and wonderful supporting performances make it easy to recommend BOYS DON'T CRY. I only wish that five months of focus on Hilary Swank hadn't led me to expect it would be the story of Brandon Teena.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 gender blenders: 7.
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