The rad­i­cal queer pol­i­tics and bit­ter­sweet lega­cy of Tomboy

When Céline Sciamma’s sec­ond fea­ture, Tomboy, pre­miered in 2011, she could have had no idea that it would one day receive extreme back­lash in her home coun­try. A year and a half lat­er, the French government’s ​‘Ecole et Ciné­ma’ ini­tia­tive, which worked to cul­ti­vate cinephil­ia in school­child­ren, found itself at the cen­tre of a polit­i­cal furore as homo­pho­bic pro­tes­tors opposed the ini­tial leg­is­la­tion for same-sex mar­riage. The afore­men­tioned cul­tur­al pro­gramme select­ed Tomboy as one of its titles, so as to intro­duce a dia­logue on gen­der the­o­ry. Ten years on, this sub­ject is still in its incip­i­ent days in France.

After the film was screened to over 46,000 mid­dle-grade and ado­les­cent audi­ences, par­ents caught wind of Tomboy’s con­tent; many who opposed the film deemed it ​‘LGBTQ+ pro­pa­gan­da’ and launched a strike that would keep their chil­dren home from school one day a month. The mil­i­tant con­ser­v­a­tive group Manif pour tous (Protest for All), which co-opt­ed the name of the same-sex mar­riage bill ​‘Mariage pour tous’, took on the inter­ests of par­ents under the pre­tence that it was dan­ger­ous for chil­dren to watch films like Tomboy. Sud­den­ly, peti­tions began cir­cu­lat­ing and con­ser­v­a­tives took to the streets with card­board signs super­im­posed with the image from the film’s poster of a young androg­y­nous child.

The heinous rhetoric spewed from the French Right could not be far­ther from the film’s truth. 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.

The film tells the sto­ry of a gen­der non-con­for­rm­ing child, named Lau­re at birth, who intro­duces him­self as Mikäel when first addressed with male pro­nouns by his new neigh­bours. It’s sum­mer­time and Mikäel’s par­ents along with his young sis­ter have just moved to a new apart­ment on the out­skirts of Paris. Mikäel takes this fresh start as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to express him­self in a dif­fer­ent way, ditch­ing his shirt when play­ing bas­ket­ball with the oth­er boys, get­ting into wrestling match­es, and seiz­ing the lib­er­ty that comes with choos­ing to over­ride the harsh con­straints of bina­ry gen­der codes.

Beyond sim­ply ques­tion­ing gen­der, the film address­es issues that are incred­i­bly sen­si­tive with­in the trans com­mu­ni­ty, such as gen­der dys­pho­ria. Mikäel is shown look­ing into mir­rors through­out the film, ques­tion­ing his appear­ance. How does every­one see him? How does he see him­self? When the oth­er kids decide to go swim­ming, our pro­tag­o­nist resorts to pack­ing his speedo – repur­posed from an old one-piece – with Play-Doh. When he looks at him­self in the mir­ror this time, uneasi­ness is eclipsed by a cer­tain eupho­ria; per­haps because he will be able to ​“pass” in his male-dom­i­nat­ed friend group, or because he final­ly expe­ri­ences self-accep­tance, root­ed in his phys­i­cal appear­ance align­ing with his inter­nal identity.

The trans read­ing of Tomboy, how­ev­er, does not erase the pos­si­bil­i­ty for oth­er inter­pre­ta­tions. Many les­bians have strong­ly iden­ti­fied with Mikäel – espe­cial­ly those who also iden­ti­fy as non-bina­ry, reflect­ing back on dif­fer­ent ways they have toyed with gen­der from child­hood through adult­hood. The roman­tic arc of the sto­ry also deserves a men­tion. Lisa, who devel­ops a crush on Mikäel, shy­ly leads him through the woods while his eyes are closed, all the way to the edge of the lake. She then cov­ers his eyes and pecks him on the lips, a ten­der moment that speaks to all of the child­hoods lived in secret by gay chil­dren. The awk­ward­ness is famil­iar, and in many ways Sci­amma sev­ers the cord between gen­der and love, turn­ing the cri­tique on the very soci­ety that pre­cip­i­tat­ed so much scruti­ny on the film in its nascent days.

When asked about the evolv­ing recep­tion of her film in a 2020 inter­view, Sci­amma respond­ed, ​“I want­ed to leave it open because I want­ed every­body to con­nect.” In this way, she reit­er­ates once again with Tomboy that the pow­er of cin­e­ma lies as much in the hands of the audi­ence as it does in film­mak­ers, and fol­low­ing suit, the bit­ter­sweet lega­cy of the film seeps so much deep­er than an oppres­sive polit­i­cal punchline.