Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

SnoopyStyle A family moves into a new neighborhood. The parents have a 10 year old and a younger daughter. Lisa befriends the 10 year old and asks for his name. He reveals it's Mikhael. He makes new friends. He gets into a fight and his secret is discovered by his mother. He's actually a girl named Laure. The mother forces Laure to wear a dress and apologize.There's got to be a better way to reveal Laure's sex other than having her stand there naked. It's too deliberate as a visual. The story may even work better if we know she's a girl from the start. The audience can follow her journey more naturally. There is also the last act. There is good tension after Laure's exposure but it seems like the movie is holding back its final punch. That might account for the movie's short length. It's heart-breaking to see Laure struggling for her identity. I don't know if the actress could perform it but she could have put it over the top with a real intense breakdown.

Claudio Carvalho The ten year-old Laure (Zoé Héran) and her six-year old sister Jeanne (Malonn Lévana) move to a Parisian suburb near the nature with their parents. Laure befriends the children in the neighborhood but for an unknown reason, she tells that she is a boy, Mickäel. Soon he becomes popular among the new friends and the teenager Lisa (Jeanne Disson) feels attracted by him. When Laure's mother, who is pregnant, discovers that her daughter had lied about her gender to the children, she takes an attitude."Tomboy" is a different story of childhood, with a tomboy that lures her new friends and becomes a popular boy. Zoé Héran and Malonn Lévana are amazing and have magnificent performances. Unfortunately the stupid attitude of Lisa destroys the story. Children are mean in this type of situation and a mother should never expose her daughter the way Lisa does. She should seek professional support for Laure and herself to understand whether the attention-seeking of her daughter was just a way to get new friends or whether she is a transgender girl to properly deal with the situation. Depending on the medical orientation, the family should even need to move to another neighborhood to protect her daughter. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Tomboy"

zetes From the director of the very good Water Lilies, a film about teenage sexuality. This one is similar in theme, with a style seemingly derived from the Dardennes (Water Lilies was far less documentary realist). Zoe Heran stars as a pre-teen girl who wishes she were a boy. Her parents think she's just a tomboy, perhaps that it's just a phase, but when the family moves into their new home during the middle of summer break, Heran introduces herself to the local children as Mikael. There are a few weeks left before school starts. She doesn't have much of a plan other than to enjoy her time as a boy. Of course, exposure is ever lurking. Heran is excellent, as are Jeanne Disson as the girl with whom she gets somewhat romantically involved and Malonn Levana as Heran's little sister (the moment where she figures out what her sister's up to is as great a moment of acting as anything achieved by Quevenzhane). Like any Dardennes film, it's simple, sweet, and quietly devastating.

TheSquiss When ten-year-old Laure moves to a Parisian suburb with her parents and younger sister, Jeanne, it is a difficult transition with a new neighbourhood to make home, new friends to find and a new school with which to contend. Although her parents clearly love her and Jeanne looks up to her as the ultimate big sister, Laure has issues of her own that isolate her from the world. Laure resists the stereotyping foisted upon young French girls and is content to run free in shorts and t-shirt as a tomboy and her parents seem at ease with her choice.However, when she makes her first foray into friendship with a group of children who will soon be her peers at school, she introduces herself as Mickäel and they happily accept that she is a boy. Welcomed as part of the group of boys who swim and play football, Mickäel also forms a bond of friendship with Lisa (Jeanne Disson), a 'regular' girl, who sees in him a gentleness and sensitivity that is absent in the boys with whom she, too, has kicked around.While never actually stated, the probability of Laure/Mickäel being (unnoticed, undiagnosed or just ignored) transgender is evident but writer/director Céline Sciamma prefers to take the gentler approach of studying social norms of gender types rather than a no-holds-barred sexual exploration.Tomboy is a beautifully subtle film that is dialogue-light but filled with the language of silence and unarticulated glances. The three young principals are confident and natural in their performances and Sciamma appears content to sit back and let them play their parts fluidly and without strict direction. The relationship between Laure/Mickäel and Jeanne is particularly sensitively handled with the role of big sister meandering between the two according to circumstances.There is little input from the parents, and they are credited simply as La mere and La père, but when the girls' mother steps into the scene her impact is immediate and stirs both judgment and understanding in the viewer.While Tomboy suggests questions that could be asked, it stops short of dictating the answers and, instead, makes a suggestion that we may accept or condemn and, though some may find the subject matter uncomfortable, one hopes those very few who are attracted to this lovely film are not of the camp given to prejudice and fear-inspired anger.Tomboy is a gentle film that deserves to be watched quietly and savoured in the company of gentle people.