From time to time, a coming-of-age film comes across to paint the already vivid LGBT cinema with new colors. The ones “The Way he Looks” has are subtle, tender, and sweet, but bold enough to leave an indelible imprint.
Leonardo (Ghillerme Lobo) is a blind teenager coping up with the changes brought to him by adolescence. He struggles to find independence from his overprotective parents, and he’s longing for acceptance from everyone who would rather mock him for his disability. He’s well adjusted with all the mess , but his equally super-protective bestfriend, Giovanna, never leaves his side.
Albeit anomalous, everything happening—all those bullying, the parents who would not want to miss a single moment without their eyes on him—comes across to Leonardo as essential pains of growing up, and he recognizes the need to go through all of them. Until the handsome new boy, Gabriel (Fabio Audi) , arrives.
The movie tries to take a single road as much as it can, keeping its track straight, and all its elements in tack, throughout its route. It grows as it goes, but it never entangles itself with the complications of inserting unneccessary expositories. In what could be seen as its most complicated angle (yet easily perceptible), the narrative sheds light on an unlikely love triangle. Giovanna has deep feelings for Leonardo, and she keeps sending hints of her admiration to him, but he couldn’t quite decipher them. But Leonardo is in love with Gabriel, and she also finds the new guy attractive. This strike as an immediate complication, but the characters and narrative themselves have ways to easily shrug it off.
Yet “The Way he Looks” biggest concern isn’t this love triangle. More to it is Leonardo’s journey to manhood, his escape from the confines of the world he lives in. This mirrors a universal subject that speaks for all ages, and this is where the movie is most piercingly capable. The movie’s tone complements the easygoing nature of Leonardo, and the simplistic approach of the story. It doesn’t feed too much on the disasters of its subjects, its conflict mainly coming from Leo’s little revolts, and Giovanna’s ignoring him when she feels Gabriel has already took her place in Leo’s life.
These maybe are small, but they affect with utmost warmth and sincerity they would send you crippling inside. In one of its sweetest moments, Gabriel introduces the music he likes to Leonardo, whose musical taste is limited only to the classicals. This gives way to a scene where Gabriel has made the often shy Leo, dance, and while Gabriel might haven’t realized it, such moment awaken something inside Leo. Suddenly he is in love. This is only one of countless small moments that makes watching this movie truly emotional. All across, sprawls sheer heartwarming scenes that tug at the heartstrings, like when Gabriel took Leo in the cinema while he narrates what’s happening onscreen, and when he suddenly kisses Leo, when Leo thinks no one would let him kiss anyone.
Daniel Ribeiro, the director and writer of the film, surely knows well his subject. He has a keen eye on details and has hands to craft them into beautiful pieces of a bigger picture, resulting to a gentle yet affecting storyline. Sweet and compassionate, “The Way he Looks” leaves a cathartic sense of personal liberation, making it one of the most sensible entries to its genre, in a long while.
RATING: 8/10 (JE)
The movie is Brazil’s entry to the 87th Annual Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.
