To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > Arts & Entertainment Oct. 11, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/1999/10/11/cry "Boys Don't Cry" The fictionalized account of the Brandon Teena story is sensationalistic storytelling at its best. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Stephanie Zacharek Like the threat of heat lightning on a sultry summer evening, a vapor of menace hovers over Kimberly Peirce's "Boys Don't Cry" almost from the first frame. The movie, an account of a real-life multiple murder, unfolds in such a leisurely way that it seems like one long premonition: Something very bad is going to happen to a character we're rapidly growing to care about, and our increasing feelings of helplessness sweep the story forward, toward inevitable tragedy. "Boys Don't Cry" is gripping, and it's moving, but it isn't particularly subtle. There's a strong thread of tabloid drama running through its core -- but at least it's sensationalistic storytelling with a heart. That may be the only honest approach, since Peirce is dealing with such sensationalistic material: "Boys Don't Cry" tells the true story of Brandon Teena (played by Hilary Swank), who was raped and murdered in a small Nebraska town in 1993. Brandon's secret was that he was, biologically, a woman -- an assigned role that had never felt right to him. Thus Teena Brandon became Brandon Teena, dressing like a man, cultivating male mannerisms and pursuing the attentions of women. In other words, he lived his life as the man he wanted to be. The charismatic Brandon was hugely successful with women -- they seemed to have little trouble buying his identity as a man -- but he repeatedly found himself in scrapes with the law, tangled up in crimes that included forgery and auto theft. His murderers, ex-cons John Lotter and Thomas Nissen (played by Peter Sarsgaard and Brendan Sexton III), were two locals from Falls City, the Nebraska town he'd drifted into. According to Peirce's telling of the story, they had become friends with Brandon, and there was the additional complication that one of them had long been obsessed with a young woman Brandon had fallen in love with (Lana Tisdel, played by Chloë Sevigny). When Lotter and Nissen discovered Brandon's "real" sexual identity, they brutally raped him. When Brandon went to the authorities (who, apparently, were not particularly sympathetic), Lotter and Nissen tracked him down and killed him, along with several of his friends, in order to silence him. Peirce, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Andy Bienen, covers an extraordinary amount of territory, not just in terms of dealing with Brandon's sexual-identity and self-fulfillment issues, but also in trying to understand the lives of those around him. She's never condescending in her view of small-town life -- she doesn't go out of her way to make it look depressing and dismal, and with the reality of Falls City, she doesn't have to -- but she's also clear-eyed about the fallacy that small towns are necessarily sweet, safe little places somehow less threatening than cities. Her vision of Brandon's Nebraska (the movie was shot in and around Dallas, as Peirce discovered that Brandon Teena's murder was still too hot an issue in Falls City) takes the measure of roadhouses where pals congregate at night, of highways that seem to stretch into nowhere, of dingy homes rendered bleakly cheerful by framed prints. Occasionally, when one of the characters is confessing a long-cherished dream, or making a hopeful assertion that the world really is a beautiful place, Peirce cuts to an eerily lit dream landscape that's almost David Lynch-like in its beauty, dotted with simple elements like water towers, naked trees and low ceilings of clouds. It's as if she and cinematographer Jim Denault (who also shot the starkly evocative 1996 "illtown") want to assert that there can be beauty in bleakness, and vice versa. The landscape around Brandon -- changeable at any given minute but mostly stuck somewhere between stark ugliness and naked splendor -- acts as a kind of mirror for the dueling elements of his own identity. The movie's surface is charged with tension; Hilary Swank's Brandon, with his gently curved cheekbones and smooth skin, is all about tension lurking just beneath the surface. There are times when Peirce's instincts as a storyteller fail her: The rape scene is so brutally realistic that it verges on being voyeuristic, and I don't think Peirce would have sacrificed any of its power by relying more on suggestion than on savage details. But wherever Peirce falters, her ensemble of actors effortlessly picks up the slack. Brendan Sexton (as Nissen) and particularly Peter Sarsgaard (as Lotter) pull off the difficult feat of making you feel some measure of sympathy for two men who are essentially cold-blooded killers. You're never ready to excuse their behavior, but it's impossible not to see them as flesh-and-blood characters instead of symbols. Their brutality toward Brandon, once they discover his secret, is obviously a product of confusion. He was someone they liked and trusted. With their obviously limited understanding of women (Lotter makes direct references to the stupidity of his estranged girlfriend, the mother of his young child), they just aren't equipped to handle Brandon's double betrayal. Not only had he duped them about such an integral component of his identity, he was also an official member of the gender they not-so-secretly despised. As Brandon, Hilary Swank gives a performance that's a continual revelation. With his cropped, farmer-boy haircut and a padded tube sock stuffed down his jeans, Swank's Brandon passes for a man easily enough. In preparation for the role, Swank spent time in public dressed as a man, and whether her choices are intuitive or intentional, they work as a marvelous subterfuge for a character who's striving (against the cruelty of nature, unfortunately) for acceptance. Brandon's swagger seems to spring straight from his joints. His full lips are always just a little cracked and chapped (few women willingly allow this to happen). You don't actually ever forget that you're watching a woman -- but that's exactly the point. Brandon conveys his uncertainty and vulnerability in small, subtle ways, in the way he avoids a direct glance, or smiles too broadly and eagerly when he's trying to make friends. Conventionally speaking, those are "womanly" screens often used to hide insecurity; it's heartrending to see Brandon succeed so completely in filling the role of a man -- only to give himself away to us in these tiny, barely perceptible ways. It's love at first sight when Brandon sees Chloë Sevigny's Lana, and that goes for us, too. Sevigny seems to end up being the heart of just about every movie she appears in (from the abominable "Kids" to the soggy "The Last Days of Disco"), and "Boys Don't Cry" is no exception. With her sleepy lizard eyes and her slow, secret smile, she at first seems a little inscrutable as Lana, a 19-year-old who sleep-works through the night shift in a spinach-packing factory, but who pours every essence of her being into her karaoke singing. Sevigny is the kind of actress who never gives it all away at once. We see her slowly becoming more and more comfortable with Brandon, and simultaneously, we warm up to her too. When the two of them find themselves in her darkened backyard, playing around with a Polaroid camera, we get the first clue that she really, really likes him. She swings away from him, glancing back slyly, her beguiling smile an unspoken invitation. As an actress, Sevigny's transformative power translates not just to people (we really start loving Brandon when she does) but also to things. Her Lana is a tough, townie girl in beat-up leather, but when she oohs and ahhs over a selection of cheap silver rings at a convenience-store checkout, you don't feel pity for the poor soul because that's all she can afford. You think, "Yes, one of those would look pretty on her." You want every good thing for her character, which makes it all the more wrenching to know that there's trouble ahead. When Brandon dies, "Boys Don't Cry" reaches an emotional intensity that's almost operatic. The saddest thing, though, is seeing Sevigny's Lana crumpled over his corpse -- the way she plays it, you know that when Brandon went, he took a part of her with him, too. salon.com | Oct. 11, 1999