The Way He Looks Review

There might not be anything I love more than a movie that captures the infinite complexity of first love well.  It's a tricky thing to do.  It's easy to fall into cliche, or to have the young lovers fall quickly, surely, completely in love.  The fact of the matter is that falling in love is rarely a matter of a single trip: it's a long, bumbling stumble along a tightrope that offers support to resistance but can't possibly hold the weight of a starry-eyed romantic for long.

The Way He Looks, Daniel Ribeiro's feature debut and Brazil's Oscar submission this year, gets it exactly right.  It doesn't resort to splashy drama or tragic turns.  It's actually something like Boyhood in that it never feels the need to go too far.  Ribeiro recognizes that the highs and lows come later, once a relationship has properly started and had time to develop growing pains.  The tentative romance between Leonardo (Ghilherme Lobo) and Gabriel (Fabio Audi) simmers, each step forward matched by a reactionary step back, all hesitation and aching.  The Way He Looks made me ache.

Ribeiro's film isn't only set apart by its subtlety, but also by its subject matter.  Leonardo is blind, the subject of ridicule by most of the fellow students at his school.  He yearns for greater independence, wondering if it's possible to study abroad and bristling at his parents' constant hovering.  His sense of self is at stake, and the battle for identity and freedom becomes all the more complicated by the arrival of Gabriel, who quickly falls in with Leonardo and his best friend, Giovana (Tess Amorim).  Giovana, like all the other girls in school, falls for the dashing new student, even as he becomes an unknowing wedge between her and Leonardo.

What follows is a beautiful study in youthful longing.  Were one to know nothing going into The Way He Looks, the turn into queer territory might come as a surprise.  Ribeiro's script is all nuance and candor.  His characters are so normal, their conversations so banal, their schedules so routine.  The magic comes in the moments of forgetting, and what results.  As a new friend, Gabriel is prone to ask Leonardo if he's seen an internet video or wants to go to a movie.  These slip-ups plant the seeds of friendship, and more, as Gabriel whispers to Leonardo about what's happening on the big screen, or guides Leonardo's hands over rocks to explain the wonder of an eclipse.  Leonardo experiences love at first touch, first smell, first taste; what makes him different makes him singular, the high school student who isn't drawn by what he sees, but by everything else.  That Lobo isn't actually blind came as a shock to me, so perfect is his performance.  Every movement is true, every reaction flawless; it's a stunning turn.

As a queer film, The Way He Looks is close to revelatory.  It's so much tamer than many of its ilk, the romantic goals more like WALL-E's than any gay protagonist that comes to mind.  And by removing the visual attraction (again, on Leonardo's part), the film becomes a subtle reprimand of a community that is prone to snap judgments and hung up on appearances.  There are enough bullies lurking without; why let that hatred cause internal discord?  Though, it must be said, both of the lead actors are extremely cute.  But the message still comes through, especially when Leonardo asks Giovana if she thinks people find him attractive; even he feels the pressure of being looked at.

High school is often remembered as a terrible time, full of cliques and awkwardness and every other painful aspect of growing up.  And those are present in The Way He Looks.  This isn't a sanitized depiction of that time of one's life, but neither is it hyperbolized.  And in the midst of the swirling storm of name-calling and cruel pranks, Ribeiro finds the soothing respite of falling in love, and lets his characters rest there, basking and writhing in the pangs and uncertainties of becoming more themselves.  Though I can't say I've ever been in love with a person, I have been in love with movies, sometimes briefly and passionately, other times for years, perhaps forever.  I am madly, achingly, desperately in love with The Way He Looks, and hopeful that one day I'll find my Gabriel or Leonardo.