Is the way he looks a good movie?

Daniel Ribeiro’s The Way He Looks dedicates itself not to closed-ended statements regarding blossoming sexuality, but rather the touches, smells, and glances that begin to constitute one’s sensual fortification during adolescence. By relegating his scope to the anxieties of Leo (Ghilherme Lobo), a blind teenager caught between the throes of parental protection and desire for sexual autonomy and identity, Ribeiro places Leo’s gaze (or literal lack thereof) as something that must be attained through sensation, which roots itself in social interaction. These engagements form through Gi (Tess Amorim), Leo’s BFF, who’s equally motivated by a search for her first romantic relationship, and Gabriel (Fabio Audi), a new student who comes to be the Jules to Leo’s Jim, with Gi initially the girl of each boy’s innocuous affections.

Ribeiro, however, displays little intent to simply recast François Truffaut’s love-triangle dynamics into the confines of school-daze clichés beyond these initial narrative similarities. He’s steadily less concerned with offering a scenario for simplistic resolution than deemphasizing the film’s conventional plot points as a means to reorient Leo’s bodily exploration. Ribeiro lingers within a scene of Leo in the shower, as he gently kisses the steamy glass pane, letting his lips delicately touch the surface. When Gabriel takes Leo to the movies, Ribeiro frames Gabriel’s mouth in close-up as he dictates narrative events, with Leo shuddering at the movie’s bracing sound effects. It’s a key point in the film’s consistently revisionist trajectory, which calls attention to the impossibility of Leo’s gaze, since the shot of Gabriel’s mouth is, spatially speaking, what would typically represent a reverse shot.

What progressively mounts tension isn’t a question of hook-ups and melodramatic epiphanies, but the film’s understanding of Leo’s gradually realized homosexuality as being inextricable from its central metaphor of compromised vision. However, Ribeiro isn’t merely correlating blindness with homosexual absence, since Gabriel, who possesses the capacity for sight, is given the film’s best scene, as he scans Leo’s naked body while showering. The scene recalls Leo’s mimed shower kiss, but this time the situation is live. Gabriel is conflicted about his inclinations, but Ribeiro makes clear that these hesitations come purely from the vantage point of a privileged gaze, such that without Leo’s returned, affectionate look, Gabriel acknowledges his own voyeur status.

As Gi gradually recedes from the film’s immediate concerns, The Way He Looks confronts the dynamic implications of its title head-on. The film is concerned with receiving the gaze as an object of desire, but also how one looks. In this regard, Ribeiro wisely avoids the literalness of a film like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by rooting his visual interrogations into the vulnerabilities of his characters, not formal tics. Moreover, once Leo and Gabriel actualize their desire, there are stakes in a kiss that transcend simply an entrance for each of the boys into the more splendid pangs of their sexually entwined selves. Ribeiro lingers once again on the interaction, with Leo’s touch of Gabriel’s lips as a mode of vision that liberates Leo’s sexuality. Instead of talking, as Leo has done for the film’s duration, he’s acting on his desire. When Leo finally cups Gabriel’s hand outside the school, to the dismay of an on-looking, perpetual bully, it’s Ribeiro’s final, searing gesture of a demand for cinematic-as-social compassion.

Score: 

Cast: Ghilherme Lobo, Fabio Audi, Tess Amorim, Selma Egrei, Eucir de Souza  Director: Daniel Ribiero  Screenwriter: Daniel Ribiero  Distributor: Strand Releasing  Running Time: 95 min  Rating: NR  Year: 2014  Buy: Video

‘“Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”’ ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Much like ‘The Little Prince’, you will not find the film ‘The Way He Looks’ featuring anytime soon in any Top 10 lists of the year or of all time.

It is not a critics’ darling. It doesn’t capture the zeitgeist and it certainly does not provide any groundbreaking insight about the times we live in. It is not a ‘Catcher in the rye’ nor a ‘In Search of Lost Time’. But it is a ‘The Little Prince’, concocted with the same deceptive simplicity and irresistible understated charm. And just as likely a target for the same misanthropic, highbrow bile as the latter is.

Its plot, an age-old story of teenage girl/boy/otherwise meets teenage girl/boy/otherwise. Its magic, telling it with inescapable charm and simplicity.

Seemingly reducing the complexity of the human condition to its most clichéd, over-simplistic denominator, what in reality this film does is finding the common humanity in all of us and bridging the gap by conveying it in a universally accessible language, that of emotions, sensations and of fewer words as possible; blasphemy for the supposedly more sophisticated masses.

The film is awkward, silly at times, and it revels in it. It comes to life when depicting with disarming sincerity and earnestness such moments of embarrassing unease. And embarrassing unease is the ultimate definition of being a teenager, if there has ever been any.

Sex hasn’t happened yet. Life hasn’t happened yet. You are discovering who you are, how your body responds to stimulus, which stimulus it prefers and how. You have never chartered these waters before, you have no clue what to expect and feel completely out of your depth. You are clumsy, all that you do and say is pathetic and all that surrounds and happens to you is silly and painfully awkward. And yet, you have never felt so alive.

A few babyish kisses in a foggy shower mirror. One fully clothed masturbation scene, angle wide focused on the eyes, the lips, the face, the touch and the thrill of discovering fantasy and pleasure. One lips-only hushed kiss. One fleeting glance at your loved one’s line of beauty. One climatic final embrace. The thrilling delight of speeding away down your street in your bike, holding the one you love tight, with a joyful abandonment that only youth and inexperience allows.

Let’s face it: Disney nowadays manages to squeeze in more action than this. And yet, ‘The Way He Looks’ stands tall as one of the most sensual pictures ever made. Nothing you see will arouse you. Nothing is overt, crass or vulgar. Its sensuality derives not from what you see but from what you experience. With its disarming sincerity and earnestness, the film pulls you in; you don’t observe as much as you experience.

Some films will provide you with the comic relief needed to manage the drudgeries of daily life and prevent you from falling down the perilous pitfalls you find along the way. Other films will provide you with a safe haven to let it all out, anger and sadness alike, by serving as a metaphor and ultimate validation of all the sorrows in your life.

But then there are films that by virtue of their artistry will fill you with a pervasive sense that irrespective of the reality that you are facing, you will ultimately prevail in some form or the other and will still be able to somehow take a small measure of joy from what surrounds you. Such films will not necessarily give you profound insights about life and your existence, nor will they open your eyes to new ways of being and doing, nor will they invariably make you cry or laugh out loud. Instead, they will fill you with an unbridled, understated elation and an inescapable sensation of being at peace with life passing mercilessly by and you somehow still managing to take some pleasurable bits of it for your enjoyment. They will make it OK to be OK with life as is and its imperfections.

Nothing in this film feels false or formulaic, owing much to one of the most naturalistic and sincere pieces of acting to ever grace the screen, curtsy of its 3 main leads, Ghilherme Lobo, Fabio Audi and Tess Amorim. You will find it silly and unsophisticated. You will find it unremarkable and understated. And you also will feel hijacked by expectancy, as you see sincere love unfolding before your eyes. You will end up elated and uplifted. You will want to clap at the end and will be left feeling giddy for weeks to come. You will be a willing prisoner of its charm.

Just don’t forget to leave your misanthropic self behind when entering the screening room; you can always get back to it later. Give it a break.

That fox was on to something after all...

Oh and I lie. ‘The Way He Looks’ did indeed feature in Top 10 films of 2014’s lists. Joshua Bote, Terence Johnson, you legends.

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