The Way He Looks
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
Love is blind. And all the more so for Leo (Ghilherme Lobo), a São Paulo teenager with not much going on besides his friendship with childhood besty Giovana (Tess Amorim), overbearingly protective parents and idle dreams of an exchange program, but who gradually falls for the new boy in school, Gabriel (Fabio Audi). Bullied, kept a watchful eye over by his parents and set apart from all the playground flirtations and bike-shed kisses of his classmates, Leo is discovering himself – trying out new experiences like dancing and the cinema, fighting the domestic battle for independence and finding his first great love. But as the film progresses, an intriguing central premise emerges – what is sexuality if you’re blind? And while Leo seems to have his coming-out rather easy – his love is returned by his new best friend and the bullies are silenced with a display of defiant handholding – Daniel Ribeiro’s The Way He Looks is nevertheless a gently intimate portrait of a boy becoming a man.
The Way He Looks is showing on Oct 9th & 10th at the 58th BFI London Film Festival
