The Way He Looks is a low-key but charming and ultimately uplifting Brazilian film about a love triangle between three teenagers. It is the first feature-length film by the young Brazilian filmmaker Daniel Ribeiro and is based on his 2010 short film Eu Não Quero Voltar Sozinho with exactly the same three lead characters, and actors, albeit four years younger.
Set in a middle class suburb of São Paolo, it tells the story of Leonardo, who has been blind since birth, and who discovers his sexuality with the arrival at his school of new boy Gabriel. Meanwhile, his best friend Giovana, who has secretly had feelings for Leonardo begins to feel increasingly sidelined. If all this sounds slight, it’s because it is, but in the film’s simplicity and sincerity lies its strength.
The film’s treatment of both blindness and sexual preference is refreshingly straightforward, seamlessly avoiding the sentimental pitfalls and polemic of either theme, thereby forcing the audience to see them as a matter of course and not the inherent subject of drama.
Although it is technically a gay themed film, it avoids the usual territory of desire, struggle and rejection. If anything, it is Leonard’s conflict with his overprotective parents that provides the film with much of its drama.
The developing emotional connection between the two boys is subtly and innocently portrayed. As a sightless person, Leonardo quite often relies on the physical guidance of first Giovana and then Gabriel to accompany him both to and from school, and it is this physical contact that spills into the realms of sexual desire. That said there is a protracted shower scene, that takes place during a school trip, which struck a contrived and stereotypical note which could have been avoided.
The film naturally explores the interesting question of the source of desire when it is not fed by sight, and how that physical contact, on which Leonardo seems to depend, becomes charged with sexual longing.
With naturalistic and endearing performances from the three young (and consequently inexperienced) leads (Ghilhermo Lobo as Leonardo, Tess Amorim as Giovana and Fabio Audi as Gabriel) and a lightness of touch by the director, and indeed the intimate and pastel like strokes of the cinematography by Pierre De Kerchove The Way He Looks left me feeling uplifted. It effortlessly strikes a balance between a lighthearted and a more serious approach, making a virtue of its simplicity, but no less poignant and thought provoking for doing so.
The Way He Looks is released in cinemas 24th October 2014.
Director: Daniel Ribeiro
Writer: Daniel Ribeiro
Stars: Gilherme Lobo, Fabio Audi, Tess Amorim, Lucia Romano, Eucir de Souza, Selma Egrei, Isabela Guasco, Julio Machado, Naruna Costa, Victor Filgueiras
Runtime: 95 min
Country: Brazil
Film Rating: 
