The Film Reports

2 stars

Drama, Romance

One of the few seemingly good films in the Netflix LGBT category, The Way He Looks is a Brazilian film and follows a teenage boy, Leonardo (Ghilherme Lobo), who is blind. The main cast also includes his parents who are having trouble coming to terms with the fact that their son is growing up and wants more independence. Leo also spends much of the movie with his friends, Giovana (Tess Amorim) and of course, the love interest, Gabriel (Fabio Audi).

I did start watching with the idea that it would be a high school romantic drama like Get Real (1998). It’s not. While there were scenes that did fit that, the majority of the film seems to be unable to see the two boys as having romantic feelings for each other. I felt as though they were either shown to be platonic or overly sexual. It’s not very romantic and the pacing definitely felt strange.

Of course, having a gay romance comes with its own set of potential issues, which again, they did show but in a disjointed way. Leonardo is shown to be taunted by other boys in his school over and over and this is never dealt with. When there is more concrete evidence that Leo is gay, like they’ve been accusing him of, they are rendered speechless and Leo and Gabriel walk off into the sunshine. It’s not realistic, and I would argue that its a horrible way to represent the bullying LGBT people experience and bullying in general.

So yes, I was very disappointed with the fact that I had expected a good LGBT film and this film didn’t deliver. However, I thought the treatment of Leonardo’s disability was dealt with quite well. This was mostly in the form of the ongoing argument between Leo and his parents with the issue of his independence but also in the little details, like when Gabriel forgets to tell Leo about a step in their path. Lobo was best in the scenes with the parents, as the rightfully pissed-off Leo and this coincided with when the film was at its best.

In summary, the gay part was bad, the disability part was good. Unfortunately, it’s not good enough to warrant me wanting to watch this again, and there are probably (definitely) other films that deal with these two aspects much better.

Watch it: don’t. But if you really want to – on a lazy day, in between cleaning your room and scrolling through instagram and twitter.