The teenage love story “The Way He Looks” isn’t heavy. Despite its theme of coming out (a transition made more difficult by adolescent bullying), it has the breezy feel of a smart, alternative pop song — specifically, Belle and Sebastian’s “There’s Too Much Love,” which is featured several times in the film, becoming its touchstone.
And yet the tale, from Brazilian writer-director Daniel Ribeiro, is told with such tenderness, such intelligence and such aching honesty that it takes on the weight of something far more significant than puppy love. Like its subject, first kisses and best friends, it’s hard to forget.
The main character Leo (Ghilherme Lobo) is a blind boy who spends nearly all of his free time with his childhood friend Giovana (Tess Amorim), a girl who — you can tell from the way she looks at him, though he can’t — wishes they were more than friends. When Gabriel (Fabio Audi), a cute new boy, enrolls at their school, his almost immediate connection with Leo threatens to undermine Giovana and Leo’s long-standing relationship.
And that’s pretty much it.
Gabriel’s friendship with another classmate, the flirtatious Karina (Isabela Guasco), adds a slight wrinkle to the plot — does Gabriel reciprocate Leo’s growing affections? — but otherwise the story is as straightforward as they come.
Nevertheless, Ribeiro manages to wring a lot of juice from these dry developments, and from Leo’s evolving home life. Chafing under the helicopter parenting of his well-meaning mother and father (Lúcia Romano and Eucir de Souza), Leo starts seeking independence in ways large and small.
Several scenes feature discussions between Leo and his folks about his proposed participation in a foreign-exchange program. They disapprove, mostly out of fears for his safety; Leo doesn’t understand why they think he can’t take care of himself. And yet their son also happily accepts help shaving from his father.
That scene is one of the slightest, yet also one of the sweetest and most genuine in the film. Ribeiro has an uncanny eye for the telling emotional gesture, and “The Way He Looks” is full of them. Its young star, who is not actually blind, delivers a soulful, entirely natural and convincing performance, as do Amorim and Audi. This is some of the most accessible, touching and direct acting I have seen all year, in any film.
What Ribeiro evokes from his cast is a sense of awakening life. You certainly feel it from the triad at the center of the film, but it’s also there in every other character: Leo’s parents; his patient grandmother (Selma Egrei); his impatient teacher (Naruna Costa); even Leo’s homophobic classmate Fabio (Pedro Carvalho), who receives, at the end of the movie, not a comeuppance, but a kind of education.
The movie offers a lesson, too: We are all — young and old, the worst and the best of us — still capable of blossoming.
Unrated. Contains some obscenity, brief sensuality and nudity. In Portuguese with subtitles. 96 minutes.
