The Way He Looks (2014)

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Almost all of us gay guys love this movie. It's sweet without treacle, and sensitive without being patronizing.I think it resonates with us mostly because Leo--blind AND gay--represents the isolation many of us felt when we began hoping for a love connection. When you're young and gay and haven't yet worked up the courage to tell anyone, the isolation can be overwhelming. You don't know who is or isn't like you, you can only speculate. And you can only speculate in an oblique, round-about way lest you inadvertently reveal too much about yourself. Keen observation seems an essential skill.In this movie, poor Leo is already isolated because of his disability. And even though he has learned to navigate the physical world with confidence, the world of emotional connections is another thing altogether.So much of the way we figure things out is visually. Surreptitious glances or prolonged eye contact become clues to help us find our way. So our hearts ache for Leo who has to figure all this out from conversations or third-hand information. He even has to ask his best friend how she rates his appearance; he has no other way to find out if he's considered attractive. Can you imagine not checking your appearance in the mirror before you leave the house? Checking and re-checking? This is why we love this movie. Coming out is hard enough for we the sighted, and little Leo manages it in a world of total darkness. In so doing he wins our respect AND our love.

From time to time, a coming-of-age film comes across to paint the already vivid LGBT cinema with new colors. The ones THE WAY HE LOOKS has are subtle, tender, and sweet, but bold enough to leave an indelible imprint.Leonardo (Ghillerme Lobo) is a blind teenager coping up with the changes brought to him by adolescence. He struggles to find independence from his overprotective parents, and he's longing for acceptance from everyone who would rather mock him for his disability. He's well adjusted with all the mess , but his equally super-protective bestfriend, Giovanna, never leaves his side. Albeit anomalous, everything happening—all those bullying, the parents who would not want to miss a single moment without their eyes on him—comes across to Leonardo as essential pains of growing up, and he recognizes the need to go through all of them. Until the handsome new boy, Gabriel (Fabio Audi) , arrives.The movie tries to take a single road as much as it can, keeping its track straight, and all its elements in tack, throughout its route. It grows as it goes, but it never entangles itself with the complications of inserting unnecessary expositories. In what could be seen as its most complicated angle (yet easily perceptible), the movie sheds light on an unlikely love triangle. Giovanna has deep feelings for Leonardo, and she keeps sending hints of her admiration to him, but he couldn't quite decipher them. But Leonardo is in love with Gabriel, and she also finds the new guy attractive. This strike as an immediate complication, but the characters and narrative themselves have ways to easily shrug it off.Yet THE WAY HE LOOKS biggest concern isn't this love triangle. More to it is Leonardo's journey to manhood, his escape from the confines of the world he lives in. This mirrors a universal subject that speaks for all ages, and this is where the movie is most piercingly capable. The movie's tone complements the easygoing nature of Leonardo, and the simplistic approach of the story. It doesn't feed to much on the disasters its subjects, that its conflict mainly comes from Leo's little revolts, and Giovanna's ignoring him when she feels Gabriel has already took her place in Leo's life. These maybe are small, but they affect with utmost warmth and sincerity they would send you crippling inside. In one of its sweetest moments, Gabriel introduces the music he likes to Leonardo, whose musical taste is limited only to the classicals. This gives way to a scene where Gabriel has made the often shy Leo, dance, and while Gabriel might haven't realized it, such moment awaken something inside Leo. Suddenly he is in love. This is only one of countless small moments that makes watching this movie truly emotional. All across, sprawls sheer heartwarming scenes that tug at the heartstrings, like when Gabriel took Leo in the cinema while he narrates what's happening on screen, and when he suddenly kisses Leo, when he thinks no one would let him kiss anyone.Daniel Ribeiro, the director and writer of the film, surely knows well his subject. He has a keen eye on details and has hands to craft them into beautiful pieces of a bigger picture, resulting to a gentle yet affecting storyline. Sweet and compassionate, THE WAY HE LOOKS leaves a cathartic sense of personal liberation, making it one of the most sensible entries to its genre, in a long while. 8/10 The movie is Brazil's entry to the 87th Annual Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.

The movie has a familiar topic as seen in many recent LGBT movies, thanks to promotion campaigns for LGBT people and the more open social viewpoint. Thus, throughout the movie, people will experience a gentle feeling about life. No scandals, no climax, and just a lovely ending.Stories about student's love often go this way. A new classmate of a boy falls in love with him, and they eventually get together. But it doesn't really mean that you only need to watch some beginning and some ending minutes.The Way He Looks is more special because Leo is a juvenile blind boy who intensely seeks independence to prove that he's not inferior to those normal boys out there. Fate brings Gabriel close to him. No need for special events, just some daily activities at school, and they start to feel for each other. People will enjoy watching Gabriel accompanying his cute friend all the time, to find out that there are chances for them to express their feelings but nothing has been made.The last scene when the boys stay together in Leo's room is so romantic. As mentioned, there are no special things put into the movie, but people will still love the way Gabriel asks Leo, the way Leo touches Gabriel's face and kisses him, the way the boys hug each other, and even their sounds of breathing. No sexual feelings, just a very pure sense of young love.Neither of the boys are very handsome; however, their actions are extremely effective. They express no feminine behaviors, but people can still feel something distinguishable between the boys' roles in their relationship. The director has been so delicate that he deeply understands which kind of spices to mix into the film.The remained feeling after the movie is a lightly impressive happiness. People will remember vaguely that this love is formed by a friendship, and the boys have overcome some small issues to reach to each other. They will love the boys' contribution to each other. Leo is blind, but his heart and his love are so bright.

It's a nice movie for teenagers, but it is packed with clichés. The first warning sign for me was that Gabriel only listened classic music and then you have "Spiegel im Spiegel". I don't know if that song is more over-used than "Breathe me" by Sia, but it certainly feels like it. Then we have the guys at school. Come on! We've seen them so many times before and nowadays of course youth can be cruel but with Gabriel it wouldn't be as explicit as it is here to mark them as "the bad guys". It would make more sense if it were the microagressions that made him feel weird and out of place, after all he wants to be treated like everybody else and fly alone. I didn't suffer with the movie but I don't think there was enough material for it to be more than a short film.