Herald rating: * * * *
Running time: 114 mins
In stores: Today
Review: Ewan McDonald
Teena Brandon is a lonely girl who would rather be a boy. One day she gets a short haircut, sticks a sock down her jeans and goes into a bar to try her luck. By the time
she leaves her home town of Lincoln, Nebraska, and moves to Falls City in 1993, he has become Brandon Teena.
Brandon (Hilary Swank) is a nice guy and soon he and Lana (Chloe Sevigny) are an item. For Lana, Brandon is a world from local men like John (Peter Sarsgaard) and Tom (Brendan Sexton) who hang out at the trailer park where she lives, the gas stations, the country bars. It can't have a happy ending, and it doesn't.
Brandon was raped and, after the authorities ignored the complaint, murdered a few days later. You already know who did it.
This is a true story (a 1999 documentary, The Brandon Teena Story, has played in film festivals here) so I'm not giving anything away by telling you the ending. For the strength of this movie lies in its telling; its feel for its characters; the inexorable unfolding of an infinitely sad story; the performances from Swank and Sevigny, strong and tender and lonely and dignified in the middle of a rat's nest.
Swank won the Best Actress Oscar for this role earlier in the year. No wonder.
