Don’t Call Me Son is quietly virtuous in its simplicity. It is the story of a teenage boy, Pierre, whose identity, like that of most teenagers, seems both a deep source of personal anxiety and personal pride.
He paints his fingernails and wears his hair long, he dances with other young men and with other young women; the first scene of the film concludes with him making love to a girl in the bathroom of a party, and the slowly camera drifts lower and lower, to eventually rest on Pierre’s underwear – he is wearing a thong.
In the midst of this exploration of his own gendered identity – which there is refreshingly little dialogue discussing – Pierre finds out that both his sister and he were stolen at birth by their mother, who seems to keep a happy, if impoverished, home. The mother is taken away in handcuffs and the children are introduced to their real parents in a series of excruciatingly uncomfortable scenes which are never allowed to linger long enough as to become unnecessary; the tension is clear from the first beat.
If this sounds like quite the revelation, it is. But Don’t Call Me Son seems committed to presenting Pierre’s story with as much calm, patient observation as possible. The almost entirely handheld camera lingers on relaxed looks and small details of behavior, and even in moments of heightened conflict we see, mostly, the faces of those who are not involved. This casualness of depiction can seem sometimes put-on, or even cruel in its apathy – but what is being a teenager if not practicing a sort of feigned casualness, even as the world inside you screams with chaos?
In introducing Pierre as an androgynous teenager and the letting the actual plot focus almost entirely on his interaction with a new family in a new, big, art-filled house, the films sets up a trifecta of effective takes on teenage identity and on the blend of uncertainty and necessity that accompanies it. Family, class, and gender are all presented as interrelated aspects of the thing we call the self, and this self is presented as both excruciatingly complicated and deeply important. The movie is about identity of all kinds. In this, it presents a small victory for stories of gender-fluidity – no one, after all, escapes having to grapple with who they are, and Don’t Call Me Son succeeds in being both extraordinarily specific and instantly recognizable to anyone who’s been a teenager.
Anna Muylaert – a Brazilian director whose previous outing, The Second Mother, garnered her modest international attention – has here a small (it runs a concise yet unrushed 82 minutes) and necessary film, presented with modesty and care. What else does a skinny boy in the throes of young-adulthood need?
DON’T CALL ME SON will have a 2-week engagement November 2 – 15 at Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St. (west of 6th Ave.), with screenings daily at 12:30, 2:20, 4:15, 6:10, 8:00, and 9:50.
-Nick Vincennes
