Using his senses

After my post yesterday I went out to a movie. It is one with rave reviews, but the only time I could see it during it's weeklong run was 9:45 on a Friday night. The movie is The Way He Looks and was shown at Cinema Detroit. I've been at this cinema once before. It's in an old elementary school and is minimal operation, but it shows movies not shown anywhere else in the area. I'm still puzzled by the pool table in the boys room.

Alas, there was a glitch last night. The movie is from Brazil, so is in Portuguese. When it started the subtitles weren't showing and it took a couple minutes for the staff to catch on. Then it took 25 minutes of fussing over the equipment and another false start before the small audience could watch and understand. The subtitles were finally in place, though we also got a frame counter on the screen as well. When the movie was over (at midnight) the owner gave us passes for a future show.

The story is about Leonardo and his friend Giovana. They are in high school. Some of their classmates make fun of Leo because he is blind. He uses a noisy braille typewriter in class, appears to stare straight ahead, and needs Giovana to walk him home. His parents are overly protective to the point he considers a foreign exchange program to get out from under them.

Then Gabriel joins the class. Soon Giovana feels ignored and it takes a while to sort through all that, with lots of misunderstanding along the way. So what in all that teenage angst caught my attention? The story explores (at least a little bit) the idea of sexual attraction in the blind. If Leo can't see and be aroused by the human form how does he discover he is gay?

The actor who played Leo did such a convincing job playing blind that I wondered if they found a blind actor. I don't know the answer to that. Though I thought the other aspects of the story were a bit lightweight, Brazil has nominated the film as their submission for best foreign film Oscar.