To call The Way He Looks “slight” is by no means a pejorative. Its small ambitions and very compactness is why it succeeds, even to some degree exceeding expectations. Yet it has all the ingredients for a clichéd cocktail: part coming-out, part coming-of-age, part friendship. It sounds like everything out there. But by being exactly what it needs to be, without grandiosity or pretension, it allows its earnestness to be completely winning.
Leonardo (Ghilherme Lobo), a blind high school student, and his best friend Giovana (Tess Amorim) spend their days wondering if a great romance will befall them, if they’ll be swept up in someone’s arms and essentially live happily ever after. It is, to put it mildly, a teenage dream. When a new student named Gabriel (Fabio Audi) arrives, Leo and Gi’s friendship is shifts and Leo begins to experience romantic feelings for his new friend.
Though the relationship dynamic between Leo and Gi is fairly critical to the story, their subplot involving an evolutionary shift in how that dynamic works is fairly uninteresting. It isn’t a knock against the film, but rather that the film is less concerned with that part of the story and more concerned with the development between Leo and Gabriel. The threesome, as friends, act like a younger version of Heartbeats or Jules and Jim, cast with high-schoolers, and while a pleasant amount of attention and detail is put into giving texture to the friendship between Leo and Gi, the stakes don’t resonate as dramatically high. Perhaps ironically, the rift between the two seems as silly as listening to your actual friends in high school describe a similar situation. Even in its predictability, it’s not really annoying, but it doesn’t feel all that important. You care more about the growing relationship between Leo and Gabriel.
In a way, it’s a little surprising that this little arthouse picture doesn’t ask bigger questions about sexuality and sensuality, how the two are and aren’t intrinsically related to one another. But that The Way He Looks doesn’t do that is to its benefit. One gets the impression that exploring those larger philosophical themes would be a weak point for director Daniel Ribeiro, who seems to find strength in directing actors.
Leo possesses a rather boyish face, notable because it’s devoid of cynicism. He’s naïve, living under his mother’s suffocating protection. So watching him as he develops feelings for Gabriel is rather hypnotic and thrilling. Lobo’s face knows just when to contort to invoke specific emotions: mild jealousy, elation, ecstasy, hesitation. Particularly interesting is how his facial expressions and body language change when he’s with Gabriel. They grow stronger and shed the exterior nervousness that defines Leo’s character. That naked vulnerability on Leo’s part is compelling. It’s as if there’s a wall he needs to build to protect himself, mostly from bullies, but doesn’t know how to. The person who shows him how is the one for whom he lets jump over that wall.
There are moments of poetry in this film, capturing warmth and unfamiliar newness. As Gabriel explains what a solar eclipse is to Leo, there’s a palpable hint of longing and excitement. But the poetry, simple though it is, actually comes out in unexpected ways, in moments that are sadder and arguably more disappointing for Leo. It is perhaps more impressive that the film is so light and sweet and even sappy without veering into the saccharine. Maybe it’s because there’s a sincerity to the story. Tied into its small ambitions, the film doesn’t feel the need to say anything particularly new (nor does it), and instead settles into this normalized idea of queer romance.
The film is, ironically enough, remarkable for its unapologetic unremarkability, another comment that sounds like a pejorative but is quite the opposite. Its title not only speaks of the superficial, but also in what a gaze may mean. Leo asks Gi if he’s attractive, leading into if other people think he’s attractive. A gaze means both everything and nothing to Leo: his gaze is through the other senses, the attentiveness of what he touches, hears, smells, and tastes. But to be gazed at is his implied desire. It’s an act of validation. Though Leo speaks at the beginning of the film of his desire to kiss someone, it’s the thing that comes before that may matter most: to have someone look at you with affection and longing.
The Way He Looks’ subject matter is intangible, surely recalling a line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind! Therefore, is winged Cupid blind?” In the end, it’s hard to pinpoint why Ribeiro’s film is so lovely. It’s delicate without being frail, honeyed without its clichés being a hindrance, warm without being alienating. The film takes pleasure in the simplest moments. And sometimes that’s all you can ask for.