Chloe Sevigny received her only Oscar nomination to date for her performance as Lana Tisdel in Boys Don't Cry.
Boys Don't Cry is an extremely harrowing and powerful movie about the rape and murder of a young trans man in the early 1990s. It's a truly fantastic movie that lingers in your mind even long after you've seen the movie, helped greatly by Kimberly Pierce's terrific direction that is raw and delicate in equal parts. Each of the supporting roles is played to perfection, with Peter Sarsgaard being particularly effective. Some people complain about the fact that may not be particularly accurate but I personally don't care about it because the emotional impact of the movie makes up for it completely.
In her first scenes in the movie, Chloe Sevigny establishes Lana as a not particularly refined, a bit uncouth girl: I guess that this makes understandable why the real Lana Tisdel described Sevigny's Lana as "lazy and white trash" but I strongly disagree with that. Sevigny portrays perfectly this superficial aspect of Lana's personality but she doesn't make an overbearing or dominating side of her performance - just a small part of Lana's character. And trashy would be the last adjective I would use to describe Lana as presented in the movie, because she's far from it. Sevigny shows that under Lana's appearence lies a smart and tender personality: there is a spark and an intelligence in her portrayal that shows Lana's true potential and that's why over the movie she makes you hope that she'll make it to Menphis where she could finally show what she truly is worth and live the life she truly wants. Chloe Sevigny also manages to project a rough yet luminous charm in her performance: from her first scene in which she sings at the karaoke, she makes Lana a magnetic and captivating presence and Brandon's attraction towards her never feels odd and unconvincing.
Her chemistry with Hilary Swank is key to the success of the movie, and it's indeed fantastic: they work so beautifully together and they make for an incredibly believable couple. Sevigny never tries to steal the spotlight from Swank's showier performance but she's never less effective than her and her subtlety and delicacy in handling Lana's feelings is something truly remarkable. In the beginning of the movie, she shows that Lana is bored by her life in Falls City and feels trapped and limited: when she meets Brandon and falls in love with him, Sevigny just glows on screen as she portrays Lana's newfound enjoyement and love for life. The scene in which Lana and Brandon plan to move to Menphis is a fantastic movie because both actresses show the intense love and sincere affection the two characters feel for each other, and Sevigny is also great in the scene in which, after Brandon tells her he's an ermaphrodite, Lana reaffirms her love for Brandon anyway. Their genuine happiness in those moments make the third act of the movie even more devastating.
As I mentioned in the beginning of the movie, I find this movie extremely powerful and moving and Chloe Sevigny's performance has a lot to do with that. Particularly the scene in which Tom and John forces Brandon to undress and show his female genitals and then try to make Lana look is an amazing for Sevigny: the way she shields her eyes and tries to look away is simply devastating and her line delivering of "Leave him alone!" is simply chilling to the bone. But one of her greatest moments in the movie is when she meets Brandon after he's been raped: Sevigny shows a wide range of emotions in that scene, going from being heartbroken, to trying to understand until finally accepting Brandon for what he is, and she nails all of them. Again, the actresses' amazing chemistry makes the scene even more powerful and it's just extremely moving to see those two characters finding a little moment of solace and tenderness within the tragedy. And in the murder scene Sevigny couldn't be more fantastic - again, her line-delivery couldn't be more perfect: her shouting of "Candace!" or her screaming in anguish after the killing is unforgettable, and her facial expression as she looks at Brandon in the eyes for the last time is heartbreaking. And it's thanks to her performance that the ending of the movie, with that final smile, feels so emotionally powerful and works so well as it does.
This is a truly brilliant performance from Chloe Sevigny who ends up being just as unforgettable as Hilary Swank, if not even better. Lana is the beating heart of Boys Don't Cry, and that's thanks to Sevigny's complex, vivid and poignant turn. It's a performance that, even after several rewatches, remains just as devastating and heartbreaking as it was the first time I saw it.
5/5
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