"Boys Don't Cry"

There are times when Peirce's instincts as a storyteller fail her: The rape scene is so brutally realistic that it verges on being voyeuristic, and I don't think Peirce would have sacrificed any of its power by relying more on suggestion than on savage details. But wherever Peirce falters, her ensemble of actors effortlessly picks up the slack. Brendan Sexton (as Nissen) and particularly Peter Sarsgaard (as Lotter) pull off the difficult feat of making you feel some measure of sympathy for two men who are essentially cold-blooded killers. You're never ready to excuse their behavior, but it's impossible not to see them as flesh-and-blood characters instead of symbols. Their brutality toward Brandon, once they discover his secret, is obviously a product of confusion. He was someone they liked and trusted. With their obviously limited understanding of women (Lotter makes direct references to the stupidity of his estranged girlfriend, the mother of his young child), they just aren't equipped to handle Brandon's double betrayal. Not only had he duped them about such an integral component of his identity, he was also an official member of the gender they not-so-secretly despised.

As Brandon, Hilary Swank gives a performance that's a continual revelation. With his cropped, farmer-boy haircut and a padded tube sock stuffed down his jeans, Swank's Brandon passes for a man easily enough. In preparation for the role, Swank spent time in public dressed as a man, and whether her choices are intuitive or intentional, they work as a marvelous subterfuge for a character who's striving (against the cruelty of nature, unfortunately) for acceptance. Brandon's swagger seems to spring straight from his joints. His full lips are always just a little cracked and chapped (few women willingly allow this to happen). You don't actually ever forget that you're watching a woman -- but that's exactly the point. Brandon conveys his uncertainty and vulnerability in small, subtle ways, in the way he avoids a direct glance, or smiles too broadly and eagerly when he's trying to make friends. Conventionally speaking, those are "womanly" screens often used to hide insecurity; it's heartrending to see Brandon succeed so completely in filling the role of a man -- only to give himself away to us in these tiny, barely perceptible ways.

It's love at first sight when Brandon sees Chloë Sevigny's Lana, and that goes for us, too. Sevigny seems to end up being the heart of just about every movie she appears in (from the abominable "Kids" to the soggy "The Last Days of Disco"), and "Boys Don't Cry" is no exception. With her sleepy lizard eyes and her slow, secret smile, she at first seems a little inscrutable as Lana, a 19-year-old who sleep-works through the night shift in a spinach-packing factory, but who pours every essence of her being into her karaoke singing. Sevigny is the kind of actress who never gives it all away at once. We see her slowly becoming more and more comfortable with Brandon, and simultaneously, we warm up to her too. When the two of them find themselves in her darkened backyard, playing around with a Polaroid camera, we get the first clue that she really, really likes him. She swings away from him, glancing back slyly, her beguiling smile an unspoken invitation.

As an actress, Sevigny's transformative power translates not just to people (we really start loving Brandon when she does) but also to things. Her Lana is a tough, townie girl in beat-up leather, but when she oohs and ahhs over a selection of cheap silver rings at a convenience-store checkout, you don't feel pity for the poor soul because that's all she can afford. You think, "Yes, one of those would look pretty on her." You want every good thing for her character, which makes it all the more wrenching to know that there's trouble ahead. When Brandon dies, "Boys Don't Cry" reaches an emotional intensity that's almost operatic. The saddest thing, though, is seeing Sevigny's Lana crumpled over his corpse -- the way she plays it, you know that when Brandon went, he took a part of her with him, too.

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