Kimberly Peirce's strength is the care she takes with actors and the people they play. We recommend Boys Don't Cry for its convincing romance, though the surrounding community needs more of that attention.
Fi1m perspective
In Boys Don't Cry (1999), Brandon and Lana's romance gets enough attention for us to care about what they hope for together. That is where Kimberly Peirce's direction is most persuasive: she makes their closeness convincing before allowing the threat of violence to dominate. Hilary Swank and Chloë Sevigny give the film its tenderness, helped by a screenplay from Peirce and Andy Bienen that keeps Brandon's wish to be loved in view. We were moved by their romance because the affection felt credible, rather than put there simply to make the danger more upsetting. It is a painful film we recommend, with a firm warning about the violence.
Her debut followed five years of research, and its attention to Brandon's wants makes that time feel well spent. Stop-Loss (2008), which she also wrote and directed, arrived nine years later after development struggles. Interviews informed its treatment of soldiers' experiences in Iraq, continuing her interest in stories grounded in lived experience. With Carrie (2013), her third feature, she took on a remake of the Stephen King adaptation. Her television work includes episodes of Halt and Catch Fire, Kidding and P-Valley.
In Boys Don't Cry, the collaborators help explain why her sympathy for the characters works on screen. Jim Denault's cinematography finds tenderness in the harsh, constricted small-town surroundings. Production designer Michael Shaw makes those surroundings credible and resists making poverty picturesque. Nathan Larson's music supports the emotional closeness without overwhelming the actors, and Peirce lets these contributions remain unobtrusive. We can believe in the place without being invited to look down on the people who live there.
The limits of that care show in the writing of John Lotter and Tom Nissen, played by Peter Sarsgaard and Brendan Sexton III. Both actors make forceful impressions, but Peirce and Bienen give us too little to understand either man beyond the danger he represents. The pacing also slips, a consequential flaw in a drama asking us to endure so much distress. The gaps in the writing matter because Peirce avoids treating this community with contempt, leaving us wanting to understand it better. Start with Boys Don't Cry, and take the warning about its violence seriously.
Biography
Kimberly Peirce is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. She studied at the University of Chicago and earned an MFA from Columbia University.
Peirce wrote and directed her debut feature Boys Don't Cry (1999). She later directed and co-wrote Stop-Loss (2008) and directed the remake Carrie (2013). She has also directed episodes of television series including The L Word, Halt and Catch Fire, TURN: Washington's Spies, Dear White People and P-Valley.
