The father of an 18-year-old, director Manuel Foglia gave voice to guys of the same age to find out how they see themselves and what it’s like to be a man in their eyes. Boys, a genre film shows teenagers with multiple visions, but almost all still caught in the mold of the guy who does not express how he feels.
The world is changing, but are the guys changing? It’s not so clear, we conclude by watching the documentary Boy, a genre film, presented this Monday on UnisTV. There are those who dare to step outside the box by claiming their sensitivity or an extraordinary gender identity, but many still believe that being a man means being strong and not displaying your vulnerability. They speak little, only cry in secret and many consider that a hockey locker room is a sufficient safe space to express what they are to their peers.
Manuel Foglia doesn’t beat around the bush when asked about his film: “I don’t have an answer to any questions,” he says. I only have what is there. He says it with the obvious: he is not a sociologist or a psychologist and does not claim to be. His film on the masculine condition seen by adolescents, he conceived it in the manner of a wildlife documentary, he explains: his camera observes, questions, directs the gaze, but lets the viewer make sense of what ‘he see.
These kinds of observations, he has been making them for a long time. The model of the alpha male and the macho preoccupied him (and bothered him, we understand) since adolescence. When he was younger, Manuel Foglia was bullied.
Victim, in a certain way, of a narrow vision of masculinity which crushes boys or men which deviates from a model where respect is won more by force than by diplomacy and where aggression has more value as sensitivity, a characteristic associated with femininity.
Boys, a genre film mainly follows two fifth-grade classes: one from a high school in Montreal, the other from Matane. Students from these two classes are engaged in artistic projects whose objective is to question the stereotypes that feed biases and prejudices of which we are not necessarily aware. Little by little, they will reflect as much on racism as on sexism and will be led to talk about boy-girl relationships.
This detour towards the analysis of stereotypes is disconcerting at first, but ends up finding its meaning in the reflection it nourishes. The collaborative project between the two classes also allows the director to film the students in their natural environment – in this case, a high school – and to capture eloquent scenes: the very physical interactions between the boys in the corridors, the handles of complex hand that groups of friends exchange like a code or very evocative comments caught in flight.
When showing Matane students around his high school, one of the Montreal teenagers, for example, points out, passing in front of the gymnasium, that this is where they have “the most fun” at school. A seemingly innocuous detail, which takes on its full meaning when, later in the film, we see the importance that sport plays in the socialization of boys and in the – radically different – values they learn by playing soccer or at hockey.
Boys, a genre film shows both the openness of teenagers and the weight of their family heritage. Whether this family has its roots in Quebec or elsewhere is not always of great importance: regardless of their origin, the boys believe that a man can be sensitive, for example, but they have all learned not to talk about their emotions, to cash in and not to crack. Except when they are alone. Asked about the notion of safe space, a professional working in a high school said that, according to him, for a boy to open up in such a safe space, there should be no other guy around him. That is to say…
Manuel Foglia hopes to do something useful with this film. He believes that to change what needs to be changed in boys, you must first engage in conversation with them. That this conversation can’t happen without women. “It’s a shared responsibility, to change the boys,” he said.
