Softie (Samuel Theis, 2021) (Patreon)

English titles of foreign films can often be clumsy and misleading, and Softie is not a particularly apt rendition of Petite nature. The phrase is a derogatory expression meaning "hothouse flower," "weakling," or something with crueler gay overtones, such as "pansy." The epithet-du jour in English would probably be "snowflake," although that might mislead audiences into thinking there was some political undertone to the term. The producers should probably opt for something completely outside the realm of the idiomatic, like Sweet Little Johnny, to convey what's really going on.

After all, Johnny's problem is less one of personality than of context. Aliosha Reinert plays the ten-year-old as sensitive, curious, and intelligent. As we eventually find out, he is also discovering that he's gay. But as sometimes happens with such kids, Johnny was born into the wrong class. His young, harried single mother (Mélissa Olexa) looks around 35 and has four kids. She works at a snack truck, and is a hard drinker on the weekends. She has moved the family into "the hood," as she calls it -- a broken-down apartment block on the rough side of town. And although Johnny is her pride and joy -- largely because he's willing to help raise his younger sister Mélissa (Jade Schwartz) -- she is angry at him for not being tough enough to take care of himself, for not conforming to lower-class ideals of masculinity.

We never get the sense that Johnny's mom is homophobic, exactly. But it's as though the fact that she may be raising a gay son has never occurred to her. That's partly because she is a somewhat disengaged mother, one who works to feed and clothe her children and doesn't have time for bourgeois extravagances like participating in her kids' education. But she is also a bit self-involved, and Johnny being gay (rather than just "sensitive") would demand that she make an extra effort to get him the support he needs. And really, it's she who demands support from Johnny.

When a new teacher from "the big city" (Lyon) takes over Johnny's class, it alters the dynamic at school and at home. Mr. Adamski (Antoine Reinartz) takes notice of Johnny and sees his potential. This special regard just happens to coincide with the boy's sexual awakening, and Johnny develops feelings for this kind, intelligent adult man. Adamski's museum curator girlfriend Nora (Izïa Higelin) takes a particular shine to Johnny and invites him along for family dinners and a museum trip, despite her partner's concern that this may be crossing a professional boundary.

Softie is the solo debut from Samuel Theis, one of the three co-directors of 2014's Party Girl, which I never saw. That film was about an older woman who enjoyed drinking and hooking up, and seems to parallel Softie's characterization of Johnny's mom, in terms of society's opprobrium toward women who exhibit laddish behavior. But here the focus is on Johnny and his growing yet inarticulate feeling of being different from those around him. He lashes out during a family dinner about his mom serving store-brand Coke and serving cheap food. He is a smart kid, but he is understandably incapable of grasping the imbrication of his class position and the gender expectations he feels, and the result is petty snobbery, which becomes implicit judgment of his mom.

Stylistically, Softie is solid but undistinguished. I frequently felt like I was watching a wrestling match between the social realism of the Dardennes (especially Rosetta) and the outsized family melodrama of Xavier Dolan (e.g. Mommy). As you can imagine, this is something of an unholy marriage, and both tendencies blunt the edges of the other. But Softie successfully captures an all-too-common experience in the lives of queer children. How did I become like this? And why am I stuck with them?