Brandon is everything a girl could want in a boyfriend. He's handsome, polite, clean-cut and charming. But he isn't really a he.

Brandon Teena is really Teena Brandon and she does such a good job of passing herself off as a member of the opposite sex that, at times, it seems she even fools herself. How else to explain how Brandon can plunge headlong into relationships with women without considering the consequences of what will happen when the clothes come off and the truth is revealed?

Boys Don't Cry is the shattering true story of the tragic events that unfolded when Brandon came into a small Nebraska town in 1993. Things start off with Brandon quickly befriending an ex-con, John, during a bar fight. When Brandon meets, Lana, the longtime object of John's affection -- it's love at first sight. Their affair is sweet, pure and ultimately doomed.

Hilary Swank plays Brandon, and her performance is stunning. A beautiful actress in real life, Swank is completely -- sometimes creepily -- convincing as a man. Her Teena Brandon is a tragic, fascinating, lovable, innocent, deeply confused creature and placed in the circumstances of small town life -- her story could not end happily. It's a story director Kimberly Peirce tells extremely well. It's the bleakest portrait of the underbelly of American life since River's Edge.
(c) Copyright 2000