Figure 1.--Here Bruno is with his Mum after leaving the Mother Superior's office. As with most Catholic schools, there is a school uniform. |
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This film has been released as both "The Dress Code" (1999) and "Bruno" (2000). The tagline: "A film that's long on originality but short on pants." The basic premise is that Bruno is an 8 years old cross dresser who attends a Roman Catholic elementary school. He has a recurring dream of being chased by an angel, and it's the vision of the angel that sanctions (for Bruno) his choice of wearing a dress. Actually, when we meet Bruno, he's wearing the blue blazer, long grey trousers, and blue tie that are
the uniform of his Long Island parochial school. Bruno is the victim of the class bullies. The film touches upon, but does not really tackle a very serious problem at American schools. Children that are different can have a very difficult time.
I believe that this was a made for TV movie rather than a film with a theatrical release. I'm not sure why the marketing people thought that it needed a new title. It has gone by two
different titles in two different years: "The Dress
Code" (1999) and "Bruno" (2000). The tagline that the marketing people provided, "A film that's long on originality but short on pants."
The basic premise is that Bruno is an 8-years old cross dresser who attends a Roman Catholic elementary (primary) school. He has a recurring dream of being chased by an angel, and it's the vision of the angel that sanctions (for Bruno) his choice of wearing a dress.
Alex D. Linz (1989- ) plays Bruno marvelously. He's a fine young actor. Bruno is the victim of the class bullies; he's small and from a distance resembles a girl. He lives with his mom, a
morbidly obese dressmaker with a flamboyant style. His dad is a police officer, divorced from his mom. His grandmother is Shirley Mac Laine.
When we meet Bruno, he's wearing the blue blazer, long grey trousers, and blue tie that are the uniform of his Long Island parochial school. His clothes consisted of his school
uniform (blue blazer, white shirt, blue tie, grey long trousers), grey sweater and long trousers worn with a dark shirt, and a grey double-breaster suit, white shirt, and large dark blue bow-tie. This seems a bit more formal than most Catholic elementary schools that I remember, but Long Island is a affluent area with many New York City bedroom communities. As the film develops we begin to see him in different girly outfits. Bruno says about the style of clothes one wears, 'Sometimes what you wear can bring you closer to God. But sometimes what you want to wear can seperate you from people."
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Bruno and his mom are problems for the Mother Superior, played by Kathy Bates. Mom defends Bruno completely; Mother Superior would prefer that Bruno be more like the other boys so that she wouldn't have to deal with the discipline problems. Bruno is befriended by a new girl, a street-wise African-American who wears a cowboy hat and brings cap pistols to school, not exactly a smart thing nowadys. When she's around, the boys leave Bruno alone.
One day, Bruno and the girl are talking after school, and the weather turned cold. Bruno offers her his pants in exchange for her skirt. They look like two little girls who are friends. While playing, Bruno runs into the street and is struck by a car. Rushed to the emergency room, the doctors and nurses think Bruno is a girl until, of course, they look a little closer! Bruno had a vision while unconscious, that he was with the angel of his dream, and both of them were wearing a robe or dress. This convinces him that wearing a dress is all right: he's closer to the angels when he wears a dress.
Bruno is a spelling genius in school. (HBC could use his help.) He's competing to go on to the National Catholic Spelling
Bee championship, where first prize is a trip to the Vatican for a visit with the Pope. At the competition at his school, Bruno first shows up in a dress made for him by his mom. Mother Superior of course went ballistic and summoned his mother. Neither Mom nor Bruno would give an inch on his right to wear a dress; Bruno even audaciously pointed out that the pontiff wears a dress! As Bruno and his mom leave the school, they are set upon by a vicious group of his classmates who pelt them and their car with rotten food. Mom gunned the engine and drove toward the group of tormentors. No one was hurt, but the police came to Bruno's house to question his mom, who became so overwrought that she suffered a mild heart attack.
Bruno has to live with his dad's mother, played by Shirley Mac Laine. Grandma is tough as nails, and she cut Bruno's hair in a longish, but definitely boy's style, and insisted that he dress like a boy in shirt and trousers. Grandma had been just as tough with Bruno's dad; in a flashback scene, we see his dad as a boy who likes to sing opera. Mother/Grandma took the opera records away and told him not to be a sissy. Eventually, Grandma reconciles herself to Bruno's preference for dresses after he related the angel dream and vision to her. In fact, she becomes his fiercest supporter. Bruno eventually won the national spelling championship, and he had a private audience with the Pope. Both were dressed in similar white robes, of course.
The film has its hits and misses. Some of the humor is stale, the predictable jokes and names directed toward Bruno and his mom. One HBC reader liked the part where the nuns march the children into the school, singing the old army standard, "Soundoff", with the lyrics: "Catholic school is where I am; Catholic school will make me a man!" HBC is unsure if this was actually done at Catholic schools. Actually this American Catholic elementary (primary) school seems more like a prep school than an elementary schgool. At times the characters become no more than stereotypes: Bruno's smart-mouthed girlfriend who answers back the nuns and the school bullies with
sharp returns; obese mom who empties a hospital candy machine of its contents; the tough cigarette-smoking, bingo-playing Grandma (One of the school bullies, confronted by her, calls her "Butch" to her face. For that she picked him up and hung him by his coat from a
tall fence post.) Yet, other scenes are almost heartbreaking. The schoolyard tormentors terrified Bruno and his mom, trapped in their brightly colored Cadillac. In their haste to find refuge in the car,
mom left her very womanly polka dot umbrella on the sidewalk, like a fragment of spirit or heart left behind.
The premise of the film, however, seems to be undermined by its development and execution. Bruno
wants to wear dresses; it's angelic. As Bruno points out, Roman soldiers wore togas; Scotsman wear kilts; and there are plenty of historical examples of men wearing a garment very similar to a skirt or a dress. So far, so good. But by the end of the film, Bruno is in 8-year old drag, looking in one scene like a Diva and in another like a cowgirl. That seems a far stretch from wearing an angel's robe or a kilt.
The film touches upon, but does not really tackle a very serious problem at American schools. Children that are different can have a very difficult time. Some teachers are sensitive to this issue, but many are not. This problem includes a varierty of differebces. Racial and religious differences are less of a problem than they used to be. Physical and mental differences are usually adequately addressed. What is not well addressed is gender-role differences. Boys that are girlish and girls that are boyish can be subjected to terrible taunting and abuse. The children targetted are often in a terrible quandry, because they often do not receive support ecen at home and many do not want to raise the subject of their sexuality at home. In far too many instances, extended abuse at school has led to suiside.
HBC readers who enjoyed this film might also like to see the French/Belgian film, "Ma Vie en Rose" (1997)
Another reader comments, "Bruno utters one line several times in
the film, 'Just what I need, another flamboyant woman!' It reminded me of a time when I was about 10 or 11, and an elderly relation asked me, "John, how do you like your women, flamboyant or demure?" Not
knowing the meaning of either adjective, and being all of 10 or 11, I could just wrinkle my nose, crinkle my eyes and answer, 'Neither one!'"
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