The Way He Looks – Blindness, First Love, and the Quiet Revolution of Being Ordinary

Sebastian Hart

A Queer Teen Film That Refuses to Be a Tragedy

Brazilian film The Way He Looks (Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho) opens with an ordinary annoyance: a blind teenager, Leonardo, struggling to assert his independence against overprotective parents and a school environment that alternates between boredom and bullying. The film could have turned this setup into a heavy drama about discrimination. Instead, it chooses something more radical in its simplicity: a gentle, almost quiet queer coming‑of‑age story where the biggest stakes are friendship, freedom, and first love.

For viewers saturated with high‑angst, plot‑twisty queer films, The Way He Looks can feel almost too calm at first. Stay with it. The film’s power lies precisely in how stubbornly it centers small, human moments: shared earbuds, walking home after class, the way jealousy feels like betrayal when you are sixteen and your world contains about six important people.

Disability as Lived Reality, Not Symbol

One of the film’s most striking choices is how it handles Leonardo’s blindness. He is not reduced to a symbol of inspiration or tragedy. He is:

  • snarky,
  • occasionally selfish,
  • romantic and dreamy,
  • frustrated at being treated like a fragile child.

The camera rarely adopts his point of view visually; instead, the soundtrack does the heavy lifting. Street noise, footsteps, and the tone of voices build his sensory world. We watch him navigate familiar spaces with practiced ease and unfamiliar ones with cautious experimentation.

Importantly, the story does not frame his disability as something that must be “overcome” for romance to be possible. Gabriel, the new boy who slowly becomes his crush, never fetishises Leonardo’s blindness or turns it into a noble sacrifice. He simply… works with it:

  • quietly announcing when he steps closer,
  • guiding without grabbing,
  • asking questions instead of assuming limits.

For disabled and chronically ill viewers hungry for representation that simply lets them exist, this is a quietly revolutionary portrayal.

The Triangle That Isn’t About Betrayal

At the heart of the film lies a triangle: Leonardo, his lifelong best friend Giovana, and new arrival Gabriel. In a more melodramatic version of this story, Giovana would turn into a villain—jealous, homophobic, sabotaging. The Way He Looks refuses this easy route.

Giovana is hurt and confused when Leonardo gravitates towards Gabriel. She feels left behind, replaced. Her reaction is messy but deeply human, rooted in fear of abandonment rather than malice. The film allows her feelings to be as important as the budding romance, underscoring that coming of age is rarely tidy for anyone in the friend group.

When the truth of Leonardo’s feelings emerges, the resolution is not a dramatic blow‑up but a slow re‑calibration. Apologies are awkward, but sincere. No one is punished for being vulnerable. For MM romance readers, this dynamic offers an interesting variant of the Friends to Lovers / Friends Drift Apart pattern that does not require destroying the original friendship to validate the romance.

A New Kind of First Love Story

The romance itself is built from small gestures:

  • late‑night chats on MSN,
  • shared music,
  • Gabriel walking Leonardo home,
  • tentatively holding hands under a blanket during a movie.

There’s a beach trip, of course—if there were a trope list, “first swim with crush” would be on it. But even there, the film stays grounded. There is no sudden, idealised revelation shot in slow motion. There is splashing, teasing, and the awkward logistics of helping someone into the water who cannot see the waves.

For viewers used to Western teen films where queer love must be either painful or hyper‑sexualised, the innocence here is refreshing. The film does not deny desire; it simply lets it unfold at a pace that matches the characters’ emotional age.

Politics in the Background, Not the Foreground

The Way He Looks was released in 2014, in a Brazil already wrestling with queer rights, evangelical conservatism, and protests. Yet the film keeps explicit politics mostly offscreen. There are no hate crimes, no courtroom speeches, no Pride marches.

Is that a flaw? That depends on what you need from queer cinema. What the film does offer is a political stance through its refusal to sensationalise:

  • It insists that a blind gay teenager’s first crush is inherently worthy of a full film.
  • It shows parents who wobble between control and support, gradually leaning toward the latter.
  • It depicts school bullies as real threats, but not as omnipotent monsters.

In a world where disabled queer teens are often either invisible or treated as metaphors, that insistence on ordinariness is quietly radical.

How It Fits into Your MM Romance Watchlist

For LGBT Novel Atlas, The Way He Looks belongs in a category like “Soft International Coming‑of‑Age Queer Films” alongside titles such as Love, Simon and Heartstopper (though the latter is a series). It’s perfect for:

  • readers who love First Love, Coming of Age, and Friends to Lovers tropes;
  • viewers craving clean, non‑explicit romances centered on emotional beats;
  • anyone interested in disability representation handled with nuance and warmth.

Writers can learn from:

  • how the film uses sound, routine, and small changes to chart character growth;
  • how it builds a compelling love story without external plot twists;
  • how it treats secondary characters—especially Giovana—as fully human, not disposable obstacles.

In a Trope Encyclopedia, The Way He Looks is a reminder that not every queer story has to push boundaries through shock. Sometimes the most quietly revolutionary act is showing a blind gay boy who wants exactly what straight teens are allowed to want: independence, a first kiss, and the feeling that someone chose him, specifically, on purpose.