Is Eli a homosexual male?

[Wolfchild]

The gender-bending Eli does not quite make it into the movie version, at least not explicitly. In general though, the film Eli is very much a cipher, so much a cipher that it has led to all kinds of interpretations of the character. Eli is an angel. Eli is a scheming little witch seducing a young boy etc. I really can't articulate how this works, but I think this is a big factor in the "infectious" nature of the film.

I beg to differ. The peek scene pretty much makes it explicit that Eli is (or was) a boy. However, I did not really have this opinion until I viewed the film in a cinema. Watching it on DVD, it is really not very clear what is being portrayed, but seeing it on the silver screen it is all too clear. Lina pretty much owns the Eli character, and Lina as Eli is an unmistakably feminine portrayal. However what the peek scene portrays (when viewed its full, umm... glory?) is also unmistakable in what it says about Eli's original gender - as unmistakable as it is horrific.

[drakkar]

Also the bluray pays hugely off compared to the dvd.
I'm still astonished of how the actors fill the definition gap. Lina when asked about the funny smell is plain fantastic.
Not so with e.g. Der Untergang.

[gattoparde59]

I beg to differ. The peek scene pretty much makes it explicit that Eli is (or was) a boy. However, I did not really have this opinion until I viewed the film in a cinema. Watching it on DVD, it is really not very clear what is being portrayed, but seeing it on the silver screen it is all too clear. Lina pretty much owns the Eli character, and Lina as Eli is an unmistakably feminine portrayal. However what the peek scene portrays (when viewed its full, umm... glory?) is also unmistakable in what it says about Eli's original gender - as unmistakable as it is horrific.

I can't speak for other people, but this was my experience with the DvD:

Watching on my 1980s era Toshiba television with a obviously decaying tube, the first time I saw this shot I made out a horizontal surgical scar, complete with suture marks. I had no idea what I was looking at. Girls get mutilated too, not just boys.

I will grant that this is a very subtle film that really needs to be seen in a movie theater to be fully appreciated.

[DMt.]

There never will be definitive answer to this question, and I am not the first person to make that statement. It is interesting that this issue has attracted so much discussion. Other than simply being straight up homophobia, I see the question as being one of identity. Adolescence is a time when your identity is very much in question, and I think this issue really attracts the attention of adolescents- both chronological and spiritual adolescents. Who am I? What kind of person will I become? I am not quite a child, but I am not quite a man either, and so forth.

As a_c_l states at the very beginning of this thread, Eli's identity is really tragically indefinite. Eli is never quite one thing altogether. Eli is not quite a boy, but he is really not a girl either. (It is rather unfortunate in this story that "indefinite" translates into "female" ) Eli is not quite human, but sadly she is not quite a vampire either. Eli is stuck perpetually as a nothing. This could also be a source of magical power for Eli. Being nothing in particular, Eli is free to become virtually anything.

The gender-bending Eli does not quite make it into the movie version, at least not explicitly. In general though, the film Eli is very much a cipher, so much a cipher that it has led to all kinds of interpretations of the character. Eli is an angel. Eli is a scheming little witch seducing a young boy etc. I really can't articulate how this works, but I think this is a big factor in the "infectious" nature of the film.

That Eli lacks an identity makes it all the more important that Eli find some identity. My favorite identity is the one that Oskar gives to Eli: Eli, my friend.

This is so nice.

Except for the 'cipher' bit. A performance as silently expressive of desolation as the child Lina's deserves a little more than that, I think.

[Dario]

DMt, who is the young woman portrayed in your avatar picture? What is the black spot on the upper part of her nose?

[Angelalex242]

Actually, I didn't know Eli was originally a boy till I researched it online. The peek scene made no sense, because I thought Oskar was seeing that Eli was, in fact, a girl. Being an adult, I tried not to pay too much attention and saw it as a 12 year old peeking on his girlfriend. And I couldn't figure out a logical reason for the apparent kiddie porn.

The peek is not enough, in my opinion, to get the point across to an audience, particularly an adult audience who won't want to look too closely at it, that Eli was a boy.

[a_contemplative_life]

The gender-bending Eli does not quite make it into the movie version, at least not explicitly. In general though, the film Eli is very much a cipher, so much a cipher that it has led to all kinds of interpretations of the character. Eli is an angel. Eli is a scheming little witch seducing a young boy etc. I really can't articulate how this works, but I think this is a big factor in the "infectious" nature of the film.

I beg to differ. The peek scene pretty much makes it explicit that Eli is (or was) a boy. However, I did not really have this opinion until I viewed the film in a cinema. Watching it on DVD, it is really not very clear what is being portrayed, but seeing it on the silver screen it is all too clear. Lina pretty much owns the Eli character, and Lina as Eli is an unmistakably feminine portrayal. However what the peek scene portrays (when viewed its full, umm... glory?) is also unmistakable in what it says about Eli's original gender - as unmistakable as it is horrific.

No question that Eli started out as a boy. The problem is, what happens to that identity when the boy is made a eunuch and now we're 200 years down the road.

I see Eli as a person who has fallen between the cracks in so many ways. Virtually everything that we as 'normal' human beings take for granted has been stripped away. I do not see Eli's gender situation as being a 'freedom' to be whatever she wants. While it might make it easier for Eli to relate to certain people in certain ways, I think overall it is a horrifying curse, and that this is the primary way Eli views it in her mind--it's like being cut off and set adrift in a sea of loneliness and uncertainty, with no normal guideposts to help find your way, particularly when you really think about how young Eli was when all of this happened, and then ask yourself how you could possibly have coped with that kind of identity destruction at such a young age. Eli was not trying to flatter himself with that horrifying self-description in the novel's bedroom scene.

[DMt.]

DMt, who is the young woman portrayed in your avatar picture? What is the black spot on the upper part of her nose?

A friend of my sons', cropped out from a 21st birthday photograph.

It's a piercing, a sort of bolt through the bridge of her nose...there's one on her nostril, as well.

[gattoparde59]

I see Eli as a person who has fallen between the cracks in so many ways. Virtually everything that we as 'normal' human beings take for granted has been stripped away. I do not see Eli's gender situation as being a 'freedom' to be whatever she wants. While it might make it easier for Eli to relate to certain people in certain ways, I think overall it is a horrifying curse, and that this is the primary way Eli views it in her mind--it's like being cut off and set adrift in a sea of loneliness and uncertainty, with no normal guideposts to help find your way, particularly when you really think about how young Eli was when all of this happened, and then ask yourself how you could possibly have coped with that kind of identity destruction at such a young age. Eli was not trying to flatter himself with that horrifying self-description in the novel's bedroom scene.

I agree that this is a curse. Elsewhere Eli describes herself as "nobody." I think that these are the same things that define Eli as a magical creature, falling between the cracks but filling the void in Oskar's life.

"What have you got in there, if you don't mind my asking?"
"A little bit of everything."

I did notice that "Conductor" is listed in the credits for Let Me In. I wonder what lines he gets?

[Dario]

When I first watched the movie, I had the same doubt as Angelalex242. I didn't get that Eli was a male until I searched on the Internet. This is due to the Italian dubbing which is flawed for a couple of reasons, in my opinion. First, it is unconvincingly slow paced and second, Eli's voice is definitely feminine. This is in contrast to the fact that Italy has a long tradition of dubbing and the practice here is pretty much systematic and well developed. I guess you don't even imagine how appropriate the masculine voice in the Swedish dubbing was to fully understand the plot.