How Velasquez got to be an accomplished TED Talker from her radically premature birth is the journey followed in Bordo’s documentary, which is as sunny and positive as its subject.
So much so that we quickly come to take for granted that her upcoming talk in front of a live Mexican audience of 10,000 will be a breeze for her and her listeners. But this articulate, intelligent woman carries herself with preternatural confidence, grace and unflappable friendliness. Afflicted with a syndrome that, undiagnosed for years, prevents her from gaining weight, Velasquez can be a shock to behold on first encounter. Her hair is just dandy, but her face is wizened, her vision impaired, and her 58-pound body is as stick-thin as that of a skinny girl on the cusp of adolescence. The gesture may be common enough in any woman about to appear in public in Velasquez, a disability and anti-bullying activist in her 20s, it’s momentous and telling. In the first moments of “A Brave Heart,” a woman enters the frame, sits down, adjusts her hair and smiles. Though Bordo is a touch too inclined to nudge Velasquez into sainthood, such is the force of her charm and determination that “A Brave Heart” will likely appeal to audiences beyond anti-bullying activists and disability advocates, though mostly in VOD, where it will debut simultaneously with its theatrical release.
As a rallying cry for anti- bullying legislation, however, the film is superficial, glossing over the rather vague and toothless act that Velasquez is still trying to push through Congress together with Tina Meier, the mother of an online bullying victim who committed suicide. Tracking the young Texan’s passage from bullied child to self-assured motivational speaker and lobbyist, “A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story” is strong on Velasquez’s developing backbone and smarts with the support of school and family.
Sara Hirsh Bordo’s cheerfully upbeat documentary offers an engaging if heavily sugared portrait of a courageous woman triumphing over a disfiguring genetic mutation that prevents her from gaining weight.
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