When We Were Boys
Director: Sarah Goodman
Classification: STC
Rating: ***

Observational portraits of educational institutions are at least as old as Frederick Wiseman’s High School, and while Sarah Goodman’s When We Were Boys — a documentary shot at Toronto’s Royal St. Georges College — doesn’t bring anything new to the table in formal terms, its sincerity is winning.

Establishing the ebb and flow of the in-school social ecosystem — girls being this frantic, hormonally charged realm’s obvious structuring absence — Goodman smartly narrows her focus to the friendship between two boys: Gentle striver Noah and laconic class clown Colin.

Their fraying relationship gives When We Were Boys its throughline, and it’s obvious that Goodman has worked hard to establish the boys’ trust. As Noah gradually shrinks into the role of class outcast, Colin assumes an upward social trajectory, a development that gives the final movements some dramatic juice.

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