Synopsis
A promising teenage dancer enrolls at a prestigious ballet school while grappling with her gender dysphoria.
Girl
2018 Directed by Lukas Dhont
Cast
Victor Polster Arieh Worthalter Oliver Bodart Tijmen Govaerts Chris Thys Nele Hardiman Katelijne Damen Valentijn Dhaenens Magali Elali Alice de Broqueville Alain Honorez Angelo Tijssens Marie-Louise Wilderijckx Virginia Hendricksen Daniel Nicodème Els Olaerts Hélène Theunissen Alexia Depicker Steve Driesen Ingrid Heiderscheidt Anthime Breyne William Banu Rilke Eyckermans Naomi Velissariou Sophie Huygens Annelies Moens Pieter Piron
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Alternative Titles
Under My Skin, 언더 마이 스킨
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Popular reviews
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the kind of movie that mistakes leering, gawking and cynically attaining sympathy through relentlessly inflicting trauma & shock horror for empathy. please listen to trans critics.
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The more I think about this the more I detest it. Do we really need films about trans people in 2018 which constitute pure misery and self-hatred? This movie isn't interested in shining a light on what trans teens struggle with, it just wants to beat its trans character into the ground so cis people who've never met or spoken to a trans person, never really taken an interest in what it's like to be trans beyond the plot outline bullet points of gender dysmorphia and transition, can gasp and tut in muted, liberal shock (of which I, too, have been guilty). Nearly every review out of Cannes stressed the film's "empathetic" nature but almost all I could see was that being confused for sheer, patronising pity.
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Cisgender audiences are confronted by an inescapable irony as they watch “Girl,” the arrestingly empathetic debut from Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont. Few narrative dramas (if any) have more sensitively explored the nuances of growing up transgender, the bravery required to transition, and the struggle for self-acceptance that can motivate or define that process. Likewise, few narrative dramas (if any) have more palpably distilled the pain of being deadnamed, the humiliation of being reduced to your body, and the cruelty of being misrepresented as something that you’re not.
So how do we, who can only share in such experiences second-hand, square all that with the fact that the lead character — a 16-year-old ballerina who’s impatiently waiting for her gender-confirmation surgery — is played by a cisgender male actor?
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Can’t really say anything about this movie that’s positive in any light other than that they, like, knew how to work the camera, but I do have something to say about this movie: it’s very uncomfortable how much this movie chooses to linger on what Lara isn’t and juxtaposes that with images of what she wants her body to be. It doesn’t feel like the camera views her as a woman; despite all these people seeming to accept her, it feels like it views her as someone trying to be a woman rather than as the woman she already is. At every possible opportunity, we see Lara’s lack of breasts. At every possible opportunity, we see Lara’s genitals. At every…
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'This illustrates the problem with so many trans narratives by cisgender artists—or even with the trans narratives by trans artists that are curated by the by-and-large cisgender industry of producers, programmers, and the like: we, the cis people in the room, are all too concerned with trans identity as a physical crisis. We’re fixated on transgenderism as the problem of being “born in the wrong body”—we’re obsessed with the body specifically, and with its ostensible misalignment with the soul. And liberals are no less fixated than, say, the conservatives obsessed with trans bathroom rights. We either insistently reject the idea of trans identity outright or—sympathetically and not—keep wanting to know how trans people make sense of what we've characterized as…
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Two reasons have encouraged me to see this Belgian film: 1. The interesting subject it deals with 2. Because it features an actor who has always been so underrated and I am referring to Arieh Worthalter who, when I have seen him, I think that he has received little attention in the film industry.
The story of Girl is as simple as it is complicated to analyze: Lara is a 15-year-old transgender girl who dreams of becoming a dancer. Rather than exposing bullying or intolerance towards Lara, filmmaker Lukas Dhont addresses the inner confrontation and concerns of the young girl. Dhont immerses us inside the routines, discoveries, fears, worries, conquests, and defeats of the protagonist's day-to-day life. Almost always though…
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The movie focuses on Lara, a transgender girl. She goes to school, ballet, and has a normal home life. She lies to her dad about things and faces all kinds of trauma. The performance was subdued. I felt like I wanted more from the story, but it was a pretty decent slice of life film.
Vegan alert:
-Lara's brother was cracking eggs.
-Lara cooks a meat dish for the New Year's Eve meal. -
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The cinematic equivalent of asking a trans person what their genitals look like
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WTF is this description? A GIRL, BORN IN A BOY’S BODY? I have reported this to Letterboxd. Also, trans genital mutilation as trans representation, urghh.
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i want a movie where a trans woman chases ghosts, i want one where a trans woman is a private detective, i want a movie where a middle-aged trans woman finds love, i want a movie with a mean trans woman, i want a trans woman with superpowers, not this shit.
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