Girl (2018)

Directed by: Lukas Dhont | 106 minutes | drama | Actors: Victor Polster, Arieh Worthalter, Oliver Bodart, Tijmen Govaerts, Katelijne Damen, Valentijn Dhaenens, Magali Elali, Alice de Broqueville, Alain Honorez, Chris Thys, Angelo Tijssens, Marie-Louise Wilderijckx, Virgina Hendricksen, Daniel Nicodème, Els Olaerts

Lara is a 15-year-old girl with big dreams. She wants to become a ballerina, because dancing is her passion and her life. She lives in an apartment somewhere in Belgium, with her father and her brother Milo, for whom she is a surrogate mother. Lara is elegant, modest and polite, she loves to cuddle with her little brother and she has a beautiful disarming smile. The only thing that sets Lara apart from other girls is that she’s actually a boy. A boy who was once called Victor.

In the heartbreaking Belgian drama ‘Girl’, we follow Lara as she pursues her dreams: those to become a ballerina and those to metamorphose into a real girl. We are present at the horribly heavy ballet lessons, we feel the pain in the feet and body, we go along when Lara undergoes her first hormone treatment and we hear from the doctor how a sex operation works. And together with Lara we understand that this is a lot of work.

In Girl we experience how complex and exhausting the process of gender reassignment is, even when the environment sympathizes on all sides. Everyone loves Lara, from father to psychologist to ballet teacher, and everyone goes out of their way to support her. But even they can’t help but notice that the changes are slow and that as a boy girl you are vulnerable to bullying and other bumps in the road.

The fact that ‘Girl’ is so heartbreaking is partly due to the nuanced and warm-blooded script, in which especially the conversations between father and daughter have an emotional impact. But the great hero of this film is the young Victor Polster as Lara. Polster makes it clear that Lara’s femininity is not in feminine mannerisms, but is completely internalized in her personality and appearance. The hand that naturally slides some hairs away, the elegant smile, the way she cuddles with her brother. Nothing learned, pure nature.

What you can say about ‘Girl’ is that Lara’s dreams, added together, are quite extreme. Ballet is top sport, wanting to change sex demands the same kind of willpower, that two together asks too much of every mortal and is ultimately not very credible. But that’s the only flaw of this gripping, moving, deeply human film.