Trans and non-gender-conforming film critics and audiences-writing fearlessly for outlets like The Hollywood Reporter, Out, Reverse Shot, and the B.F.I.-have met this film with at minimum skepticism, but more often with anger. Girl fixates on these images until, at least symbolically, they start to feel like intractable parallels, markers of Lara’s progress toward becoming who it is she wants to become. Dhont, deploying the neat, handheld style characteristic of too much contemporary European realism, zeroes in on the bloodied tape on Lara’s bruised and battered toes when she removes her shoes before peeking at the torturously irritating tape over her pelvis. Its focus on dance feels like an excuse to harp on the physical realities of Lara’s transition. The film treats dance as a limit case for proving what a trans body can and cannot be-and in that regard, Girl, co-written and directed by Lukas Dhont, is a curiously unjust, myopic, even dangerous movie. In Lara’s case, it also can’t help to have a dance instructor surveying one’s body and saying, “Some things can’t be changed”-an overt nod toward Lara’s bad feet, which are less pliable than those of girls who started en pointe at 12, but also a reference to Lara’s body as a whole. A 15-year-old like Lara was already bound to be overwhelmed by the unpredictable physical changes endemic to puberty and exhaustive physical training-to say nothing of all the accordant hormonal and psychological hullabaloo.
She’s an aspiring dancer to boot, and has been accepted to a new dance school-provisionally, on the condition that she can learn to dance en pointe with the other young women.ĭance is a lifestyle that automatically brings overt attention to the body-as if teenagers need another excuse to over-analyze themselves. Lara, played by cisgender actor Victor Polster, is a young trans woman who, with her father’s blessing, has begun the rigorous process of transitioning, regularly taking puberty inhibitors and meeting with doctors and a counselor to plan next steps, including surgery. It’s an early sign of trouble that we spend so much of Girl watching Lara-the heroine of the controversial Belgian film, now streaming on Netflix-looking at herself in the mirror.