Cecil says: Girl is an extraordinary film on so many levels. It’s the story of a few months in the life of a teenage transgender girl who is training to be a ballerina. We go through the struggles this involves on both journeys: dealing with the transition from boy to girl and the physical ordeal any young person has to put themselves through to make the grade as a ballet dancer.
Actually the gender journey is already done for the Girl
Lara. She is a girl as far as we can see, and we never think of her as a boy at
all, but we live through her medical appointments, her therapy sessions and her
treatments as the system helps her body to change, though it’s never quick
enough for the teenager who just wants to get there now.
The dance school scenes, with the punishing schedule and the
amazing contortions her body has to go through, not to mention her poor feet –
bloodied by countless pointe steps - are almost the more exhausting to watch.
So intense and so difficult. And as one of the teachers says, the other girls
have an advantage in starting to dance at a much earlier age, and doing the
pointe walks from age 12, whereas Lara is starting from scratch at 15.
And then there are the struggles of just being an
adolescent, no matter what your gender. The scene when the other dance school
girls gang up on Lara is heart-breaking (though Bea says that all teenage girls
at some point will be ganged up on, for whatever reason – it just happens to be
Lara’s birth gender which is the focal point in this case).
The scenes where Lara is getting medical advice and therapy
felt much more realistic than the recent Channel 4 TV series Butterfly, where
the Mum reacted rather dramatically to an initial No from the Clinic and took
her daughter off to America for (very expensive) treatment. I actually don’t
believe there would be such a focus on surgery so early in most people’s
journey as they indicate for Lara, but other than that, the depiction of the
treatment process felt quite genuine to me.
I can imagine some trans activists getting annoyed that Lara
was not played by a transgender actor. But Victor Polster was fantastic in the
role, and as we found later in a Google search of the casting process, the
producers wanted a lead actor who could dance at this level, which is no mean
feat. It is only a really good dancer who can go from the wooden moves of the
opening lessons to the grace and skills of Lara’s dancing later in the film.
Apparently 500 people auditioned for the role, including 7 trans actors, but
none of them was a good enough dancer. So they had to go to dance schools to
find the right person to play the role.
There were fine performances also from Lara’s father (Arieh
Worthalter), and even her little brother – played by Oliver Bodart - had a very
moving scene where he reacts badly to being taunted for having a trans sister.
One thing I did think was that Lara was very lucky to have
support from every single member of her family. That would have been a probable
third battle ground in Lara’s life because there would always be an old uncle
or cousin who didn’t accept her transition, but maybe that would have
complicated the plot too much to add that level as well.
The self-harming scene was awful to watch but also superbly
well-acted, both by Polster, and by Worthalter in his response.
So, Girl is an amazing movie. It is very intense, but with
long periods of silence too (long enough for my rumbling stomach to be audible
for anyone in the seats nearby, I reckon). Very thought-provoking, but
beautiful too.
****
Bea says: I really enjoyed this sensitive handling of the very common (at the moment) transgender theme; although in many ways for me this film is really about the growing pains of adolescence with transgender being an additional dimension.
Lara is adjusting to a new school which has the added complication of being a performing arts school, to a new town, and she is navigating her way to adult life roles as a dancer and in her family.
She is very quiet as a character, perhaps painfully shy and struggles to speak to anyone. The film follows her life intimately and so we get an insight into her struggles which her family, teachers and therapists do not, which actually felt to me like a real privilege.
The final scene, a few years in Lara's future, brought hope and joy.
Highly recommended, atlhough some scenes are hard to watch.
****
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