Girl, A Fantastic Woman and cinema’s difficult… | Little White Lies

Girl, A Fan­tas­tic Woman and cinema’s dif­fi­cult peri­od of transition

19 Mar 2019

Words by Lillian Crawford

Young woman in athletic attire sitting on floor, taping her ankle.
Young woman in athletic attire sitting on floor, taping her ankle.
How the lan­guage we use to talk about art which explores sub­jects of gen­der and iden­ti­ty can evolve.

The way we write about peo­ple who have under­gone gen­der tran­si­tion needs to change. For some peo­ple, the pre­fix trans’ is an essen­tial part of their iden­ti­ty, and some­thing they are con­fi­dent to use. How­ev­er, this arti­cle seeks to remind the read­er that a large num­ber of peo­ple who have tran­si­tioned sim­ply want to be accept­ed in their true gen­der with­out being defined by a past most would rather forget.

The neces­si­ty for this dis­cus­sion has arisen from the debate sur­round­ing Girl, a Bel­gian film by Lukas Dhont which depicts the med­ical tran­si­tion of a 15-year-old bal­le­ri­na named Lara, played by Vic­tor Polster.

Regard­less of crit­i­cism, it can only be good that we are talk­ing about and rais­ing aware­ness of what it means to be trans­gen­der. The prob­lem aris­es when peo­ple take this to be a sin­gu­lar expe­ri­ence that can be encap­su­lat­ed in a piece of art. For Lara, her gen­i­talia are the focal point of her body dys­pho­ria, while for oth­ers it might be their face, voice, or a gen­er­al over­whelm­ing dis­com­fort in their own skin.

Her image dys­mor­phia is relat­ed to impli­ca­tions of anorex­ia and con­stant body checks in the mir­ror, a real­is­tic por­tray­al of a large num­ber of peo­ple going through gen­der tran­si­tion. This is not a uni­ver­sal case, for there is no such thing, but it is that of dancer Nora Mon­sec­our upon whom the film based. To claim that it is not gen­uine is dis­re­spect­ful of her tes­ti­mo­ny.

Con­tro­ver­sy par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­rounds the dras­tic action Lara is shown to take after her body becomes too frag­ile for gen­der reas­sign­ment surgery to be fea­si­ble. Words can­not express how dev­as­tat­ing being told that this pro­ce­dure needs to be delayed can be for those whose tran­si­tion revolves around it, often lead­ing to dark and sui­ci­dal thoughts.

In the film, Dhont has elect­ed to rep­re­sent these feel­ings through an act of self-harm which can be read as the inevitable cul­mi­na­tion of Lara’s dys­pho­ria. Rather than intend­ing to make an audi­ence squea­mish, the focus of the cam­era upon her crotch mir­rors her own obses­sion, con­stant­ly aware of that which is pre­vent­ing her from liv­ing as her true self. Espe­cial­ly in the bina­ry world of bal­let, the com­par­isons drawn by the cam­era between Lara and the oth­er girls is not Dhont’s crit­i­cism, but that of Lara herself.

Young woman in athletic attire sitting on floor, taping her ankle.

Beyond writ­ing on this spe­cif­ic film, there is an inher­ent prob­lem in the brand­ing of men and women as cis or trans. It becomes an error when writ­ers crit­i­cise Dhont as a cis male direc­tor’, Vic­tor Pol­ster as a cis male actor’, despite nei­ther iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as such. In doing so, it is made clear that there is a notion of dif­fer­ence for film­mak­ers who are trans’. This bar­ri­er cre­at­ed by lan­guage must be over­come if peo­ple who have tran­si­tioned are to be accept­ed in the gen­der they inher­ent­ly are.

To say that a trans per­son can only play a cer­tain char­ac­ter or make a film, or even be a crit­ic of these films, forces one to expose one’s med­ical his­to­ry in order to qual­i­fy one­self to have a voice. I am a female crit­ic – if you were to enquire whether or not I have tran­si­tioned would be a vio­la­tion of my pri­va­cy. It is sure­ly impos­si­ble for peo­ple who have tran­si­tioned to be giv­en equal oppor­tu­ni­ty if they are con­stant­ly hav­ing to jus­ti­fy their right to speak.

Before see­ing Girl, I had already decid­ed that the film was an abom­i­na­tion. I held a strong view that only some­one tran­si­tion­ing, or some­one who iden­ti­fied in the true gen­der of the pro­tag­o­nist could suc­cess­ful­ly tell their sto­ry. Til­da Swinton’s absurd turn as a Ger­man man in Sus­piria, for exam­ple, demon­strates the insult­ing idea that some­one of an assigned gen­der can por­tray anoth­er. The same can be said of non-bina­ry iden­ti­ties, if any film­mak­er both­ered to cast or rep­re­sent such people.

Indeed, it is the notion of bina­ry gen­der which makes dis­cus­sions of cast­ing uncom­fort­able. When crit­ics brand Pol­ster as a cis actor’, they imply that he was born into a spe­cif­ic mind­set and form of life that pre­vents him from hav­ing any sen­si­tiv­i­ty to female expe­ri­ence. The issue with Polster’s cast­ing is rather that he is por­tray­ing a girl on puber­ty block­ers, which would pre­vent Lara from devel­op­ing some of the mas­cu­line fea­tures high­light­ed in the film. While he gives a very respect­ful per­for­mance, it is still unde­ni­ably one that should have gone to a female actor.

Girl is not the first film attempt­ing to grap­ple with these issues. In 2017, Sebastián Lelio direct­ed A Fan­tas­tic Woman, whose protagonist’s tran­si­tion is only made an issue of by oth­er peo­ple. The extrem­i­ty of the trans­pho­bia made it a film I had on first view­ing dis­missed for being irre­deemably bleak. On the con­trary, by cel­e­brat­ing Marina’s (Daniela Vega) tal­ent for singing, the film does not reduce its cen­tral fig­ure to an object of fetishi­sa­tion, which has been por­trayed as being the case espe­cial­ly when women choose not to have reas­sign­ment surgery.

A Fan­tas­tic Woman, how­ev­er, sets itself up as an unabashed love sto­ry as the audi­ence feels the romance between Mari­na and her part­ner Orlan­do (Fran­cis­co Reyes). It is his unques­tion­ing accep­tance of her that makes the lat­er dead­nam­ing, vio­lence, and nau­se­at­ing descrip­tion of Mari­na as a chimera’ hit hard – it is so painful­ly and obvi­ous­ly false.

Two people embracing on a dance floor, lit by colourful stage lights.

Avoid­ing this prob­lem, Girl is clear but nec­es­sar­i­ly sub­tle in its dis­tinc­tion between gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty. Lara’s father (Arieh Worthal­ter) clear­ly does not mind who his daugh­ter is attract­ed to, and delight­ful con­ver­sa­tion in a car sees her pur­pose­ful­ly mys­ti­fy who she fan­cies – the point being that at her age she still isn’t sure.

Lara’s expe­ri­ence of some­thing approach­ing a sex­u­al awak­en­ing no doubt exac­er­bates her dys­pho­ria, and makes her more sen­si­tive to mis­gen­der­ing, but also accep­tance, as in a delight­ful scene when her brother’s teacher asks if she is his sis­ter and the cam­era focus­es on her beam­ing face as she walks away. Girl also effec­tive­ly cap­tures the moment of men­tal error when fam­i­ly mem­bers in frus­tra­tion dead­name their loved one – the heart-break­ing tears that fol­low remind us that friends and fam­i­ly must also go through a dif­fi­cult tran­si­tion process.

The hard­est scene to watch in A Fan­tas­tic Woman is one in which Mari­na attempts to pose as a man in order to enter a spa. She remains obvi­ous­ly female, and Vega’s courage to expose her­self in this way goes beyond the usu­al chal­lenges of act­ing. This per­for­mance must have tak­en its toll on Vega, who at 29 would per­haps pos­sess greater psy­cho­log­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty to get through the scene.

With Girl, the fragili­ty of a child begin­ning their tran­si­tion would wors­en the tur­moil that con­sti­tutes gen­der dys­pho­ria. Because we need films depict­ing the process itself for peo­ple to under­stand the dif­fi­cul­ties it can bring, the cast­ing of an actor not under­go­ing treat­ment was essen­tial. I reit­er­ate – a girl would still have been bet­ter posi­tioned to play this part with authenticity.

I not attempt­ing to rebut spe­cif­ic writ­ers because I have no right to under­mine their per­son­al respons­es to see­ing these films. As already men­tioned, Girl is a film which has been the sub­ject of wide­spread crit­i­cism, cov­er­ing the gamut from pos­i­tive­ly skewed reviews to naked­ly per­son­al reflec­tions on the ways in which the film artic­u­lates its dra­ma and rep­re­sents its char­ac­ters. Through­out the debate there seems to have been a gen­er­al mis­un­der­stand­ing that there are no peo­ple whose tran­si­tion resem­bles that of Lara in the film. It cer­tain­ly seemed like this for Nora Mon­sec­our, who must feel tar­get­ed by the furi­ous crit­i­cism aimed at the film.

By telling her, and oth­er men and women whose tran­si­tions are or were sim­i­lar to that shown in Girl, that their expe­ri­ence is not that of a trans­gen­der per­son is itself dan­ger­ous­ly trans­pho­bic. My only hope in writ­ing this piece is that writ­ers choose their lan­guage more care­ful­ly – pre­fix­ing man’ or woman’ with cis’ or trans’ only serves to deny equal oppor­tu­ni­ty. Some peo­ple do com­fort­ably iden­ti­fy them­selves in this way, for it is per­ceived as nec­es­sary to label one­self to demon­strate that a voice is being represented.

But for those who have tran­si­tioned seek­ing only to be per­ceived as men or women, there is no need or oblig­a­tion to reveal sen­si­tive med­ical infor­ma­tion so they can be allowed to do their job.

Both of these films choose to end with Handel’s aria Ombra Mai Fu’. In A Fan­tas­tic Woman, Mari­na per­forms the piece at a con­cert, and an orches­tral arrange­ment is heard as Lara walks down a pas­sage in the final scene of Girl. The aim is to be opti­mistic, to cel­e­brate art in their lives and bring hope for the future after a peri­od of trau­ma. Both scenes are clipped on as a rushed epi­logue – the use in Girl is par­tic­u­lar­ly jar­ring as it fol­lows an unjus­ti­fi­ably dis­turb­ing act. A less emo­tion­al­ly obscure end­ing could have seen Lara hap­py in her pointe shoes giv­ing a recital, sim­i­lar to the short per­for­mance at the end of Bil­ly Elliot.

Instead we hear an aria com­posed for sopra­no cas­tra­to, the impli­ca­tions of which are clear. The films then reduce their hero­ines to sug­gest that they have mere­ly been cas­trat­ed and remain male. This is almost cer­tain­ly not the intend­ed mes­sage, but it does demon­strate the impor­tance of extreme sen­si­tiv­i­ty and atten­tion to detail when deal­ing with such a del­i­cate sub­ject, espe­cial­ly when it has the poten­tial to trig­ger audi­ences. I dare say these are issues to which crit­ics might pay bet­ter attention.

Lara and Mari­na face extra dif­fi­cul­ty in careers that we as crit­ics ought to applaud – opera and bal­let. As already chal­leng­ing fields, we should not be adding obsta­cles to their entry into the envi­ron­ment in which they will thrive – the same of course applies to act­ing. In art as in life, if we insist that peo­ple who have tran­si­tioned can only take on the roles of trans’ peo­ple, it fol­lows that no one who has tran­si­tioned can per­form the roles of those who have not. This sit­u­a­tion would only serve to nar­row access to already oppres­sive sec­tors of work.

Progress is not in films that deal direct­ly with med­ical and social tran­si­tion, although they are impor­tant, but ones which do not make an issue of the sub­ject alto­geth­er. Nei­ther Mari­na nor Lara is termed a trans female’ in the films, and yet more-or-less every review of both films brand­ed them as such. These films are actu­al­ly about a woman who wants to sing, and a girl who longs to dance. By fix­at­ing on gen­der as the trans­pho­bic char­ac­ters do, we ulti­mate­ly reduce their tal­ents and per­son­al­i­ties to the med­ical process they have undergone.

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