Girl – first look review

Lara (Vic­tor Pol­ster) wants two things in life: to become a career bal­le­ri­na and to com­plete her gen­der realign­ment from male to female. She is tall and sinewy with an elfin face, and per­fect­ly built to dance. Yet the piece of excess flesh between her legs is also the fig­u­ra­tive mill­stone around her neck, shap­ing almost every deci­sion she makes in life. Bel­gian direc­tor Lukas Dhont’s excep­tion­al teen movie debut, Girl, fol­lows the soft­ly spo­ken Lara as she nego­ti­ates such banal tasks as going to the bath­room dur­ing bal­let prac­tice, along­side the com­pli­cat­ed pre-op treat­ment that comes ahead of her final operation.

Where the film excels is that it nev­er comes across as a study, or a sto­ry that’s being told for cold edu­ca­tion­al pur­pos­es. There’s a sub­tle real­ism to the way the char­ac­ters inter­act, as well as a dearth of what you might see as big dra­mat­ic moments (although, there def­i­nite­ly are a few big ones thrown in). Even thought Lara is going through inten­sive bal­let tri­als, you nev­er get the sense that this is a movie where the char­ac­ter is all set to embrace clas­si­cal art as a way to tri­umph over his or her adver­si­ty. There’s some­thing deep­er and more mov­ing: a depic­tion of a trans char­ac­ter who craves both change and nor­mal­cy, the sim­ple desire to live and to be con­tent in her own body.

Pol­ster deliv­ers a mes­meris­ing per­for­mance in the title role, nev­er overem­pha­sis­ing emo­tions and hit­ting every nec­es­sary note with sub­tle, grace­ful élan. Watch­ing the film is a game of look­ing at the Lara being pre­sent­ed to the world and the Lara being hid­den from the world, the frac­tured soul under­neath that, awk­ward cream-coloured skin. One is hap­py to respond, ​“I’m fine!”, every time her well­be­ing is asked after by her dot­ing father (Arieh Worthal­ter), and the oth­er is a mess of nerves and eager­ness, break­ing down in the split sec­onds between paint­ed smiles and par­ry­ing the jibes from her peers with qui­et bewilderment.

Just as in Lara’s ardu­ous dance prac­tices, there are a cou­ple of very minor mis­steps. A humil­i­a­tion sequence ear­ly on, where a school teacher asks Lara to close her eyes while the female mem­bers of her class decide if she can use the same restroom as them, just feels like a stunt from a less­er, more moral­ly didac­tic movie. There’s also a bul­ly­ing cir­cle sequence lat­er which just trans­lates as a quick and cheap way to make Lara more sad.

Yet these moments stand out because the all mate­r­i­al around them is so rig­or­ous and sen­si­tive. The dance sequences are beau­ti­ful­ly filmed – a casu­al cel­e­bra­tion of bod­ies in motion which boasts an excit­ing, doc­u­men­tary inti­ma­cy. The cli­max is sur­pris­ing (shock­ing, even) but extreme­ly plau­si­ble giv­en what comes before it, cap­ping off a sen­sa­tion­al and assured film which will hope­ful­ly be the first of many for its tal­ent­ed mak­er and incred­i­ble star.