Girl

The human body is a prison. The human body is an enabler of free­dom. The human body is a ter­rain so vast and intri­cate that we’ll nev­er ful­ly com­pre­hend it, even after spend­ing decades in its com­pa­ny. The human body is mal­leable and can evolve in tan­dem with our desires. The human body is a con­duit for ten­der­ness and pain. The human body is oth­er things we have yet to define. It is per­son­al and pos­sess­es secret mean­ings to the individual.

Lukas Dhont’s debut fea­ture, Girl, explores all of these con­cepts, but is also inter­est­ed in look­ing at the ten­sions and trau­mas that arise when the body becomes a por­tal for artis­tic and bio­log­i­cal expression.

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 appears per­fect­ly built for the exer­tions of dance. Yet the piece of excess flesh between her legs is also the fig­u­ra­tive mill­stone around her neck, shap­ing almost every deci­sion she makes.

Lara is extreme­ly shy, and the film leaves it open as to whether that is a nat­ur­al facet of her char­ac­ter, or whether she has recent­ly descend­ed into a state of nervy mono­syl­labia due to the pre­car­i­ous prospect of her tran­si­tion. Either way, it’s through bal­let that she’s able to release pri­mal and pos­si­bly obscure emo­tions into the world. This is realised through Polster’s remark­ably sub­tle per­for­mance, one of expert poise and bound­less gen­eros­i­ty. He shows with­out ever telling.

Dhont admits that Lara, as a char­ac­ter, is going through things he’ll nev­er be able to com­pre­hend, and as with any film­mak­er telling a sto­ry about a fic­tion­al per­son, a cer­tain amount of tact­ful pro­jec­tion is required. How tact­ful he is will inevitably come down to objec­tive dis­cre­tion. Yet instead of attempt­ing to make an overt­ly moral­is­tic film, he has made a cred­i­ble one, a dra­ma which con­sis­tent­ly con­vinces with its refined sense of behav­iour­al dynam­ics and messy domes­tic milieu.

In a way, Dhont exem­pli­fies the role of Lara’s hope­less­ly com­pas­sion­ate father (Arieh Worthal­ter) who is entire­ly com­mit­ted to co-pilot­ing through this cru­cial stage in his daughter’s life. But often his tra­di­tion­al parental log­ic doesn’t quite address the intri­ca­cies at hand.

When the film orig­i­nal­ly screened at the 2018 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, it struck a chord with audi­ences in atten­dance. The ques­tion of whether it exploits the fragili­ty of its sub­ject for lurid dra­mat­ic ends or extends unend­ing empa­thy towards her har­row­ing jour­ney is cer­tain­ly a point of con­tention. There is a sub­plot in which Lara is rit­u­al­ly humil­i­at­ed by her peers which feels under­cooked and spite­ful, and there is a shock­ing scene late in the film which, let’s just say, is like­ly to divide audiences.

To these eyes it is hard to see this as a sto­ry pow­ered by feel­ings of mal­ice and igno­rance, and yet there have been numer­ous pow­er­ful and edu­ca­tion­al cri­tiques writ­ten of the film by trans crit­ics which argue oth­er­wise. These diver­gent view­points are a para­dox with­in the art of crit­i­cism, and yet Girl is also a film which is about the dif­fi­cul­ty of sec­ond-guess­ing the impuls­es, urges and emo­tions of others.