Girls Lost

What would you do if you could spend a few hours liv­ing as a dif­fer­ent gen­der? Direc­tor Alexan­dra-Therese Keining’s Girls Lost answers this ques­tion and much more as it fol­lows teen trio Kim (Tuva Jag­ell), Momo (Louise Nyvall) and Bel­la (Wilma Holmén) as they dis­cov­er a mys­te­ri­ous enchant­ed plant that, when ingest­ed, tem­porar­i­ly turns them into boys. But it’s not just their sex that changes, the world around them and their per­cep­tion of it does too. The nec­tar of the flower infus­es them with new-found con­fi­dence and spurs a drug-fuelled rebel­lion that frees them from their dai­ly repressions.

Masks, lanterns, fairy lights and a bon­fire in a for­est at night – the girls dance under the moon­light to the twin­kle of girl­hood in a neon wilder­ness full of won­der and promise. But all is not as light-heart­ed as it seems. Tar­get­ed by sex­ist bul­lies that go as far as gang­ing up to try to rip Bella’s top off, the girls are in a fight to fig­ure out who they real­ly are.

Fenced into a murky world of vio­lence, mar­gin­al­i­ty and sex­u­al con­fu­sion, the girls’ belief in the mag­i­cal flower stems from a deeply root­ed desire to be treat­ed as equals. An androg­y­nous and pret­ty char­ac­ter to begin with, the flower affirms Kim’s gen­der cri­sis and address­es trans­sex­u­al­i­ty in a way that adds weight to what might oth­er­wise seem a lit­tle basic. Accom­pa­nied by ​’80s inspired synth, com­plete with shots of teens ped­dling hur­ried­ly around their local sub­ur­ban neigh­bour­hood, there’s a clear nod to com­ing-of-age dra­mas of that era, but with a con­tem­po­rary twist that spot­lights LGBTQA+ issues.

The moon is an ever-present motif in the film that reflects the fear and mys­tery the girls face. Hold­ing with­in it the total­i­ty of the fem­i­nine expe­ri­ence, the moon’s var­i­ous cycles of change mir­ror the lives of the girls as they evolve and grow through their unique expe­ri­ences. But do the girls embrace their fem­i­nin­i­ty or reject it?