Review: Girl

Girl (2018): Written by Lukas Dhont and Angelo Tijssens, directed by Lukas Dhont.  Starring: Victor Polster.  Running Time: 100 minutes. 

Rating: 4/4

UPDATE: After being made aware of very sharp criticisms of this film, which ultimately made me less supportive of the film that I originally was, I wrote a follow-up piece on what changed my mind.  Please click here to read it.  The review below is unchanged from when I first wrote it.  

            From the Low Countries comes, courtesy of the annual Queer Film Festival in Weiterstadt, one of the most searing and deep engagements with the many physical and psychological hurdles of gender transition to come out in years.  Girl, written and directed by Belgian director Lukas Dhont, delves deep into the day to day existence of Lara, a young transgirl in the process of her medical transition.  Since she’s experiencing puberty and growing at the same time, this already-complex process is even more delicate and potentially fraught.   

            While she is clearly blessed with an immensely loving and supporting family and a host of engaged and capable doctors handling her medical procedures, day-to-day teenage life as a transperson is relentlessly brutal, with Lara all too aware of how so many of her classmates and ballet partners see her as more of a curiosity to be poked and prodded rather than a person worthy of respect and dignity.  Her sense of alienation leaves her feeling isolated and alone even though her father desperately tries to reach out and offer his support.  Over time, this alienation grows into a desperation that blinds her to much of the love and support around her, leaving her increasingly incapable of seeing the healthy ways through her struggles.  The climax this builds to includes a moment that induced me to look away from the screen entirely for a bit, the first time in years a film has managed to push me that far. 

            Lara’s alienation, her unending fears and anxieties, are powerfully captured through the use of shots that focuses for extended cuts on her face, setting her apart from the normal scenes of daily teenage life that surround her.  We often see her stand, silent, at a window, watching “normal” teenagers below talking, laughing, making out, and through ’s performance, Lara’s longing is made achingly palpable.  There is a biting authenticity to so many of the scenes featuring Lara’s often rather tortured interactions with people her age. 

            Lara’s father is equally powerful in how earnest and clear his love for his daughter is, and how acutely aware he is that he simply can’t protect her from the worst, even though he wants to.  It is a remarkably acted film through and through. 

            Films, as Roger Ebert loved to say, are machines that generate empathy- the best of them take us out of ourselves and allow us to see, think, and understand as other people in ways that are otherwise next to impossible to achieve.  Girl is one of the year’s finest examples of how film can achieve this, by so perfectly and sensitively delving into how we define gender, both individually and as a society.  It peels back the layers of gentility we like to use in the West to pretend we’ve already created the perfect world, when in fact we still so very far away from one.  No one deserves to experience the humiliations and pains that Lara is forced to endure.  Girl reminds us of why continuing the fight for a world where our Lara’s can exist without fear is so essential, why we can never allow ourselves to let up. 

-Noah Franc