Girl

It is 2018, feminist and queer movements have gained huge rights towards equality (every single country in the world has recognized women's right to vote, and 28 countries have recognized same sex marriage), and even when there's a lot to be done, we tend to believe that the Western World is every day more and more open towards inclusion and acceptance, and moving closer towards the end of patriarchy.

But at times, some events open our eyes to the real picture. The recent announcement that for the first time ever the beauty contest of Miss Universe will allow two transgender women to compete (Miss Spain and Miss Mongolia) sparked a new flame that bursts another bubble of the liberal thought. From open attacks to the right of the two women to be in the contest, even from other contestant, to a wave of mocking memes on the Internet, we are coming to see that, even among well educated middle-upper classes, the anti-transgender feeling is still vibrant, how much outrage is produced by the challenging of the traditional concepts of gender and sexuality.

Forgetting the fact that a Beauty Contest that measure a woman's value from her physical appearance shouldn't be a thing at all, what comes from this moment in trans history is the importance of representation in popular culture. Just earlier this year, Chilean film Una Mujer Fantástica won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, with actress Daniela Vega being among the presenters of the show (first time for a transgender woman), and later, Girl, a Belgian film about a teenage girl going through the process of sex change, won the Camera d'Or for the Best First Feature Film in the Cannes Film Festival.

Unlike A Fantastic Woman, that focused on the social reactions, Girl is mostly about the internal process. A fantastic character study, Lara is struggling to fulfill her dreams of becoming a professional ballet dancer and finally having a genital surgery, which only causes her more distress when she founds out that both dreams are in conflict against each other (she needs to rest for the surgery, but intense practice to make it as a dancer). Lukas Dhont makes a fantastic work getting us inside of Lara's world, with a dynamic camera that at times observes and at times dances, that is intimate and that acknowledges that this is a film about the human body and that is not afraid of showing it, but that is subtle and elegant at it.

But this already great screenplay that is empathic and shows us a reality that we as cisgender persons are so far away of understanding, would be nothing if it wasn't because of the amazing discovery of Victor Polster, the actor who plays Lara that offers a captivating performance, full of humanity and gives the character a round three-dimensional existence thanks to the natural way that he embodies the constant tension of his character; the pain, the confusion, the joy, the discoveries... Polster navigates a wide range of emotions and comes more than victorious from a deep internal search of performative true.

It's a shame that the film is two scenes too long, since it had a perfect ending that was pointlessly elongated, but the intimacy created and the sense of understanding of a hard reality is quite outstanding. Dhont has the certainty of an experimented filmmaker in his directorial debut, and we should say that this film goes straight to the (not as big as we wish it was) canon of transgender films. A must see film for opening discussions very needed on gender and identity.