2022.10.06

FILM_REVIEWS_GXRL, the girl who matters.

A friend recommended the film "Girl" to me; you'll like it, he added... I started watching it without knowing what it was about and I couldn't take my eyes off the screen at any moment; it trapped me from the moment I understood the inner conflict suffered by a young teenager enclosed in a male body she doesn't recognise and who, therefore, she feels trapped at an age when the only thing you want is to escape and fly. Interesting direction, as well as brave and risky, shown by the new director Lucas Dhont, with great sensitivity in conveying emotions.



The difficulties in which some of our young people find themselves, in this case a teenager, orphaned by her mother but surrounded by a protective and understanding environment, a five-year-old brother whom she looks after and to whom she pours her affection, a father who looks after her and understands her, together with her psychologist who helps her in her arduous journey.

Change of city at the moment when she begins the process of "sex change", in the slow transit between hormones and with a superhuman effort, she manages to go from male dancer to female dancer in the new academy. The young actor Victor Polster (protagonist) demonstrates as an actor-dancer what the character undergoes, as if it were himself, with an extraordinary performance, linked to a prodigious direction, with an intimate and silent camera where we accompany the protagonist and he makes us dance on tiptoe in his tortuous swan turns.

The tension in the showers where she tries to hide her intimacy, the cruel curiosity typical of her age on the part of her friends, the need to relate. She's backing herself into a corner. Something that moved me was the answer she gives to the father and the psychologist when they ask her if she has met any boys. The protagonist's answer makes us reflect once again on the fact that it is not so simple. What to do when faced with a choice of this magnitude? What to do when the identifications to the sex that was not given to her from the start imply such an uncertain journey?

I didn't wake up from the collapse until the credits start to roll. I hope the same thing happens to you.  Last year I participated in a course that prepares for the exciting task of facilitating groups and teams with Graciela Jasiner. Some of my colleagues were working with trans adolescents in rural areas because of the increase in suicides, which made me reflect on these situations. In this case "Girl" takes place in a more sympathetic socio-familial environment, but for her it is no less asphyxiating as she has a very strong desire that needs to be accompanied until she finds a way out of the suffering of not being who she thinks she is.

Diego Jiménez



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