Girl is a 2018 Belgian-Dutch drama film directed by Lukas Dhont, starring Victor Polster.
Lara (Polster) is a 15-year-old transgender girl. She wants to be a professional dancer and she attends dancing courses in a highly selective ballet school. She lives with her younger brother and her father, who supports her. She is on a hormonal treatment and she plans to have a sex reassignment surgery.
Girl provides examples of:
- Agony of the Feet: Lara's feet are covered in blood after the class because she danced en pointe too much.
- Alpha Bitch: Initially, Lois seems to be nice to Lara, but she qualifies as an alpha bitch when she pressures Lara to show her penis to a group of girls.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Downplayed because Lara generally gets on well with her younger brother, but, during a little argument with him, he calls her by her former masculine given name.
- Ballet: Lara dreams of becoming a professional ballet dancer, so she attends dancing courses in a highly selective ballet school.
- Coming of Age Story: Lara is 15 years old. Over the course of the film, she makes a lot of efforts to become a profesional dancer. She has a first sexual experience. She has disagreements with her dad. She is depressed because she has gender dysphoria about her body.
- Creepy Ballet: The intensive ballet training puts a high strain on Lara's body, which makes her gender dysphoria worse. The school is also very selective, which causes an additional mental stress. Moreover, some of the other dancers are not nice to her (they force her to show her penis at a sleepover).
- Male Frontal Nudity: When Lara looks at her naked body in a mirror in her bedroom, her penis is visible.
- Missing Mom: Lara's mother is missing. The film does not explain why.
- Parent with New Paramour: Lara's mother is missing and her father starts dating Christine.
- Self-Harm: Lara does not eat enough, so that her body weakens. She also compresses her penis with tape, so that she gets an infection. In the end, she tries to cut her penis with scissors.
- Shower Scene: There are several scenes where Lara has a shower with the other girls after the dance class, but they are not used for Fanservice, but rather to show Lara's discomfort with her body.
- Straight to the Pointe: Averted. The film actually shows how difficult it is to dance en pointe.
- Training from Hell: Lara's dance training is very intensive. Her feet are covered in blood after the class because she danced en pointe too much.
- Trans Relationship Troubles: Lara tells her shrink that she cannot have romantic relationships at the moment because her body makes it impossible. She nevertheless seduces her neighbour, but she prevents him from touching her breasts or pubis and she gives him a blowjob.
- Trans Tribulations: Lara is a transgender girl. She is publicly humiliated at school when a teacher asks if the other girls are upset by the fact that she uses the girls' changing-room. Later, her classmates force her to show her penis. Yet, her most important problem is her gender dysphoria: she is obsessed by the fact that her breasts do no develop and she self-harms.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The film is based on the story of Nora Monsecour, a professional dancer and trans woman from Belgium, but most of the events of the film are fictional (for example, Monsecour was not accepted to the girls' class).
