The Reborn Identity
GIRL I A transgender ballerina finds life moving too slowly in this Cannes favourite…
Girl is a study of youthful ambition: a Belgian named Lara just wants to be like any other teenage girl in her ballet class. The trouble is that Lara, physically, is a boy and her frustration with the glacial pace of the transition process is starting to take its toll. It sounds like the starting point for an intense and depressing LGBT movie, but the surprising thing is how light Girl is – and accomplished for a first feature.
The director is Lukas Dhont, a freshfaced 27-year-old who dreamed of making this film for nearly a decade. “I was about to start film school,” he recalls, “and I saw an article in a Belgian newspaper about a 15-year-old trans girl called Nora who went on to become a classical dancer, but whose school did not allow her to change classes from the boys’ class to the girls’ class. I had so much admiration for this girl and her story that I cut the article out and I kept it with me. And I always said to myself, ‘I want this to be my first feature film.’”
Dhont contacted Nora, and the two became close friends. “The original idea was to shoot a documentary,” he says, “but she didn’t really feel like doing that,
because she was at a moment in her life where she really didn’t want to be in front of the camera. However, she did agree to start collaborating behind the camera, and so we started writing the script for a fiction film.”
Although the film was a smash at Cannes and other festivals, Girl has since run into a backlash for Dhont’s decision to cast a non-trans actor, Victor Polster, in the lead, a controversy that may have scuppered his film’s chances at the Oscars. It’s a conversation Dhont has had many times, but he addresses the issue with good grace. “The casting process was the most challenging part of this film,” he sighs. “Because I always imagined the film with [Nora] in mind. So we did an open casting. We saw young trans people, we saw many, many people. But when Victor entered the room, we were all mesmerised. He has a magnetic force.”
Indeed, trans or not, Polster gives an extraordinary performance in a standout role. “He’s a very comfortable young person,” nods Dhont. “And
I say ‘young person’ because I think he’s someone that is able to allow himself to channel as much of his feminine as his masculine side – whatever that even means. He’s an example of a younger generation that has really started thinking less and less in this very divided, binary way.”