Girl (2018) Film4, written by Angelo Tijssens and Lukas Dhont, who also directed.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/girl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_(2018_film)

Girl is front-page headlines. Not the Belgian entry for the 2018 Cannes Film Festival that won most of the major award but grandstanding between factional groups amid a British Supreme Court’s ruling that men who change gender—through hormone treatment and surgery—are not legally women. Even the use of the term men or women here is problematic. A ruling that women (and men) are defined by biological sex at birth. Campaigners who won a landmark ruling are facing death threats and abuse. While Tory political campaigners accuse SNP First Minister, John Swinney, of having botched gender reforms such as those that would have allowed trans-male-females to self-identify whatever sex they like and use, for example, female changing rooms.

Phew. That’s lots of words that doesn’t say much about a film that’s outstanding and a tear jerker. Those two don’t usually go together, either. I’m in the majority here. I don’t have any skin in the game. The Supreme Court ruling has as much effect on me as the higher rate of income tax.

My partner’s pal, who she worked with for a few years, contacted her and told her about her son who identified as a girl. I find that sad because I know that s/he will have a hard life. Suicide rates are sky high.  

I know it’s not the same thing, but it’s a story I always tell. One of my da’s best mate’s Jimmy Mac confiding in him his son was gay.

My da wasn’t having it. ‘Oh, no, Jimmy,’ he said. ‘You’ll need tae dae somethin about that.’

What exactly, he didn’t say.

Victor Polster as Lara Verhaeghen is outstanding in so many ways as a trans-girl enrolling and being accepted for a trial period in a prestigious ballet school in Antwerp. The exercise regime in the school, particularly to the girls’ blackened toes, looks more brutal than a sex change. There’s an in-joke when her younger brother, Milo (Olivar Bodart) whom she adores, goes in a huff, and calls her Victor. He’s never to call her that. She’s a girl, not a boy. Stupid. Ah, if life were that simple. Great film.