Girl (2018) Reviews

• This is true cinematic brilliance

  moveebuff19532019-03-16

  Girl is the type of movie that will hopefully open your eyes and heart to the little known challenges that face someone caught in the wrong body. I fell in love with Lana almost immediately because of her sensitive, kind, passionate character. She brings you deep into her world of the pain it takes to hide her unwanted features with such elegance and composure. Even when egged on by fellow dancers she holds in her pain in hope of acceptance. Victor Polster is brilliant as the graceful and beautiful Lana. The determination, blood, sweat and tears it takes to be a ballerina is mind boggling but for Lara it is a passion she is not willing to give up on no matter what it takes.

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• A truly great film with an oscar winning performance

  Brusselssprout2018-10-29

  The struggles of a 15 year old girl are more than familiar and already well documented but just imagine and add to that the struggle of a girl living inside a masculine body. Every day being confronted with a body that you don't want and don't feel.The film does an extraordinay job of letting you feel all the emotions this courageous girl has to face each day over and over again. The main actor is simply stunning and if there's any justice, he should receive an oscar for this jaw dropping performance. I'm very displeased with comments as "the pacing is too slow" "or "too much repetition". To me there's only one way of discribing the ordinary life of this girl and the director was 100% right with the repetition and the pacing. Every shot is packed with emotion and tells so much. Just watch the faces of the actors and there's more action and emotion than any boring action movie. All the actors are amazing, the father, doctors, students even her little brother are very natural. It almost felt like a documentary but full of emotion. Naturally the transgender community was the first to protest - being gay myself i can say - what's new. The selfhate of - luckily - a small but loud part of the LGBT is that great that each and every attempt at making a book, film, play, etc... about the community is met with derision and has to be fiercely bashed. "Only a transgender actor could have played the role and felt the right emotions": did they really see the film and can honestly say that the emotions and acting are not spot on ? "Too much focus on the physical aspects": really ??? Ask just any 15-year old and they can tell just how much they are obsessed with their appearance, just add to that a girl in a boys' body, then tell me again why you shouldn't focus on the plysical aspects and their emotional impact. If you want to see a truly great film, it's this one.

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• Not bad but very disappointing

  yongfilmcritic2019-01-17

  I missed girl in Cannes where everyone was talking about. Finally watched the film which I was very disappointed. it was not bad but certainly bloated by everyone. Transgender or not it is ultimately a meager story and a little Boring and soulless.

• A story about humanity

  resireg2019-03-22

  I don't consider myself the target audience. I have the feeling that most lgbt movies are targeted to their own group, or to some non conformist female audience. I find that there are hardly any good movies for straight guys (like Philadelphia, C.R.A.Z.Y.), and I believe that many men can only watch movies like this alone, because other people might interpret our liking of a gay movie as an indication of som secret desire, o a hint of some effeminate tendency. The most homophobic judgement I heard so far was from straight female girls, so I avoid ever mentioning that I watched and even liked this movie. For example, when I watched the movie "Priscilla, the queen of the desert" many years ago, it made me disgusted with those bizarre, ultra flamboyant drag queens. Since I live in an environment that is 99% straight, I never had any gay or transgender acquaintance (because they always prefered hangjng out with women), so I hve no idea how was thwir lives, upbringing, etc, so films like these help us a lot to see a reality of a tiny group that we only hear about in the news, but hardly ever encounter in real life. First of all, growing up in the 90s, the rule was to choose a group and fit in, so any effeminate boy would segregate himself in the girl's world (even doing P.E. class with them) and we the straight boys have no contact whatsoever with them. So I don't have a clue if they behave masculine at home in order to deceive their parents and brothers for example. In the world that I grew up, transvestite was a synonim of sex worker, so we associated them with prostitution, drug use and freakiness. The fact that som many of them were selling themselves in the sidewalk meant that a lot of men are aroused and attracted by them, at the same time that I heard stories about groups of young guys getting together to phisically harm them, so there is this prejudice, even in me a little bit that they are to be avoided at any cost. This movie (Girl) was very eye opening, because it reminded us that these people have fathers, brothers just like us, and they behave lime a normal family. In the movie, we cheer and support Lara, because we want her to become a woman , with hormones and reassignemnt surgery in order to fulfill her dreams and become what she want to be. It is incredible hpw the actor convinced me almost all the time that it was a female pwrson when she tending for her brother(she is almost like his mother), cooking for her relatives, so she was not trying to shock or harm her family. In the end she is trying to be happy, make friends, have fun, even date another guy (but I still consider some sort of rape a person to conceal their current sex, because it makes the act non consensual. A man assumes it is kissing and fondling a girl, not a person in trasition). The beauty of the movie is also the self confidence of Lara or maybe extreme naiveté. Despite not being a girl yet, she does not mind sharing changing rooms, swimming, having sleepovers with other girls, when we know that she will be faced with embarassing questions or requests. I call it an educational movie.

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• An Emotionally Devastating Coming-of-Age Tale

  roblesar992018-09-26

  Emotionally devastating yet reassuringly empathetic, director Lukas Dhont's GIRL tells the story of transgender ballerina Lara as she seeks to complete her transition while struggling to achieve her dreams. Make no mistake, this is a tough film to watch (as exemplified by the cringing noises and gasps from the elderly women sitting in the row behind me), but it's also a rewarding one. Victor Polster delivers some of the best work of the year in his portrayal of the protagonist, and while some will rightly be bothered by the fact that Polster is a cisgender male actor who cannot ever known firsthand the difficulties that someone like Lara would have gone through her entire life, he nonetheless delivers an arresting, sensitive performance that adroitly examines these devastating struggles. And while the film does focus a fair amount on the struggles that Lara faces through her transition, it also highlights her resilience and courage, which define her more than anything else. I also have to point out that it's been a landmark year for movie dads, with Arieh Worthalter fitting right in with Michael Stuhlbarg's dad from CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, Josh Hamilton's dad from EIGHTH GRADE, and Tracy Letts' dad from LADY BIRD. Worthalter shines as a devoting father who desires nothing more than his daughter's happiness. If there's one thing I disliked about GIRL, however, it's the slow pacing, which I really started to feel during the last fifteen minutes of the film or so. It's only 105 minutes long but each and every minute is certainly felt. I also wasn't the biggest fan of Dhont cutting the music off during certain scenes (let the scene play out, Dhont!). Despite my complaints and the fact that I might not have loved GIRL, I still certainly believe it's worth watching.

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