#don't ask abt the hospitalized trans kids counter its purpose will be clear enough quickly enough

[lilyhoshikawa]

Jane's 2025 Transfem Multimedia Review Project #1 - Girl (2018)

Hiya folks! It's me, Jane, everyone's favorite girl!Welcome to Jane's 2025 Transfem Multimedia Review Project, a thing I'm going to try to do until it inevitably becomes too much work and I get sick of it. This year I've vowed to consume as much transfem-centric media as I can find, and I hope to write a short little review of everything I engage with here. This will inevitably include revisiting some of my old favorites as well as seeking out new media, so long as it fits the central theme- focusing in whole or in part on a transfeminine character in a major role. There's a lot I either won't get around to or don't want to touch for various reasons, but honestly, as time goes along I hope that'll be relatively self-explanatory.

Full disclosure, this first review went way longer than I expected it to and took awhile to write. You'll probably see why!

Because of how long this first one took, I'm not going to guarantee I won't decide to keep this rolling into 2026 if I still want to review more transfem stories and I haven't gotten enough reviews done yet. We're playing it by ear!

But without further ado! We're kicking things off with a real rough example, the 2018 Dutch drama "Girl." If you want to know why it's so rough an example… well, see below.

CW: Discussion of transphobic themes, transphobia, fetishization, misgendering / deadnaming, eating disorders, self-harm, hospitalization

"Girl" is a story predominantly about dysphoria and the self-hatred that comes from it, which is something that will echo through every narrative decision I'm going to discuss further on. I will be clear upfront that there's a potential problem in trans narratives where every story about trans people feels the need to center itself on dysphoria, the most "unique" struggle we face. At the very least, this is a criticism I've heard. I'll be honest in saying that I don't really feel the same way, as the trans media we have right now is so limited, and so much of it uses us as an unknowable "other." These sorts of stories don't bother me, but we'll see if this changes as the project goes on. At the very least, I wanted to get out in front of it here, since the decision to focus on dysphoria in and of itself is not something I have a problem with.

One thing I will say is that the choice to focus mostly on the protagonist, Lara's, dysphoria ends up framing her in a relatively privileged position, which I don't think does the movie any favors. More on that later. But first thing's first, I want to address the elephant in the room, the most notable consequence of the narrative fixation with dysphoria as a central theme.

This movie's relationship to its protagonist (the titular girl) is, in a word, fetishistic. This is exceedingly strange and upsetting, considering Lara is 15-16 years old during the events of the plot. The long, gratuitous scenes of her taking off her shirt, exposing her flat chest, and examining herself in the mirror really come off as objectification in the purest sense, in a sense that would much more easily be recognized for how gross it is were this character a cis girl. To be fair, this movie does also show a handful of underage cis characters naked, but in less of a fetishizing, drawn out way as compared to how it shows Lara. They're clearly there for comparison, and they receive far less focus than Lara and her body.

So much of this movie concerns itself less with who Lara is and more with what she is. It is a voyeuristic examination of her body, and especially her masculine traits. Despite the fact that, as we learn early on, Lara is on puberty blockers, the actor playing her (Victor Polster) obviously is not, being a cis man. This is the sort of choice that makes or breaks your ability to tell a compelling trans narrative, to be taken seriously at all. If you don't cast a trans actress, will you at least cast a cis woman? And this movie wouldn't, of course it wouldn't. That would get in the way of its primary focus: the fetishization of the transfeminine body, and in particular its "masculine" features. That might sound a little harsh, as I said upfront that the story is one about dysphoria. That would be harder to pull off with a cis actress, wouldn’t it? Well, no. It would limit the ways that you could frame and express that dysphoria, but that would actually be a blessing, as it would likely prevent them from such fetishistic framing as this. The movie makes the decision to actively undermine its own narrative to do so, ensuring that a cis man's body stands in for that of a trans woman who hasn't even undergone male puberty.

And in this vein, the movie goes to great lengths to highlight Lara's masculine features every chance it gets. Her broad shoulders, her square jawline, her flat chest, and especially her penis. Again, this character is 15-16 years old, but the filmmakers did not let that fact stop them from showing her penis onscreen on several occasions, to say nothing of how it is a constant verbal focus when it isn't being actively shown. And of course, even that is not to mention the drawn-out scenes of her tucking and removing her tuck. Something which, by the way, she uses tape for. And don't worry, the movie is sure to show us in excruciating detail how painful that is. This habit results in a lot of suffering for Lara, including a genital infection which is just glossed over in a throwaway line. Her dad begs her to stop, mentioning that she does own "special underwear" which I presume are either women's underwear with extra room for the penis or something that assists in the use of underwear to tuck, which is the most common method of tucking safely and the way myself and most of my transfem friends tuck. Why Lara chooses to continue using tape is never really explicitly stated, and I can only assume we're meant to infer that whatever underwear she owns doesn't hide away her bulge enough for her. Would be nice to see that or have it told to us, though! It would really go a long way in terms of justifying Lara's as of now inexplicable self-destructive habit.

The thing about this degree of focus on Lara's body is that, honestly, she actually passes relatively fine for much of the movie when the focus isn't on her masculine features. When we see her in casual clothing, she looks perfectly cisgender for the most part, even with a cis man playing her. To avoid grappling with this fact, the fact that maybe just maybe trans bodies are not so outlandish, that your average trans person will not be so effortlessly clockable, the movie finds as many opportunities as possible to highlight her body's more masculine aspects, even when it isn't outright stripping her naked.

Again, the amount of time this movie spends lingering on shots of Lara shirtless or otherwise partially nude is one part of that, but there's also the amount of scenes where she's in sleepwear or underwear at the doctor's office that makes sure there's a focus on her bulge. And most prominently, this manifests in her ballet, her primary (and to be honest, only) interest, which takes up a significant portion of the runtime, and which is sure to put her in a tight-fitting outfit to highlight her chest, shoulders and jawline. To maximize how distinctly they can make Lara stand out amongst cis girls.

It might be unfair of me to boldly proclaim that Lara's interest in ballet is only so they can more easily contrast her with her cis peers. After all, it's also a fantastic way to get Lara bloody and injured, working herself to the bone, and continually suffering to no avail. We'll touch more on just how much this movie revels in Lara's suffering, but for now let me just say that the ballet plotline doesn't actually end up going well for Lara.

Needless to say, there voyeurism around Lara's body is matched only by its voyeurism for her suffering. When the fixation on her body isn't being used to frame her as masculine, it's being used to showcase how rail-thin she is, because of her eating disorder. So much of the movie refuses to contend with Lara's actual thoughts and feelings, instead just showing her to us. Showing us her as she suffers in dysphoria and self-harm and disordered behavior. There's so little narrative merit to it, because there's no takeaway. Lara suffers in silence and refuses to tell the people in her life anything. Why? I don't know. I have my guesses, being in a similar boat to Lara's once myself, but I'll never get to know for sure, because the movie is allergic to having Lara actually express herself.

Lara barely talks, and the framing of scenes often don't give us much to read into. I think this is largely on purpose, because I don't know if I really believe that this movie wants us to empathize with her. It's so incredibly focused on showing instead, letting us see every detail. We don't see the causes, only the consequences. It's a movie about voyeurism. Look at this girl, look at her body, look at the spectacle.

This is all heightened by the fact that, for a significant amount of the movie, there's not really even an active conflict taking place (at least not in regard to her transness- there is the running plotline of Lara struggling to improve in ballet). Lara is by and large accepted in her community, by her family and classmates. There are a lot of scenes of characters insisting they see a woman when they look at Lara, and her not believing them. That's fine, that's real, and the movie does show us- in plenty of detail- why she doesn't see herself as a girl. It's a much more subtle and passive form of transphobia, which would be fine to focus on, in a movie that was more competent about the subject matter being tackled. But telling a story about the nuances of being trans and being supported fully but still struggling in these areas has to be purposeful, it has to be competent. And that competence has to begin at what feels more like respect and less like morbid fascination.

Early on, we already see that Lara has the sort of support most trans teens could only dream of. A father that accepts her, the best medical care available, and a new school where she can fit in. Lara is on puberty blockers early and is already in talks about bottom surgery. Her extended family all treat her like a woman and celebrate when she finally starts taking estrogen. There are isolated moments of hardship- Lara's teacher having to ask her classmates if they're okay with her using female facilities, for instance- but it's by and large the kind of universal acceptance that feels utterly alien to the vast majority of trans people, even those that knew at a young enough age to be considered for those resources.

Lara's nagging issue throughout much of the movie is entirely internal, her own dissatisfaction with her body and desire to change before she can start living. It's an understandable feeling, the sense that a trans person's life can't truly start until they pass exactly how they want to, but it is- as I hinted at earlier- a fairly privileged problem to have. For a movie that wants to revel in Lara's suffering so much, it seems noteworthy that the filmmakers chose to have so much of that be internal in nature. I don't like the conclusions that leads me to, so I'll leave them unstated but heavy-handedly implied.

Towards the 3/4th mark of the runtime, we finally start getting to more pervasive instances of transphobia directed at Lara. Of course, by then it's too late for these to actively inform her character, she's been hurting herself for the whole film without these reasons, and now these instances of transphobia are just fuel to the fire. They're also… kind of confusing?

For instance: Lara is invited to a sleepover with her classmates, and she's sectioned off into her own space away from the cis girls. This appears to be entirely at the discretion of one particular classmate, as Lara has always been allowed in female spaces in the movie up to this point, and even had her female classmates reassure her of this. This same classmate later pressures Lara into showing the girls her penis, something the other girls join in egging her on to do. It's not only an uncomfortable scene, but also just… such a confusing choice as a means to showcase Lara's social othering. To do so this late, this clumsily, I can't really see the point other than to help push Lara along to her ultimate conclusion, which is severe enough to require quite a push.

As the movie goes on, Lara gets worse and worse, more into her own head. She starts overworking and underfeeding herself, closing herself off to the world even more, and eventually facing mounting consequences. She collapses during a ballet recital which takes her out of contention for the big show that the movie had been building up to, which essentially dashes Lara's hopes of continuing on as a ballerina after she committed so much to it, and sacrificed so much for it. Her physical condition deteriorates, she eats less and less, and her relationships crumble, which is all just a lot of misery for the sake of it. She was already miserable, but we really needed to see her whole future implode, I guess.

And then, of course, the ending. Oh, how can I even talk about the ending? Well, if a good climax is the mounting story beats coming to a head, this movie's climax is its obsession with Lara's suffering, her body, and dysphoria coming to a head. Lara waits for her father to leave the apartment, calls emergency services, and uses a pair of scissors to cut off her penis. She is then rushed to the hospital, and that's about all we see of that.

What is there to say about this? How do I respond to this sort of scene? Astonishment, bewilderment at this movie's broadly positive response by critics outside of explicitly queer spaces? Outrage that the decision to tell stories about trans girls so often ends this way, with blood and mutilation and hospitalization and endless suffering? Should I address the fact that there's no real falling action past this point aside from a baffling scene of Lara, now with shorter hair, walking down a subway tunnel smiling? Should I ask the filmmakers about their understanding of vaginoplasty, and how this injury might impact it? I don't know. Honestly, I could not tell you what the right response would be. But I will tell you that I had my moments of hoping this movie had an actual compelling ending that would wrap up all my issues with it along the way, and this was not even in the running for ways I anticipated them to end it. What a brutal, ugly ending for an awful, disturbing movie.

Anyway, doing the impossible task of putting that aside somehow, things I liked. Is there anything I liked? Sure. I like the fact that Lara is very quiet. She speaks softly, rarely, and always sounds uncomfortable and unsure of herself, which is the sort of subtle characterization that feels so lacking in so much of the movie and feels very apt for a transfem character (even though, again, she is on puberty blockers, so her voice being as low as it is is a little odd). Subtle things like that go a long way! Although her quietness also comes at the cost of character, as I said before. There's also a scene where Lara is trying to get her 6 year old brother up for school in the morning and while resisting he uses her deadname, because he's a child and he knows it will upset her, which is the kind of moment I actually do quite appreciate. Lara is shocked and upset by this but she quickly has to reign it in and still do her duty of helping him get ready and taking him to school, and she can't hold it against him when he's too young to know why what he did was so wrong. It's a good moment to show the more subtle moments of struggle in a transition without it feeling forced or unnecessary. I do think it's weird that they made Lara's deadname her actor's actual first name, though. And there's one moment where Lara's dad says she'll be an example to trans girls around the world and she says "I don't want to be an example, I just want to be a girl," which is good stuff, imo.

The critical question, for me, going into media like this is "does this character feel like a trans girl?" because regardless of how painful a piece of media can be, it has value if it- intentionally or otherwise- captures some essence of the trans experience. I do think this movie does that, and I am in some ways compelled by the story. It's very ugly, it's very painful, it's the sort of media we want to leave behind us. But can I comfortably write it off in its entirety? No, not right now, not when representation is so sparse. For better or for worse, I see some of myself in this character, in her experiences, in her quiet anxiety and endless discomfort, in her dysphoric obsession with her body, even as that obsession is merely an extension of the cisgender filmmakers' fetishization and spectacle, even as the rest of the audience- the TME audience- is expected to look at it like a carnival freak show.

All of that said. Ultimately, the question is… who is this movie for, at the end of the day? What is it doing for the trans community more broadly? Does it seek to humanize us, to normalize us, to help cis people understand us? So many of these movies do, after all. It's clear from the content that this movie isn't for trans people, but is it any good for cis people? Well I hope I've already made this clear, but no. The amount of time this movie spends fetishizing trans bodies, lingering in this sense of unease and discomfort, exists for the voyeuristic thrill of the cis audience. To gaze at the transfeminine body as if to dissect it, even as each of this scenes portray Lara's own discomfort with it.

The thing is, I really feel for Lara. I understand her, see myself in her struggles. I can't help but feel myself in her, because it's the same struggle I've lived through. But looking at it objectively, I don't know that this movie connects. Lara's trauma and suffering is so much more spectacle for the viewer on the outside looking in, distilled into the way it fixates on her body. Is there artistic merit in that, in the continued use of nudity and gore to display the things that lead to her discomfort reaching its peak? Maybe. But I don't think this movie really earns that good faith.

Verdict: 2/5

There's nowhere to go but up. I hope.

Hospitalized Trans Kids Counter: 1 (+1)