This Belgian
film has been in my “so many movies, so little time” pile for years, and I
finally got around to it. It hits a lot
of the typical hallmarks of trans stories, but I think it mostly hits them well
and does a nice job exploring its subject matter while also telling a
compelling story.
The
Fabres have just moved into town, and with their new neighbors peering in,
parents Pierre and Hanna are still deciding what should be done about their
youngest child, Ludovic. Hanna insists
that Ludovic’s penchant for wearing dresses and playing with dolls is “normal”
until age seven and assures Pierre that “he’ll outgrow it” soon. Pierre, meanwhile, either doesn’t trust that
the “problem” will go away on its own or doesn’t want to wait for it to do so,
and urges more proactive measures. What
neither of them realize, of course, is that Ludovic is transgender, and despite
their worrying and speculating, her only real problem is people policing her
gender and telling her she’s something she’s not.
Many of
the story beats are what you’d expect.
We get dress-up sessions, arguments over Ludovic’s hair, bullying at
school, child psychologists, neighbors making their disapproval clear,
punishments over Ludovic being herself, tense dinner-table shouting matches,
worried looks over Ludovic’s elegant dancing, and parents at school getting up
in arms over Ludovic’s “unnatural tendencies.”
In spite of all that well-trod ground, however, there’s a good story
here that feels specific to the characters at hand.
I
really enjoy Ludovic, who’s daydreamy and a little shy, young enough that she
really doesn’t get what all the drama is about.
She accepts that she may currently have the body of a boy but knows that
that isn’t right and fully expects the situation to remedy itself soon. While she waits to become a girl, she
cheerfully plans her wedding to her schoolyard crush, and when her older sister
explains biological gender to her, it doesn’t faze her in the slightest. In fact, she sees it as an explanation to all
the confusion, and she begins reassuring people that one of her X’s (as in XX,
not XY) got lost when God was making her.
It’s not until kids at school make fun of her dolls and her parents
start yelling at her for wearing dresses that she starts to get confused
herself, not understanding how she’s expected to be a boy when she’s so
obviously a girl.
I think
that, overall, Ludovic’s parents and grandmother are handled fairly well. Even though the spectrum of acceptance to
resistance seems range generally from Hanna to Granny to Pierre, their
positions aren’t fixed and there’s no clear “good guy” or “bad guy” here. All three adults have their moments of
understanding and gentleness, and all three give in at times to their own
confusion and anger. They try to
“straighten Ludovic out” and take her to task for her gender expression in
private, but they also rally protectively around her when people in the
neighborhood sneer at her. I’m
especially interested in Hanna, whose caring empathy is built on a slightly
unstable foundation, and whose acceptance of Ludovic is continually couched in
excuses – as if she loves her “son” the way “he” is, but she’s simultaneously
reassuring herself that it’s not what it looks like. Really interesting dynamic there.
Warnings
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