I watched it a while ago, and now I write a film review on a whim. Maybe I can’t remember the details of the film?
Lara's dad is basically a template for the perfect dad, at least for the first half of the film. Because I didn't watch it continuously, I paused after the very simple conversation in the car and cried for a long time for no reason. "Do you have someone you like now?" "A boy? Or a girl?" "I didn't say I like girls." She laughed. How thoughtful and caring. Perhaps the director (screenwriter?) felt that the problem before Lara was big enough, and decided to make everything else smooth for her.
Lara wants to be a girl. As David in Druck puts it, "I was born in a boy's body." "I'm a girl, I just need to work harder." She started professional dance training in her teens, like all the other girls. Put on pointe shoes, jump and spin so hard, mess up the rhythm again and again, wipe off the sweat again and again, and continue to practice. Her toes were bleeding, but she didn't give up, and kept adapting to the dancing shoes that didn't fit her body structure in the teacher's separate class for her. Lara wants to be a girl so much, she doesn't like the doctor's advice to "be patient", she always feels that the hormones are not working, are people looking at her full of suspicion? In order to hide from her father, she wrapped a bandage on herself. Of course it hurts, but she doesn't want to be seen as a weird person.
Lara is always smiling, all the pain is silent in her heart, and all she can say is a calm "it's okay". Is it the family and the doctor that are not good enough? no. This is just the stubbornness of youth. Many children of that age seem to firmly believe that suffering and not saying a word is a sign of inner strength, as if that is the way to have true dignity. "Actually, when I grew up, I realized that there are so many things in the world that will hurt you. Why should you compete with yourself? It's better to be a little better to yourself." , which is also very applicable here.)
But even if everyone's motives are good, Lara, who is transgender, suffers a lot. At that birthday party, the girls clamored for her to take off her clothes, but they didn't know she thought it wasn't her body and didn't want to show her disgust. And at night in the stranger's apartment, Lara found herself becoming inexplicable and fled all of a sudden. After all, she is still different from other girls, and she will eventually lose the best time of her youth.
So she made a very impulsive decision. (It did hurt to watch the movie when it was put there!!) And it seems that this approach didn't really get her to the goal. But when she woke up in the hospital bed, she was a whole new person. At the end of the movie, she has her hair cut short, the lights in the subway passage are dimmed, and her face is half-smiley and determined. Did she decide to not care what other people think and become the one and only herself named Lara?
Lara's smile was like a mask, hiding all the little things that made her sad and desperate, but fortunately her family was still by her side, and fortunately she finally realized at that moment that there was no need to pretend to be another person. What does it matter to be unhappy? Why isn't it a courage to speak out? In fact, everyone around her is willing to help her solve the problem, and no one will take her as a burden.
"You're his sister, aren't you?" Lara froze for a moment, then gave a genuine smile.
(So what we strive for is actually what many people are born with. As cisgenders, are we lucky or unfortunate?)
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