The protagonist of the movie is a beautiful 10-year-old girl Laure (Zoé Héran). But she likes to dress herself up as a boy. With short hair, a monochrome T-shirt, men's big pants, and a pair of sneakers, Laure appears as a tomboy. If it hadn't been for the title to indicate her gender early, the audience might think Laure was a handsome little boy. She had just moved to a new home, and she quickly met a girl named Lisa (Jeanne Disson) in the neighboring building, and became involved with other children of the same age. But the key problem is that Laure concealed his true gender. In front of Lisa and other friends, she was a boy named Michaël. Throughout the film, we see that she has been trying to maintain her identity as a boy in front of outsiders. For this reason, she was very worried at a young age, even when she was playing with her friends, she couldn't hide the anxiety and melancholy in her eyes. What's worrying about the film is that the audience knows Laure's true gender identity from the beginning, and it can be expected that Laure's gender identity will be exposed sooner or later. What the audience does not know is when and how the layer of paper will be pierced.
If distinguished by the age of the characters, this movie may be called a children's film. However, the discussion of gender identity cognition that he is concerned about is indeed a big issue that applies to the entire society. In the eyes of some people, Laure, who has not yet developed, has cognitive impairments when it comes to her gender, because she obviously prefers to be seen as a boy. A series of actions such as boy playing shirtless, spitting, making swimming trunks and penis, seem to prove that Laure is a real kid who has wronged his daughter. But what I want to ask is, can these really prove that Laure has cognitive impairments about her gender? If so, where is the root cause? nature? family? Or society?
Indeed, Laure has always appeared in the image of a boy, but this does not mean that she does not identify with her gender (sex). In fact, she did not deliberately refuse Lisa to give her makeup, and when she heard Lisa and her mother praise her (will) be a beautiful girl, she showed a shy smile instead of panic or disgust. Unhappy. Including the upward smile when she finally told Lisa her real (feminine) name, it showed that she did not deny her girl gender. Maybe she prefers to appear as a boy, but this does not mean that she does not accept the fact that she is a girl. In addition, throughout the movie, Laure never showed the posture of "I don't want to be a girl". Similarly, her act of making a fake penis for herself was also caused by going swimming with her friends. In other words, if there is no such thing as swimming that allows outsiders to directly identify her gender, the male penis is not the gender identity that Laure must and eagerly want in her daily life. This shows that she has no cognitive barriers to the nature of her gender. What she does not agree with is her gender identity (gender), or more specifically, the additional constraints imposed on different genders by society and culture.
It should be said that Laure's family is a very typical social unit. Parents are affectionate and have a lovely little sister Jeanne (Malonn Lévana). Undeniably, Laure's parents are relatively open. Judging from the scene where her father asked her to choose whether to try beer when playing cards with her, the adults in the family allowed and encouraged little Laure to try different things, and then let her make her own decision whether she likes it or not. In addition, the mother arranged her room in blue according to Laure's wishes, which also reflected the tolerance of the family. However, even in such a relatively enlightened family, we can still see the difference between the two sexes that society makes. My father is a computer engineer, and my pregnant mother is a housewife. At the same time, the image of little sister Jeanne is almost the opposite of Laure, with almost all the typical girl characteristics in traditional social definitions. This is not only reflected in Jeane's appearance, but also in her pink room layout, pink tutu skirt, and pink toys. Not only that, but painting, dancing, and jigsaw puzzles she plays are also activities generally considered by traditional society to belong to girls. A series of comparisons between the occupation of the parents, the "tomboy" of Laure and the "real girl" of Jeane in appearance, color, space of activity, etc., as well as the pink necklace tied to the set of keys to Laure by the mother. It reveals the solidified dual definition of the two sexes imposed by the traditional society.
In fact, such examples are numerous in our daily lives. From the day of birth, a child is imposed on different attributes because of his or her gender. Regardless of personal preference, pink is for girls, and blue is for boys; climbing trees and playing football is a little boy’s patent, holding a doll and pretending to be at home is a little girl’s stuff; many men in science and many women in liberal arts; responsible It is the mother who cooks the rice and the food, and the father who is responsible for changing the light bulbs and the water channels...Similar gender identities have long been ingrained in many people's subconscious minds. It's like, Laure's little sister, already knows how to say that an older brother is better than an older sister. Although in the movie, she clearly knew that the brother she was referring to was actually her sister. Similarly, if people are asked to make gender judgments on a set of terms like doctors and nurses, university professors and preschool teachers, directors and actors, bosses and secretaries, I believe that many people’s first feelings will be biased towards the former. For men, while the latter is positioned for women. And we do not make such judgments based on personal ability. And this kind of prejudice to distinguish social division of labor and activity space by gender often makes people suffer numerous obstacles when they enter the field of identity different from their own gender. Because of the traditional thinking that men are superior to women, men are strong and women are weak, and men dominate outside and women dominate the inertia of thinking, people will question their abilities for women who want to enter the so-called masculine realm, and people who want to enter the so-called female sphere. Its motivation. Because of social pressure and prejudice, how many men and women in this world have suppressed their nature and abandoned their favorite things, things, occupations, lives, and interests.
It should be said that Laure's parents are still tolerant. They allow their daughter to dress up in the image of a tomboy and give her a certain amount of room for experimentation. However, Laure's attempt to break through society's gender identity was restricted to a small area such as his family. Once she walked out of the door of the house, she knew very well that her identity as a girl would exclude herself from many social activities. These obstacles have nothing to do with their true abilities. I have to mention a few details about Laure playing with her friends. On the side of the small court, a conversation between Lisa and Laure pointed out the limitations of gender identity on individuals. In that scene, the expressions of Lisa and Laure showed their interest in playing football. But then, Lisa reluctantly said that the reason she couldn't play football was because the boys didn't like to take her and thought she was not good enough. In other words, she has no choice whether she can play football or not.
But if we look back at the scene where Laure played the game of picking up clothes and chasing each other with new friends for the first time, we would find that the little boys questioned Lisa's ability, which is actually worthy of scrutiny. In that scene, Lisa happened to be rivals with Laure. Judging from the initial stalemate state of the two, Lisa and Laure are evenly matched in terms of abilities. The reason why Laure won that game was because Lisa deliberately let her a yard, so that Michaël, the newcomer, could be recognized by the boys. In fact, in playing football, swimming, and fighting with a boy who bullied her sister, Laure showed better abilities than other boys of the same age. However, in all this, the gender differences between her and the boys have been watered down. In other words, when the gender identity of Laure girl is not emphasized, no one questioned her ability or excluded him or her from the activity.
It can be seen that when Lisa was arguing with the little boys about what to play in the previous scene, the real reason she chose Truth or Dare was not because she didn’t want to play football, but because the gender of football was deliberately labeled. Label. She knew very well that once the boys chose to play football, she was excluded from the ranks of participants as a girl. And she, regardless of her abilities, likes it or not, can only act as an unwilling and unwilling audience. And Laure, because she has the identity of a boy, gives her more freedom and space for activities than Lisa, a girl with comparable abilities. It can be seen that one of the reasons why Laure likes to pretend to be a boy is not because she has cognitive barriers to her own gender, but because she realizes that in the traditional dualistic society of both sexes, gender identity may impose various restrictions on individuals. It can be said that the little Laure in the movie is not afraid to face the fact that she is a girl, but to let people who have formed traditional gender concepts (including those boys) know that she is not a boy. In other words, what she resists is that she will be rejected by a predominantly male society because of her female identity.
The value of this film is that it delicately and warmly outlines the confusion that Laure faced when she was growing up and challenging her gender identity. The movie did not deliberately make the little protagonist hysterical, nor did he have long sermons of bitterness, nor the decadence and anxiety of violent eroticism. The film's approach to gender identity is quite similar to the taste of "The Wedding Banquet" filmed by Li An in his early years: it is faint, but it means endless.
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