“A 10-year-old girl, settling into her new neighborhood outside Paris, is mistaken for a boy and has to live up to this new identity since it’s too late for the mistake to be clarified.”

Today I watched this movie, it’s in french with english subtitles.  It’s slow going but it held my attention mostly because of the realistic acting from these child actors.  It was pretty good except it left me with a sadness at the end.  I thought I saw a real natural progression of what a young person might be going through if they were able to realize at such a young age they would prefer to be a boy rather than a girl.

SPOILERS BELOW:

I was happy to see this little girl who seemed very happy to be a boy, it seemed like she was finally happy.  As a boy he was confident, having fun and seemed at ease with other kids.  When he lets his little sister in on the secret it seems to be again very natural, his little sister sees him as a boy and seems to like playing with him as a boy.  The games aren’t all that different from the games they play when at home alone, but his little sister talks up her big brother and is very proud of him.

When the parents find out the mother is upset, the father doesn’t seem so upset and tells his child not to blame the mother.  I almost started to hope that the next step would be registering the child in school under the boy name, sadly that didn’t happen.  No, instead the mother wakes him up, makes him wear a dress and go to his friends houses to tell them he is in fact a girl.  It breaks my heart when I see that happen, and while the mother says it doesn’t hurt her that her child prefers to be a boy, the fact that she thinks she has to out her child like this just baffles me.  Sure, it would be a shock, heck, I’m sure a lot of parents wouldn’t know how to deal with this.  After all, I know most adults feel that a child can’t be transgender or gay before puberty, sadly we know this isn’t the case.  Even if you are going to make your child live as a girl, to parade him around like that and humiliate him isn’t going to help him at all.  I started to worry that soon this child would do something violent to himself, or that the kids he’d been playing with would do something violent to him.

He didn’t kill himself, he did have his female friend check his parts to report to the gang that yes, he was a girl.  In the end, this child, who clearly identifies as a boy must live as a girl.  While I think it’s nice his female friend likes him still after she discovers the truth, I can’t help but feel sad for this child.  While he has a loving home, he is still stuck living what essentially is a lie.

I’m glad I watched the film, I would recommend it to others, so long as you have the time and patience to watch kids play and be emotional.  Still not sure what I would rate it or what I think about it.