What It Feels Like for a Girl
- Director: Brian Welsh, Marie Kristiansen, Ng Choon Ping
- Writer: Paris Lees, Georgia Christou, Sarah Simmonds, Paul Williams, Mika Onyx Johnson
- Producer: Fran du Pille
CGiii Comment
Millenarianism, Y2K and the trans community! Discuss.
What It Feels Like for a Girl captures a golden period, when the L, the G, the B and the T really did party and band together. A period before the 'Queers' mutilation of a divine moment in our history - there was no non-binary, no gender fluidity, just geeky gamers finding a voice outside within their own avatars, pseudo-psychologists awaiting pseudo-academic glory, quack physicians ducking and diving around morality...and, shady, sturgeon-like politicians with their shabby, back-handed councillors in tow...awaiting and formulating their attack and when they eventually conspired...well, that's when it really hit the fan!
But...that's a different story. Let's get back to the P-A-R-T-Y!
Meet Byron. 15 years old. And, ready. But...did he walk...or, was he pushed into this big, bad, wonderful world of ours? Doesn't matter, he grabbed the baton and ran like hell...into brick walls and cottage cubicles, drug dens and nightclubs, pimps and punters, granny's house and prison cells. It all sounds like the beginning of a tragedy...but, thankfully, being based on Paris Lees' mighty fine memoir, we know that this is a tale of survival...by the brightest.
Meet Ellis Howard. 28 years old [looks 18 {beast!}]. And ready to fly...he just gives absolutely everything...really, it is perfect casting. The similarities between actor and writer's life experiences have a compatibility that awards Byron his working-class-hero status. Ellis is not trans, he's an actor...so, let's not quibble about the murmuring dissenters...writers write, actors act...and, murderers kill,
The biggest surprise has to be...the BBC! Prosthetic penises, thrusting buttocks, statutory rape, political incorrectness...oh my! Well...keep those 'oh mys' a-coming.
Paris Lees had something to say, Ellis Howard had someone to play.
Together, they slayed.
Trailer...
The(ir) Blurb...
Byron's escape to Nottingham's underworld and discovery of the East Midlands' "premier podium-dancer-cum-hellraiser" Lady Die, who adopts Byron into her family of hilarious and chaotic troublemakers in the UK's early 2000s club scene.