Girl Like You follows the six-year journey of couple Elle and Lauren as one of them transitions to change genders, moving pronouns from he to she, and becoming Elle.
Amongst their friendship circle were Frances Elliott and Samantha Marlowe, two emerging female filmmakers from Perth, who started to watch a seemingly ordinary relationship move through challenges that are so rarely shared in the world of film and media.
What began as nothing more than an unassuming question shared between Frances and Sam following a night out with Elle and Lauren – ‘What would it be like to be born in the wrong body? – soon snowballed into a large-scale documentary funded by Screen Australia and Screenwest, that would follow the lives of Elle and Lauren to explore the question, ‘Could your love survive a gender transition?’
The film follows the couple as they navigate the effects of new body parts, changing gender roles as well as battling their own evolving sexual identities.
Girl Like You premieres on ABC on Sunday, November 7.
I am 86. When I was a (male) child, about 6, 7, 8 or so, I wondered, dreamed, obsessed, about being a girl. In private (when alone, or in bed at night) I pretended to be a girl. But in Australia in the 1940s and 1950s, physical transitioning or even hormone therapy was not possible. I simply do not know what I might have done if it had been as available and as accepted as it is now (though of course it is only accepted by some of us). I have always remained “straight”, have only ever had relationships with women, but there has always been that sadness (in that I have always wished that I had been born female).