Mya Bollaers is superb as a trans woman forced to travel with her bigoted father in a film that can’t quite escape its own cliches
![Lola and the Sea review – trans woman goes on road trip with angry dad](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2f8485a7fefbf220aed5bd23dd99a2b7ea87ce00/0_46_1200_720/master/1200.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctcmV2aWV3LTIucG5n&enable=upscale&s=35d99186e3398a91a69cfed0dd93dce8)
Trans
Actor Mya Bollaers brings a personal stillness and confidence to this flawed road movie from Belgian film-maker Laurent Micheli. Bollaers works well with co-star Benoît Magimel and together they do their best to raise the standard of this well-meaning but basically unsatisfying work.
Bollaers plays Lola, a young trans woman who has been thrown out of the family home by angry father Philippe (Magimel) and is now living in foster-care accommodation while preparing for gender reassignment surgery. But Lola’s mother, who had always accepted her identity, has died and now a somewhat contrived series of events means that Philippe and Lola must take a car journey up to her childhood home by the sea to scatter the ashes – that time-honoured trope. Philippe is bad-tempered and transphobic, he misgenders Lola and uses her old name, Lionel. But there are no prizes for guessing whether they gradually come to terms with each other.