Girl Film Review: A Counsellor Reflects on Domestic Violence, Sexual Violence, and Three Generations of Women

Content and spoiler note: This article discusses domestic violence, marital sexual violence, implied child sexual abuse, and the impact of growing up in a violent home. Please decide whether this is the right time for you to continue reading.

After watching Shu Qi’s Girl, and thinking about a recent writers’ workshop on women’s lives, gender, and violence, I could not stop thinking about many of the scenes.

As a counsellor, these stories do not feel like film plots alone. Through my work and life, I have encountered stories of children being sexually harmed by an adult in the home while another caregiver remained silent because of fear, dependence, or powerlessness. That is why some of the things the film leaves unspoken affected me so deeply.

I kept thinking about how quickly we ask, “What is wrong with her?” when someone becomes silent, fights back, runs away, or stays in a violent relationship.

Maybe the more important questions are:

What happened to her? What kind of family and historical period did she grow up in? With the resources available to her, how many real choices did she have?

Girl is not only a story about a violent man or a mother who could not protect her daughter. For me, it shows how patriarchy, financial dependence, family reputation, and silence can shape the lives of three generations of women. It also shows how safety and support can make it possible for harm not to continue into the next generation.

Three generations of women: different opportunities, different limits

In the film, we briefly learn that the girl’s grandmother stopped attending school at five years old so she could care for her family. Before she had the chance to discover what she wanted, her time and labour already belonged to other people.

In the next generation, the girl’s mother was allowed to attend school. Her grades, however, did not meet her father’s expectations. The film may also suggest that her family discovered she was seeing a boy. Her father eventually sent her away and made her work in a beauty salon.

Education looked like an opportunity, but the opportunity was still controlled by her father. If her grades, behaviour, or reputation did not meet his expectations, the family could withdraw its support.

Later, she had two children. The girl was born outside her current marriage, while her other child was born within it. She married an auto mechanic who drank heavily and used physical and sexual violence against her.

This history matters. For many women in earlier generations, marriage was not only about love. It could determine whether a woman had housing, income, social acceptance, and a respectable place within her family. When women did not receive the same access to education, property, and employment as men, remaining unmarried was not always a realistic option. Having a child outside marriage or becoming divorced could also place most of the shame and blame on the woman.

Instead of asking, “If he was abusing her, why didn’t she just leave?” I want to ask:

• Would she have had somewhere safe to live?
• Did she have an income or support from her family?
• Could she safely take her children with her?
• Could attempting to leave have made the violence more dangerous?

Staying does not necessarily mean accepting the abuse. Sometimes every available path carries a serious cost, and a person is trying to survive with very limited choices.

Why are women’s reputations, bodies, and marriages so closely controlled?

Patriarchy is not only the idea that “men are in charge.” It also appears in how families distribute education, property, and decision-making power—and in whether women and men are held to the same standards.

In a traditional patrilineal family, names, property, and family status are passed primarily through men. A woman’s sexuality and reproduction may then be treated as more than her own concern. They become tied to determining whose child belongs to which family, who will inherit, and whether a husband is seen as able to control his wife.

The girl has done nothing wrong, but she was born outside her mother’s current marriage. Her presence may challenge the husband’s sense of masculine pride and his position as the “head of the household.” This is my interpretation of the film, not a certainty about the character’s inner world. But it leaves me with a question:

Why should a man’s dignity depend on controlling his wife’s sexuality or a child’s family status?

The husband repeatedly calls himself the head of the household and says that his wife and children belong to him and cannot get away. These words do not communicate love. They communicate ownership.

When someone believes that family members belong to him, refusal can be treated as disobedience and leaving as betrayal. Violence may then become a way to keep everyone in place.

This is not just a couple arguing: using the Power and Control Wheel

Couples can argue because of stress, differences, or misunderstandings. Both partners may need to learn healthier ways of communicating. But not every relationship problem can be addressed by asking “both people to change.”

When one partner repeatedly uses intimidation, humiliation, isolation, financial restriction, physical violence, or sexual violence so that the other person becomes afraid to refuse or leave, this is not an equal conflict.

The Power and Control Wheel helps us see that physical and sexual violence are rarely isolated events. They may occur alongside emotional abuse, minimizing or denying harm, blaming the victim, using children, controlling money, isolation, coercion, and threats.

We therefore need to ask more than, “Why do they keep fighting?”

Who can safely say no?
Who controls the money and housing?
Who is free to leave the home or maintain friendships?
Who has to monitor the other person’s mood in order to stay safe?

Understanding the victim’s situation—and understanding how a person learns to treat control as a right—is not the same as excusing abuse or blaming the victim. Understanding does not mean forgiveness, and it does not reduce the person who caused harm’s responsibility.

What we are trying to understand is how families and communities may tolerate abuse, why victims can find it so difficult to leave, and how harm is carried into another generation.

Patriarchy does not excuse any act of violence. However, when men are assumed to have more authority and women’s bodies are objectified or expected to be compliant, violence can become easier to justify, hide, and continue. Using violence remains the perpetrator’s choice, and he remains responsible for that choice.

The husband in the film also has a drinking problem. Alcohol may increase risk, but it does not cause or excuse domestic violence. When a wife and children begin monitoring his moods, speaking carefully, and hiding their needs, the violence is no longer one isolated loss of control. It is shaping the entire family.

Why might a victim stay after an apology?

Power and control do not always appear at the same intensity. Some abusive relationships move through periods of rising tension, violence, apologies, and temporary calm.

An apology or a period of tenderness can restore hope. A victim may tell herself, “He is not always this bad,” “He was drunk,” “He really is sorry,” or “Maybe it will not happen again if I do not make him angry.”

This does not mean she is foolish or unable to see reality. When the same person brings love, housing, financial support, hope, and fear, those experiences can be extremely difficult to hold together. Believing that he is not entirely bad may also help her emotionally survive a situation she cannot yet leave.

But saying sorry is not the same as repair. Meaningful change requires the person using violence to stop blaming others, take full responsibility, seek appropriate intervention, respect boundaries, and demonstrate safety through consistent action over time.

Not every abusive relationship includes apologies or a clear “honeymoon phase.” The important question is not whether a relationship follows a fixed set of stages. It is whether fear, control, and loss of choice continue to shape the relationship.

When sex is used to punish, frighten, and control

One scene stayed with me. The mother puts on makeup before going to school. Her husband, lying in the room with a hangover, becomes jealous and suspicious about why she would wear makeup to class. What follows is not intimacy. He ignores her wishes and uses sex to punish and dominate her—to reassert who holds the power.

This is sexual violence.

Marriage is not permanent consent. Each partner retains the right to decide whether they want sexual contact. Sex obtained through force, threats, fear, or circumstances in which someone cannot safely refuse is not an ordinary marital disagreement. Jealousy does not make it an expression of love.

Marital sexual violence has often remained unnamed because women were taught that sex was a wife’s duty. Within that belief, her willingness, fear, or pain could disappear behind the status of marriage.

Even today, some men use “At least I don’t hit you” as proof that they are good husbands. But not hitting a partner is only the most basic expectation of safety. A person can still take away a partner’s freedom through sexual coercion, threats, humiliation, financial control, restricted friendships, or surveillance.

A safe relationship cannot be measured only by the absence of physical assault. Can each person safely say no? Are their body and boundaries respected? Can they keep their own friendships, money, work, and choices?

The film’s implied sexual harm and the family’s silence

In addition to the marital sexual violence against the mother, I read the film as subtly suggesting that the girl may have been sexually assaulted by a male character, and that her mother may have known or sensed something.

The film does not show the full event or tell us exactly what the mother knew. This is my reading of what the film leaves unsaid, not the only possible interpretation.

Still, the unspoken fear and silence affected me deeply. Children do not always disclose sexual harm in a complete story. It may become visible through fear, avoidance, silence, bodily responses, or an atmosphere in which adults sense something but refuse to name it.

For a child, the harm may come not only from the person who assaulted her. It may also come from realizing that an adult who should have protected her did not act. She may be left wondering:

Did you know?
Why didn’t you protect me?
Was keeping this family together more important than my body and safety?

The person who commits sexual assault holds full responsibility for it. A caregiver who knows or suspects that a child is being harmed also has a responsibility to protect the child. At the same time, the mother’s own abuse, financial dependence, shame, and fear may have limited her ability to act.

Understanding why a mother remained silent does not excuse the silence or erase the child’s injury.

This silence did not remain in the 1980s. The #MeToo movement brought forward experiences of sexual harassment, assault, and abuses of authority that had remained hidden in families, schools, and workplaces for years. Silence often does not mean that nothing happened. It may mean that speaking was not safe.

Instead of asking, “Why speak now?” I want to ask:

What made it unsafe for her to speak then?

How can a mother be harmed by patriarchy and also pass its rules to her daughter?

Patriarchy is not enforced only by men. Women may internalize its rules and then use those same rules to discipline their daughters.

A mother may have been taught that women must endure hardship to keep a family together; that a daughter’s behaviour proves whether her mother raised her properly; that “men are just like that”; that family problems must remain private; and that an unmarried or divorced woman will have a miserable future.

She may restrict her daughter’s friendships, demand obedience, or insist that she not tell anyone what happens at home. She may not believe she is causing harm. She may sincerely believe that following the rules is the only way to protect her daughter from the punishment she once experienced herself.

When she cannot change her husband, her extended family, or the wider social system, she may turn toward controlling the daughter who holds less power.

But if we describe this only as “a controlling mother hurting her daughter,” we once again place the full responsibility for the family on a woman. We also need to ask: Where is the father? Who controls income, housing, and major decisions? Why is preserving the family’s reputation treated as the mother’s responsibility? Do men face the same consequences when they break the same rules?

I understand the mother as occupying several positions at once: someone disciplined by these rules, someone who adapted to survive, and someone who passed those rules to the next generation.

In counselling, we can hold two truths at the same time:

Your mother may have been trying to protect you in the only way she knew—and that protection may still have hurt you.

Understanding her history does not require a daughter to forgive, obey, or continue accepting harm. It helps us recognize that the daughter was never “not good enough,” and that the conflict is not simply explained by a mother who was born controlling. Intergenerational rules about survival are operating between them.

Two girls were sent away—but the meaning was not the same

The mother was sent away by her father when she was young. Years later, she also sent her daughter away. The two generations both left home, but we cannot assume that the two decisions meant the same thing.

The father withdrew family support when his daughter failed to meet his expectations around school and behaviour, and possibly because he discovered her relationship with a boy. His decision appears connected to punishment, exclusion, and regulating a young woman’s reputation.

As the girl grew older, she continued going out with friends. Her mother gradually realized that she could no longer keep her confined at home. She also recognized that a home filled with violence and control could not offer her daughter a safe place to grow. She decided to send the girl away.

I do not know whether the mother had only one motivation. Her decision may have held powerlessness, loss of control, letting go, and protection at the same time. She may have been trying to move her daughter away from danger while admitting that she could not protect her within the home.

This was not a perfect repair, and it cannot undo what the girl experienced. Safety and abandonment may both have been present for her. Yet within her limited capacity, the mother also seems to have attempted a different choice from the previous generation.

Safety makes it possible to find yourself again

The girl later experiences the support of a close friend, finds direction through sports, and becomes an athlete.

I do not see this as a story that says determination alone can overcome trauma. When a child spends each day anticipating violence, her body and attention are focused on survival. There is little room to wonder who she is, what she enjoys, or where she wants to go.

Leaving danger, having basic needs met, and experiencing a safe friendship allow her to slowly shift energy from “How do I survive today?” toward “Who do I want to become?”

Her friend shows her that relationships do not always have to include control, fear, or betrayal. Sports give her structure, a sense of competence, and direction.

I also found myself wondering: when a person’s body has been controlled by fear or violence, can movement help her experience that this is her body—and that she can choose where it takes her?

Becoming an athlete does not mean the trauma has disappeared. Her healing is not the product of willpower alone. Safety, basic needs, friendship, opportunity, and her own effort work together to create the possibility of recovery.

How can counselling help?

After seeing all these layers, I return to my own work and ask: what can counselling offer?

Counselling cannot rewrite the past or replace safe housing, financial resources, legal support, medical care, or child protection. It can, however, offer a relationship that does not rush to blame or demand silence. It can help someone slow down and see the whole picture:

• What happened to me?
• How did family, gender, history, and access to resources shape my choices?
• Which responsibilities belong to me, and which should never have been mine?
• How did silence, people-pleasing, hypervigilance, or avoidance once help me survive?
• Beneath the voices other people placed inside me, what is my own voice saying?

Counselling is not about deciding whom a client should forgive. It is also not about teaching a victim to communicate more effectively with the person controlling her. It can offer support, help a person understand the responses that once kept her alive, and make room for her feelings, needs, values, and choices.

When ongoing violence, sexual violence, or coercive control is present, safety assessment and individual support come first. Couples counselling may not be safe or appropriate in these circumstances.

Trauma can cross generations, but it does not have to become destiny

Girl left me with more than grief for one child.

It showed me how violence can be normalized and silenced inside a family; how access to resources, reputation, chastity, and the idea of a male “head of the household” can constrain women; and how a mother can be harmed by those rules while also passing them to her daughter.

It also showed me that when a child can move away from danger, have her basic needs met, and experience relationships in which she is believed and accompanied, she may gradually build a self that is not defined only by trauma.

Children should not have to survive by being strong alone. Healing needs safety, resources, choice, and at least one person who does not ask them to remain silent.

What needs to be broken is not only one incident of violence. We also need to interrupt the power and silence that allow violence to be denied, justified, and carried from one generation to the next.

If this article brings up concerns about your safety

If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 911.

In British Columbia, call or text VictimLinkBC at 1-800-563-0808. This confidential, multilingual service is available 24 hours a day and can help with safety planning and connections to local services. Visit VictimLinkBC.

If you have reason to believe that a child or youth under 19 in British Columbia is being abused or neglected, call 1-800-663-9122. Learn more about reporting child abuse in British Columbia.

This is a counsellor’s reflection on a film. It is not a diagnosis of its characters and does not replace individualized psychological, legal, medical, or safety advice.