Boys and Girls 1983

In a remote rural setting, a young girl named Margaret and her brother live with their father, Ian Heath, a fox farmer who raises silver foxes. Each autumn and early winter, when the fur is prime, he shoots the animals, skins them, and sells the pelts to a company. In winter, the family tends two horses until they too are killed for the fox operation. The horses, Mike and Flora, are part of a brutal rhythm the family understands, even as the daughter has never before seen a horse die.

The girl watches the world her father has built—an uneasy balance between necessity and cruelty. Mike, an old and indifferent horse, and Flora, a highly stressed and nervous mare, live under the same roof, and the girl gradually confronts the emotional weight of what she witnesses. Her brother Laird shares the tension, and the siblings sense the limits of their father’s patience and authority. The girl also tries to navigate her relationship with her grandmother, sometimes adopting a more ladylike behavior as a way to cope with the surrounding harshness.

Far from the ordinary countryside, the family’s private world feels enclosed, almost like a small medieval town. A tall fence surrounds the fox enclosures, with a night door that is locked as if to keep out the outside world. The foxes inhabit this created realm, a place where daily life revolves around the cycles of killing, skinning, and confinement.

One day, the girl and Laird witness their father handling the fox fur and the remains of the animals, a scene that underscores the distance between their sheltered lives and the consequences of the father’s trade. Naked, slippery bodies are collected and buried, and the family’s world continues to function within its rigid boundaries, even as the children feel the weight of what they are part of.

A pivotal moment arrives when Flora, another horse, emerges from the barn. The father shouts that she has been kept inside to prevent escape, but the girl makes a split-second choice not to close the door. Laird sees her action, and the door’s fate becomes a point of contention between them. The horse escapes in the wake of the incident, and the farm’s routine is disrupted by the consequences of that decision. After the truck arrives, the father returns to Flora, leaving the girl and Laird to face the tension that has built up around the door and the horse.

That night at dinner, the siblings’ tension boils over. Laird asks if the girl deliberately opened the door, and she tears up, unable to fully explain herself. The father’s reaction is blunt and crushing: “It doesn’t matter… She’s just a girl.” The comment lands with the weight of a verdict, highlighting a quiet, unresolved tragedy at the heart of a family bound by work, fear, and shared secrets.