Feminist film scholar Patricia White also suggests that "Portrait of a Young Girl" is addressing the French New Wave. She writes that the film's setting, Brussels, April 1968, calls to mind the Paris, May 68 worker-student strikes, which "function as a mythical origin story in the narratives of the new left, Post-structuralist theory and film culture." By "virtue of being not quite Paris, not yet May," White says, "Portrait of a Young Girl" suggests that its story is "not given meaning by the heroic (male) politics that would require historical authenticity."