Transamerica

If you're one of those people who gets unsolicited text messages from me at odd hours, you'll know I just watched this film. If you're not, and you're dying to know what the messages said, I believe they read something like "Is it weird I just cried twice at a transexual?". For those that don't know, Transamerica charts a cross-country journey undertaken by Bree (aka Stanley aka Felicity Huffman), a pre-male-to-female-op transsexual, who is asked by her therapist to reconnect with the son (Kevin Zegers) she never knew she fathered as a final test that he is indeed ready to be a she.

The film generated a great deal of awards buzz, including a nomination for Huffman for best actress at the Oscars. No doubt the hype surrounding the film was in part indirectly encouraged by the Christian Right in America's outrage that a film could not only depict a transsexual and a male prostitute in a positive light, but in fact almost glamorise them. So it was with a fair bit of apprehension that I approached the film, aware that it had polarised critics and wary of anything that is so inflated with hype.

My first, and lasting, impression remains one of surprise. Surprise at how deftly and movingly the topic is handled, surprise at how un-shocking much of the material is, and surprise that a film that in my view did not set out to pull the heart strings caught hold of them so convincingly and rendered me blubbing, not once, but twice.

It all belonged to Huffman. I knew of the transformation she had gone under to get into the mind first of Stanley, and then of Stanley dreaming to be Bree. Meticulous attention is paid to the surgeries that he has had up to the start of the film, including cheek bone movement, skin lightening, pigment removal and breast augmentation. I read that Huffman went so far as to wear a prosthetic penis so as to feel what Stanley/Bree must have felt, and loathed, every day. But the performance was softened and tweaked to perfection by the great display of conflicting emotions that surged through Bree on discovering, and finally coming to admire and love, her runaway son.

The dynamic between Toby and Bree was excellent throughout; mutual disgust and barely veiled disdain slowly give way to grudging trust and appreciation. Perhaps the Christian Right took offence most at the fact that Bree claims to be from a Christian outreach programme as a cover for why she is escorting Toby with her across the states to his home. Of course, it might also have been the neat role reversal offered by these two: Bree yearns to be a woman; Toby makes his money by prostitution, by offering himself in a way that disgusts Bree yet also suggests something more passive and feminine than her surgeries have hitherto allowed Bree to be. Is that where the outrage stems from? A boy homosexual and a man seeking womanhood? Perhaps.

It's a tricky one even to write about; he/she dynamics for Bree are handled well in the film. Her first meeting with her therapist, over the phone, has the therapist reminding Bree that she shouldn't talk about Stanley and her past life as something separate. Stanley remains a part of Bree, no matter how hard she wishes to flee it. The meeting late in the film with Bree's family, the mother that claims Stanley is dead and the father who gladly welcomes his newly discovered grandson, is perfectly stage managed to the level at which it happens so organically that I found myself marvelled at how one could take offence at this understated gem when all it made me do was grin and cry in turns.

Truly, that's the secret to why this is such an excellent film. Its very excellence remains elusive, difficult to describe and ultimately personal. It's the biopic of an extraordinary struggle, but never glamorised or glorified, but portrayed simply, movingly and completely endearingly. Heart-warming.

***

2005

Felicity Huffman, Kevin Zegers

Written and directed by Duncan Tucker