TRANSAMERICA

This is another film we should have seen long ago. We used to go to the movies all the time when we lived in the Village but there's really no cinema up here in the Far North. So now, having Netflix and the big TV, we are catching up.

TRANSAMERICA is a small masterpiece; it deals quietly and calmly with trans-gender issues as well as prostitution, drugs, child abuse and other controversial topics without passing judgment or taking a religious/political stance.

The idea of sex change (and even of transvestism) is pretty foreign to me; I think of myself as extremely open-minded but I've never understood the attraction of cross-dressing let alone doing something permanent to your body which alters the most basic component. Back in the early 90s when I was trying organized religion again (for the last time), there was a wonderful woman in my church who began life as a man and after years of struggling made the change in her 40s. One evening she told her story to our group: knowing since childhood she was trapped in the wrong body; her tormented youth dealing with the cruelty of her peers; rejected by her family; finally finding the courage to have the surgery; her subsequent state of peace and her dedication to helping others on the same journey.

In TRANSAMERICA we find Bree (formerly known as Stanley) at a point two weeks prior to her surgery. She receives a phone call out of the blue from a kid in NYC claiming to be Stanley's son, born 17 years before as the result of Stanley's one-and-only one-night-stand in college. The boy, Toby, is in jail.  When Bree's therapist Margaret refuses to sign the papers for Bree's surgery until Bree deals with this unforeseen aspect of her life, Bree travels to New York. She presents herself as a  representative of the 'Church of the Potential Father' and bails Toby out. He is a pretty, punky boy with a devious charm, entangled in drugs and prostitution. Saying he wants to go to Los Angeles to find his father and work in the porn industry, Toby coaxes Bree into a cross-country road trip in an old station wagon.

Hilarious, touching and sometimes upsetting situations arise as they meet fellow travelers on the road, including a stop  to reconcile Toby with his step-father which proves a major disaster. Midway thru the trip Toby discovers Bree's 'secret' but they get past that and trek on, ending up in Arizona at the home of Bree's parents. There, several revelations are made.

Felicity Huffman is truly uncanny as Bree; this a performance that has to be seen to be believed - no amount of description or praise could even begin to do justice to her embodiment of the role. It is a courageous and sublimely human portrayal: funny, brave, tragic and uplifting all at once. Kevin Zegers is adorably ambiguous and somewhat androgynous as Toby; he seems to have been plucked off an East Village street corner. Elizabeth Pena (Margaret, the therapist) is exceptional and Graham Greene (as a kindly Native American, Calvin) makes you want the little by-way story of his attraction to Bree turned into a sequel. Fionnula Flanagan gives a glorious example of how to steal a movie with her touch-of-the-Irish performance as Bree's mother: indignant, bossy, shallow, and kind-hearted by turns, Flanagan turns her scenes into major events. Carrie Preston as Bree's sister, Sydney, is utterly natural and delivers her one-liners with subtle aplomb. She reminds me of girls I used to work with at Tower.

We enjoyed the movie so much that we watched it again the next day.

   

Comments

[tonya]

Another movie I missed in the theater that I'll definitely have to see. Thanks for the review. Did you ever read MIDDLESEX, by the way? One of the most compelling contemporary novels in my opinion.

[philip]

No...tell me a little about it (MIDDLESEX)...

[M]

MIDDLESEX IS AMAZING! NO DESCRIPTION CAN DO IT JUSTICE. IT'S HARROWING AND WNODERFUL....PICK IT UP:)

[tonya]

M is right! It's hard to describe but it's half American epic of the 20th Century as seen through the eyes of immigrants (and there's a little bit about Greek history -- the burning of Smyrna -- so horrible...), and half about gender / sex identity. It's by Jeffrey Eugenides and won the Pulitzer a few years ago. It's really well written, he's able to deal with race, class and gender pretty effectively in a short space, and the characters are really vividly drawn and their situations so compelling. The main character, Cal (and his grandmother, Desdemona) stayed in my head forever...

[philip]

Thanks for the tip, Tonya & M...I am ordering it from Alibris now!