Transamerica film review

certificate_15

TRANSAMERICA

A bizarre tale of cross-country and cross-gender activity, Transamerica arrives with a host of awards to its name, not least a Golden Globe victory and Oscar nomination for its leading actress Felicity Huffman, best known to audiences over here as Lynette from Desperate Housewives. Part comedy, part drama, the film falls between the two stools without settling comfortably on either.

Huffman plays Bree Osbourne, a rather timid man who is about to undergo the final stages of a male-to-female sex change. Living a solitary life in Los Angeles Bree spends her life dressing as a woman and avoiding the awkward stares and comments that follow her around. With only her therapist (Elizabeth Pena) to confide in, Bree hopes that her life as a real woman will bring her the happiness she has never known.

A big problems rears its head however when days before her final operation, Bree receives a phone call from a correctional facility on the other side of the country. A young man they have picked up claims that Bree is in fact Stanley, his father and only living relative.

Bree faces a choice and follows her heart. She flies to New York to confront the boy (Kevin Zegers), pretending that she is a religious missionary sent to help him by his father. The two take a long road trip back to the West Coast involving a number of dramatic episodes: not only the advances made to her by a real man who helps them out of trouble, but also the reactions of her own family, led by the matriarchal Elizabeth (Fionnula Flanagan). Most pressing of all, however, is Bree's difficult decision over whether to tell her wild son that she is in fact the long lost Stanley he is looking for.

While Duncan Tucker's directorial debut can be praised for bringing a much-ignored plight into a mainstream arena, the cracks soon begin to show. This is an episodic, quirky affair that never seems sure which tone to take, and as a result suffers from coming across as simply puzzling, rather than comic or dramatic. As the trip across the continent unfolds, events take several unlikely turns which remove it even further from reality.

The talking point of the film is Huffman's performance which will either delight or drive you crazy, once you stop forgetting that she is playing a man playing a woman. It's a low-key but stylised turn which may fail to convince some. Indeed, while the film has its heart in the right place, its lack of conviction is its biggest problem.

Paul Hurley