Mr Pinky caught this flick on a late night public broadcast TV station. I’d always been intrigued by the bits I’d seen of Transamerica when the film was being promoted, especially the snippets I saw of Felicity Huffman’s celebrated performance as a transsexual (I think that’s the right term?).
The theme of the film is really an old one: a misfit trying desperately to fit in. In this case, it’s about a person inbetween genders, technically a man, taking hormones to produce breasts, and awaiting an operation to make the transformation complete. Society’s ignorant would call such a person a freak; those of an ultra conservative bent would say this type of person was trying to undermine society by such behaviour.
Writer-Director’s Duncan Tucker’s wonderful script plays this up by making its main character, Sabrina ‘Bree’ Osbourne, ironically someone who is always keeping up appearances, trying so hard to maintain the status quo. She wants to be normal, to blend in, have a loving husband, a nice house, to be a pillar of the community. But her not feeling right in her own body prevents this happening.
There’s a great line at the beginning, which points to Bree’s intelligence, where she says to a psychiatrist with regards to her pending sex change operation, ‘Isn’t it ironic that an operation can cure a mental illness?’
Amazingly, this picture was made for only a million dollars. It’s made some 15 million in return. You’d never know it was such a ‘cheap’ picture. It looks smart and is nicely edited.
Don’t be put off by the weird subject matter. Afterall, this is a film about a person trying to get to a vaginoplasty operation. Transamerica is an intelligently made film about the extreme complexities of sex and society.
One last note: Felicity Huffman is totally amazing and 100% convincing in this role and deserves all the accolades she’s received.
p:)
No comments:
Post a Comment