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TRANSAMERICA Send This Review to a Friend
The big news of “Transamerica,” shown at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival, is the outstanding, award-caliber performance by Felicity Huffman, whose renown on the TV show “Desperate Housewives” doesn’t offer much of a clue as to what she is capable of delivering in her unusual new screen role. As Bree, Huffman plays a man who sees himself as a woman and hungers for transgender surgery that will make the psychological transformation irrevocably physical. But there’s a hitch. The therapist who must sign off on the operation insists that Bree deal with aspects of her past before she is ready to take the monumental step.
Bree, whose name was Stanley before she transformed her appearance into that of a prim, conservatively dressed woman, makes an astonishing discovery. An early heterosexual dalliance has resulted in a son, Toby (Kevin Zegers), and the film spends much time dealing with their new-found relationship. She conceals that behind the womanly persona she is really his father. What will happen when he learns the truth?
The success of the film depends primarily on how convincing Huffman is as Bree. She must make us believe in the character, otherwise the film can turn into a mere oddity. Huffman comes through poignantly in a smartly constructed performance. The surface femininity is there, but in a way that still leaves room for us to detect the man within. The psychological longing is there, too, so that we root for Bree to get what she wants in life. The actress evokes much feeling by projecting Bree’s state of mind and emotional needs and by her overall demeanor as a human being.
Writer-director Duncan Tucker takes the situation seriously in both plot and characterization, and although the screenplay has a melodramatic underpinning with respect to Bree and Toby, Tucker doesn’t let matters get maudlin. Bree earns both our respect and our sympathy, and one is aware of the extreme difficulties involved in such a situation.
While “Transamerica” is a very personal story, it also invites thought about the general problem of the person—be it man or woman—who knows something is deeply wrong with his or her given identity and has a desperate need to find who one really should be and take the necessary action.
There’s a lot to this story and to the film itself, but the fine work of Huffman dominates everything. A Weinstein Company release.
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