[Review]
TRANSAMERICA

by Diane S. Frank

It is said that one of the best ways for people to come to accept gays and lesbians is to know them personally. Failing that, sympathetic characters in movies and on television can become surrogates for that personal knowledge. Presumably, that same sort of familiarization would go on for people in the various trans-communities. Thus, any movie with a trans-protagonist is of great interest to us. A movie with a well-known lead, such a Transamerica, is of major importance.

As many other plot summaries have said, Transamerica is a road movie about a pre-operative transsexual woman who is forced to confront her past before she can seek her future. She has a son she didn’t know she had, and she has to deal with him in order to get the required permission she needs for the final surgery to become, in her own eyes a woman. Bree (short for Sabrina) is played by Felicity Huffman, the movie was produced by her husband, the well-known actor William H. Macy. Huffman signed for this film before she achieved fame in the television series Desperate Housewives. Now that I’ve summarized what everyone who doesn’t live in a cave already knows, let me talk about how I saw the movie - stuff you won’t see in any other review.

Thanks Bill, Felicity, and whoever else wrote or approved that line. Here we go again with the good old trans-hierarchy. Transsexuals are serious and the rest of us are not. The line was gratuitous. The pink flamingo gown could just as easily have drawn a derisive "But I’m not a drag queen", or even "Just because I have to borrow one of her dresses, I’m still NOT my mother." But no, let’s make a joke about straight men with odd taste in clothing... they’re safe to pick on. Hsss. Besides given Bree’s usual overly fussy, overly formal and generally out of place wardrobe, who’s she to talk? Miaaoow.

Did I go into the movie with a chip on my shoulder? I suppose. It’s all about politics with me anyhow. I come by it honestly, as there’s a long tradition I’ve inherited of "Yes, but is it good for the Jews?" So right off, the movie isn’t good for one part of the extended, fractured and diverse communities. My part.

I think also that the movie is not especially good for transsexuals. We try to talk about how we’re not all candidates for Jerry Springer and the other tabloid talk shows, not even mostly candidates...oh heck we like to make out like the Jerry Springer set is just a tiny part of things. But then the audience is brought along to transsexual support group at a Texas home where Bree and Toby stop for the night. As the camera meets the people around the room, the audience is introduced to people like those I see all the time. What will the general audience make of the lesbian couple who met as "straight men", couldn’t do anything about it, and become the love of each other’s life after their sexual reassignment surgery? Or, the transman who says in gruff fashion, "I’ve been woman and I’ve been man and I’ve seen things that you single sexed people can’t imagine", and portentously "we are among you". Please tell me this isn’t ripe for Jerry! It’s honest no doubt...but it’s not going to get rid of the image of oddity. They even throw in the old gag about the Mary Kay lady who doesn’t look particularly feminine or passable being in fact some born and raised female.

I suppose the effect of seeing so many transsexual women (and one man) together at once is supposed to be disarming. Toby (Bree’s son) thinks they’re nice, even if Bree is standoffish with them and at one point calls them "ersatz-women". Toby’s declaration of niceness is probably the voice of the author letting us know what’s really important and morally correct in case we’re inclined to agree with Bree. But Toby on the other hand is a sexually abused, drug using male prostitute. "Nice" where he’s coming from doesn’t take much.

There’s a lot of talk, standard narrative in transworld about being one’s true self. For this reason, many transsexuals proceed about their lives without wearing a sign, going "stealth" as it’s called for the simple and straightforward reason that they don’t want their interactions to be about their transsexuality...they just want to get on with their lives as women. When Bree knocks on the door of this safe house, she’s surprised to find a support meeting/party planning session going on. "I thought you were stealth", she questions. "Not in my own home", is the reply from the matriarch of the group. This remark sets up the scene of people letting their hair down. And that’s the problem. They were being their true selves at that party, with the offers to show pictures of someone’s genital surgery, displays of phallic dilators and size jokes and we could only wonder what face they showed to the public when they were stealth and how real that was. Bree’s face doesn’t change, and Bree is simply Bree, warts and all no matter what, and that’s a small blessing.

Am I complaining that the movie is too honest? I suppose in a way I am. The impression is supposed to be, they’re nice folk just like you and me except we have to allow them this one little quirk. But what we see is that they aren’t, at least not like you. I’ll cop to me not being any less queer than they are. My only consolation in all this is that I saw this film a second with one of the sunniest, most optimistic women I know. She thought the Texas scene was gratuitous, but at the same time thought that the impressions it left were washed away by Bree’s story. I can only hope.

I was annoyed by Bree’s family. The controlling, perfectionist, materialist Christian mother, the passive, maybe passive-aggressive, sex-deprived Jewish-sort-of father, and Sidney, the alcoholic sister. While other critics complain of a gratuitous slap at red states and Middle America, I see another problem. This was an invitation to blame transsexuality and gender variance on a dysfunctional family, and male femininity on a passive father and dominant mother. But as we know, Bree could have just as easily been from a supportive, functional family, one she temporarily turned her back on while sorting through her gender issues. Then there’s Toby, who as I said before is emotionally and sexually abused. His mother, Bree’s one-shot lover killed herself and Toby found the body. His stepfather raped him regularly. For him, becoming a gay porn star is a serious step up in the world from being a run-away, male prostitute and substance abuser.

Somewhere recently I saw someone make fun of independent film plots...something along the lines of a formula about two lesbians and a drug addict on a road trip. This is the genre of films that show up in art cinema houses, such as the Cleveland Cinematheque where film buffs have enshrined motion pictures that often seem to function more as side shows than anything else. Transamerica seems misplaced in major theatres when seen in this light.

Another characteristic of this genre of films is irony. You have Bree saying, "I like to blend in", and shown very much not blending in with the people around her. Bree is full of artifice and pretension, and yet is always making the claim to trying to be her true self. This leaves the viewer with a quandary, and I don’t think it’s one that will resolve that transsexuals are basically good people who deserve our understanding and support. Instead, it suggests that transsexuality is delusional and if they and we are lucky a few people might turn out ok in the end...and we’ll leave the others as fodder for the next IFC Films slasher picture.

Do I have anything nice to say about the movie? Yes. Felicity Huffman’s rendition of Bree was brilliant. As good a job of acting as I’ve seen. Initially, Bree is full of little ticks of expression, of the head, of the eyes and posture that betray someone acutely self-conscious, someone who is constantly monitoring themselves for meeting some standard. When Bree is under stress or pre-occupied or just being her didactic self, her voice drops or she’ll sit improperly in a skirt with her legs akimbo. (Of course, this only adds to an audience’s inclination to distrust Bree’s claim of womanhood). Bree’s myopic focus on her surgery, her writing off her family, her self-orientation is totally on-key with what I’ve seen. And I do like the honesty of the plot in this sense: I see so much of the self-centered, the selfish in all this, in any of the communities, from my perspective as an insider. The film, by its indirect message of Bree’s growth on the road to caring about someone in addition to herself, to care about a son does teach a lesson about what being a grown up is about. While it reinforces perceptions of transsexuals as having psychological disorders and bad judgment, at the same time it might carry useful hints to people who are caught in the inward focus and self-preoccupation that I’ve seen so often in pre and near term post-operative transsexual women.

The movie is of course a must see for anyone in any of the communities. The opening night show at Shaker Square Cinemas was largely attended by same-sex couples - at least from what I could see in the dark. There were no massive lines, unlike Brokeback Mountain. But whether the movie helps the transcommunities at all, that people in general feel like Bree is worthwhile, that Bree makes sense as a person and as a woman is another matter. I’m of the opinion that the movie doesn’t help. The transsexual may not be a crazed killer in this picture, but it’s still an art-house movie side show, and we’re still freaks. Huffman has affectionately called Bree a "freak", in at least one interview. Huffman means that Bree’s oddities are merely human and not related to her transsexuality. But will the audience? I think the audience will look at this and shake their heads and say "no, you’re not among us...thank goodness...there’s enough craziness in the world and I don’t need anymore." That’s too bad, but it could have been worse.