TRANSAMERICA: All-American Dysfunctional

Starring Felicity Huffman (Bree), Kevin Zegers (Toby), Elizabeth Pena (Margaret) Fionnula Flanagan (Bree’s mom), Burt Young (Bree’s father), Graham Greene (Calvin)
Director/Writer: Duncan Tucker. 103 Minutes. Rated R for sexuality, language, nudity and drug use.

After passing the battery of psychological tests required for sexual reassignment surgery, Bree Osbourne (still technically a man on female hormones) learns that “she” has fathered a son from a short-lived college relationship. The seventeen-year-old boy, Toby, is a runaway, drug-addicted prostitute, who needs, among many things, someone to bail him out of jail. But Bree, so close to the finish line after working two jobs to pay for the procedure, tries to avoid dealing with her newfound paternity. With the operation only one week away, Bree’s therapist (Pena) withholds consent for the surgery until she flies from Los Angeles to New York in order to meet Toby and face this new obstacle.

In New York, Bree posts bail for the runaway, who mistakenly thinks that the “woman” is a Christian missionary there to save his soul. Bree plays along. The two begin a road trip to the west coast, Bree believing that she will find and leave the teen with his stepfather, and Toby believing the freakish female missionary will take him to California, where he will become a famous porn star and find his long-lost, larger-than-life birth father.

Transamerica is well-acted from the major to the minor roles. Though Felicity Huffman’s physique, with its narrow waist and round hips, is clearly not masculine, she convincingly portrays a dysphoric man who is a wanna-be woman. Huffman’s performance brought her an Oscar nomination for leading actress. In spite of the overwhelming and somewhat narcissistic character of Bree, Kevin Zegers artfully renders a cunning and troubled son with good heart, but a lot of issues.

There is nothing spectacular about the cinematography. At times, Bree is a little difficult to understand because she is actually a woman who tries to sounds like a man speaking like a woman. (Gets a little confusing.) She is proud and conservative, having the stereotypical feminine fear of snakes. Bree also seems more asexual than transsexual, but perhaps that is part of her genetic condition. A little bit of trivia: director Duncan Tucker came up with the idea for this film after talking about gender perceptions with actress Katherine Connella, who had been sharing a house with Tucker for about four months. During that conversation Connella revealed that she was transgendered and had been raised as a male.

Other than the conventional stereotype of a mean and abusive step-parent, Transamerica gives us a glimpse of the people and issues that are on the fringe of our culture. Yet one interesting point to be noted is that Bree is every man and every woman: in search of herself and in her journey to self-acceptance. She has issues with her body, and in today’s society, who doesn’t? It just so happens that the small part of her body that disgusts her the most is the part that makes the biggest statement about who she is. Or so we think. Transamerica does a good job of showing how fluid gender can be. Bree tells her mother that the difference between men and women comes down to hormones (which Bree and her mother both get from a bottle) and that men simply have “out-ies” while women have “in-ies.”

On the other hand, this film was unsettling for several reasons, none of which have anything to do with the plot. Sexual abuse, incest and exploitation of a child are such deeply disturbing issues that it seems a little disingenuous and unfair to use these subjects lightly as part of the plot or as a plot manipulation. Without spoiling the turns in the film, I’ll leave off here.

As I left the theater, one word popped into my head: dysfunctional. Every character in the film was in some way dysfunctional. Transamerica is a well-acted and unusual story that never judges, never apologizes. It stays off the morality and ethics soapbox. If films about gender reassignment don’t bother you, Transamerica offers more substantial food for your thoughts than the average Hollywood film.