A - POTENTIAL - MODERN CLASSIC : "TRANSAMERICA"

When a dear friend gave me Transamerica insisting that I watch it, I was overjoyed. I had read a lot about Felicity Huffman’s rather stunning performance as a transgender man getting ready for a sex change. In fact the only reason I never ended up seeing it probably had a lot to do with the fact that it never made it to the bargain baskets back in Turkey. I can assure you people, yes, it deserves all the accolades it got.
So meet Bree (as she prefers to be called.) She was once known as Stanly but is now preparing for one of the biggest moments of her life. In literally days, she will have the sex change she has been waiting for, for so long and be the woman she has dreamt of being. Until she gets a phone call (OK, slight cliché alert). Her one single sexual encounter with a women (that Bree classes as “so tragically lesbian it didn’t count”) has, unbeknown to her, born fruit in the shape of Toby her 19 year-old son. And her son is in one heck of a lot of trouble. His mother has passed away and he is in jail, with desperate need to be bailed out and got off the streets where he has been living on his own for a while now. Bree would be perfectly happy to wire him the bail money and forget the whole episode but then her therapist feels that she should “make peace” with her past and that part of her past, i.e. encounter her son. So reluctantly, Bree accepts. Posing as a church worker she bails him out of jail, and her initial plan is to deposit him back with his stepfather but as it with these things, things do not go according to plan… No, not one little bit…
Now on the one hand, this is definitely a road movie. And by that I mean a pretty darn typical one. Especially the son who “appears out of the blue” theme. However, Bree and her transsexual identity give a significant twist to the whole affair, transforming it from something that could be incredibly cliché to something quite extraordinary. Gently, not at all in an “in your face” kind of way, Transamerica informs us about the lives of transsexuals, a complicated affair, and I don’t just mean about the makeup and clothes.
Key to the whole affair is Bree’s reluctance to reveal her true identity to her son. It is not that she is ashamed of being the way she is, more that she is almost certain of being rejected. Later on in the film we meet Bree’s family and that pretty much shows us, if we ever had any doubt, where the certainty comes from. Bree’s identity has pretty much upturned her relationship with her parents and she is sure that her son will react in the same way – a risk she is more and more unable to take as she gets attached to him. And beyond that, there is the small matter of her being his father, a veritable minefield that we watch Bree negotiate with baited breath.
We get other tit-bits of information too as Bree is a veritable mine of information, among which, it has to be noted, is the nature of the sex change operation. “No I will not have it “cut off” !” Bree exclaims indignantly at one point of the film – but if you want to find out the rest of that sentence, watch the film or do your research. The film as a whole is funny and touching, wonderfully acted in all quarters and does a wonderful job of being in your face and controversial and impossible to adore. But at the same time, as you watch, spare a thought for how difficult it is to be openly transsexual or gay, even in our modern times some times; rejection can be just round the corner, and the people you care about are the toughest ones to tell because there you have the most to lose… That’s very sad and it shouldn’t be this way… Just for the record…