Transamerica
Director and writer: Duncan Tucker
Country: United States
Year: 2005
Actors: Felicity Huffman (Bree), Kevin Zegers (Toby), Fionnula Flanagan (Elizabeth), Elizabeth Peña (Margaret), Graham Greene (Calvin), Burt Young (Murray), Carrie Preston (Sydney), Venita Evans (Arletty), Jon Budinoff (Alex), Raynor Scheine (Bobby Jensen).
Production: Linda Moran, Rene Bastian y Sebastian Duncan.
Music: David Mansfield.
Photography: Stephen Kazmierski.
Setup: Pam Wise.
Artistic Direction: Mark White.
Time: 103 minutes
One week before the vaginoplasty that will finish the process of sexual resignation, Sabrina Osbourne (Bree) received a phone call asking for Stanley Schupak, her male name. She knew at that moment that a consequence of a heterosexual relationship she had in her youth as a man, she had a son, Toby Wilkins, who is in jail. She tried to ignore this situation but her psychotherapist forced her to confront the problem and resolve it, as a condition for the operation.
Bree felt disappointed but then she decided to go for her son. She paid the bail, one dollar, and come back to Los Angeles. Toby is happy because he want to be a porno start and Los Angeles is the place he always want to be. But Bree took him to his town to give him away with his family. There he discover he had suffered sexual abuse and that was the reason he escape from home, after the death of his mother.
In the road, Bree and Toby know each other and get well. Toby realize Bree is not a woman and also is not the nun she said she was when took him out of jail. But the mystery of her parenthood is still hidden. They suffered many problems and had to go with Bree’s family. There Toby realize Bree suffer rejection from her family. But Bree’s father love immediately Toby, he remember him the sun they lost. When the truth came out it is going to cause different feelings.
The movie is interesting because show some situations that trans population had to suffer but it is only present the reality of upper-class and not the hard difficulties that most of this population had to deal with. The story is another American dreamt of happiness without any interrogation about sexual binarity. In this sense, Bree is a perfect lady and she don’t establish a question to her identity, that deep view inside the character is missing. Anyway is a first approach to transsexuals in a different point of view, opposite to the perspective that see them as psychopaths an ill people, as in The Silence of The Lambs, that start seen them as people of bond and blush.
More information
http://www.labutaca.net/films/39/transamerica.htm
