Susan Granger’s review of “Transamerica” (The Weinstein Company)
Sexually ambiguous roles often spell Oscar for actors but Emmy-winner Felicity Huffman breaks new ground here, playing a male transsexual about to have surgery to become a woman.
Stanley (that’s Huffman) has been waiting all his/her life for the operation that will allow him/her to feel fully feminine. She/he is already comfortable cross-dressing, taken the necessary hormones and assumed the name Bree (short for Sabrina). With only a week before the gender-reassignment operation, Bree learns that, as Stanley, he fathered a son, Toby (Kevin Zegers), who is in jail in New York. Bree’s therapist (Elizabeth Pena) insists that she fly East from LA immediately to cope somehow with this troubled teen and explain the awkward situation. Unable to tell the truth, Bree bails sullen Toby out, poses as a Christian missionary and, discovering that he’s a drug-addicted male prostitute, offers to drive him to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of a “film career” in pornographic movies. Thus begins a meandering, plaintive cross-country trip that’s filled with deceptions and revelations en route to family dysfunction. Made on a shoestring budget, it’s like “Priscilla: Queen of the Desert” meets “Broken Flowers” via “Soldier’s Girl.”
Completed before the debut of “Desperate Housewives,” this complicated, challenging part reveals just how versatile Felicity Huffman is. She astonishes with her skill, her dignity, her bravura style and her knockout performance. Although writer/director Duncan Tucker isn’t able to rise above the inherent melodrama, he’s assembled a strong supporting cast that also includes Finnula Flanagan and Graham Greene. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Transamerica” is an astute, gender-bending 7, a lively twist on an old Hollywood road movie formula.
