Transamerica (2005)

Truly Dreadful Film

Best movie of this year hands down!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

I always laugh and cry through this movie, it is a great story, with universal themes, and a lot of layered meaning and humor.It is pretty real, and I feel for Bree because I am also a woman of transsexual experience, and I've been through a lot of what she goes through as part of transition. Changing sex is one of the most difficult (and risky) things a human being can do - a bit like climbing Everest without the glory (that's why the bath-scene is *so poignant* and *important*). So many scenes ring true to my experience.If you pay close attention, you will see and hear some of the "secret" humor we trans woman share among ourselves...humor helps us as we pay our "trans dues."Blessings & Joy!!Renee

Transamerica was a great movie that highlighted many obstacles that trans-gendered and transsexual people are faced with. One of the greatest fears of transsexual people is having their gender questioned and in Transamerica, Bree is faced with that exact fear. When Bree is sitting in a restaurant, she finds a little girl staring at her with a confused look on her face. Eventually the little girl asks Bree, "are you a boy or a girl?" Bree immediately breaks down and viewers are exposed to the true difficulties that transsexuals deal with on a day to day basis. Another issue that transsexuals deal with is the classification of their disorder. Gender dysmorphia is what trans-gendered people must be diagnosed with before any surgery procedures can take place. In Transamerica, Bree makes a comment to her doctor about how it is an amazing thing that plastic surgery is a cure for her disorder. The majority of trans-gendered people would most likely agree that surgery would be a cure for their disorder. Evidently, Bree does not agree that she has a mental disorder but simply believes her brain does not match her body. Unfortunately in today's society, trans-gendered people are considered to have a mental disorder and as many know, being known to having a mental disorder can be dire to one's life. Another issue that Bree has difficulties facing is her life as a man. Bree's past comes back to haunt her when she finds out that she has a son who has many troubles of his own. She struggles with coming to terms with the fact that her past can not be changed and that she has to deal with consequences of her actions while living life as a man. Clearly, trans-gendered people have a number of different issues that need to be dealt with in order to live happily. Once Bree is able to accept her past, she is able to find peace and happiness as a woman

Sweet but contrived, Duncan Tucker's "Transamerica" stars Felicity Huffman as a male-to-female transgender who self-identifies as a woman. While awaiting a sex change operation, Huffman learns that the son she fathered many years ago has recently been jailed. Huffman bails her kid out of jail and the duo embark on a generic road journey.Though resolutely formulaic, "Transamerica" sports many fine moments. The film captures the quiet suffering of many marginalised groups, the private longings of transgenders, and the generation spanning fall-outs of persecution. Elsewhere Huffman's son is shown to be as damaged as she is precisely because others have been abusive and unsupportive toward her. Mother and child slowly mend this cycle of pain.While celebrated by many transgenders and transsexuals, "Transamerica" is also fervently hated by radical feminists, homosexuals and various segments of the transgender/transsexual community. For many radical feminists, gender is entirely a social construct. Ergo males and females are equally privy to the socio-semiotic codes of masculinity and femininity. For someone who is born with female genitalia to self-identify as a male and "want to be a man", irks many radical feminists. It's a form of selling out, of bowing to social pressures. Many in the gay community also (wrongly) view transgenders as homosexuals who exhibit various guilt complexes (ie gay men attracted to men thus become women to remove stigma). Of course this ignores many things; there are many gay, straight or lesbian transgenders, sexual preference doesn't seem to motivate sex changes and homosexuals themselves seldomly wish to be or become the opposite sex.Within the transsexual/transgender community, you also have segments who disparage all those who seek sex changes. The belief is that one can never "really" be the other sex, that the desire for change masks some deeper, more intrinsic incompleteness, and that one should embrace their conflicts. This is a more "spiritual" line of criticism. Others posit sex changes as a kind of class based persecution; sex changes are expensive, and not all transgenders can afford the same procedures. The fear is that a class based hierarchy is being set up, giving rise to new forms of persecution. Some can afford to be more "male" and "female" than others, based purely on income. With advancements in technology, one also ends up with weird situations and distinctions: is a transgender who has a specific modern operation, modification or cutting edge hormonal treatment more "real", "authentic" and "male/female" than one who afforded everything but the latest? Is one with incomplete, cheaper cosmetic operations inferior and less desirable than a state-of-the art post-op transsexual? Another form of criticism, running broadly across the LGBT community, is a distrust of confessional, "journey narratives". There's a scepticism of any narrative in which one is not a "real" man/woman before an operation, goes under the knife, and comes out an "authentic person". Such narratives tend to glorify surgery and cosmetics. Huffman epitomises this in the film: "Jesus made me this way so I could suffer and be reborn the way he wanted me," she says. The issue is to what extent the "final product" - the trans-gender's mental construct of "how they should finally be" - is externally constructed, whether this matters or not, and whether the desire to be "fit for the public eye" is itself a form of oppression.Other criticisms, these from less hard-lined feminists, tend to focus on the consistent desexualization of pre-op transsexuals. This has given birth to the term trans-misogyny, the idea that the pre-op transsexual is reduced to his or her body, made undesirable until fixed and so forth. The word transsexual itself came in the wake of "transvestite", the accompanying suffix creating the idea that both are orientations. Both words, some say, also have the effect of reducing subjects to their bodies, compartmentalising them into various ideas of two impermeable biological sexes, thereby further affirming a "trapped in the wrong body" paradigm. The argument is that we do not "cross over" to our gender. Rather, we reveal our genders. The process of what is now called transition should therefore be liberatingly reconfigured as revelation. Some transgenders agree with this, some view its implications as far too difficult a cross to bear, whilst most say "shut the hell up". They're hard-lined essentialists. They believe their desires stem from a genetic or innate, neurochemical place. They simply "feel" in the wrong bodies and want the "right" bodies. It is their right.7.5/10 - Worth one viewing.

As someone who's made the same journey as Bree I thought the movie was wonderful. My story has a lot in common with Bree's. Sure I have some issues with some of the technical details, but overall it does a great job. In this movie we have both a personal and family story combined. Bree is looking to complete her transition and at the same time becomes a parent to a child she never had.Many trans people are unhappy with how Bree is portrayed, but I think they forget who the target audience is. Hint: It's not us trans people. So the portrayal of Bree in the movie is not really linear. In essence they compact a couple years of transition down to a one week period in the movie. That's why Bree appears so insecure at the beginning and so rounded and polished at the end. It's a lesson to non-trans people in brief of how we change over the course of transition.I would also be remiss to not mention the great soundtrack. Particularly "Like A Rose" as Bree's being readied for surgery. They also did a great job with casting. Everyone seemed so right for the parts they played. And finally, I think Felicity Huffman was robbed, she should have won the Oscar for this film.