Transamerica (Widescreen Edition)

"Transamerica" was easily the best film I have seen in months, and, furthermore, having just seen "Walk the Line" this week, I can say without any hesitation that the fact that Reese Witherspoon (who I loved in her role, as well) won the Oscar over Felicity Huffman is just wrong. Reese was adorable as June Carter, but Felicity Huffman's transformation in this film is astounding--the way she carries herself, the way she speaks, the subtle ways in which Bree becomes more and more comfortable in her body as the film progresses...it was a revelatory performance. There was not one moment where I didn't fully believe that she was a woman who used to look like a man learning how to be a woman in her new body. And she makes Bree so relatable, which is an enormous accomplishment considering transsexuality is a topic that makes so many people uncomfortable.

I'm not even going to get into complaining that this should have been nominated (and won) for Best Picture as well, because, really, what's the point? But suffice it to say, it was brilliant, and also restrained. Although I am a fan of indie films, many of them do tend to have a pretentious streak, and this one did not. It was heartfelt, honest, funny, painful at times, and also short. Too short, in fact. I wanted to stay with these characters much longer. Btw, Kevin Zegers, who played her newfound son, gave a fantastic performance as well. It takes a great deal of talent to be paired with an actress of Felicity Huffman's skill and to not come across as inferior by comparison. He deserves just as much acclaim as she received. Even the screenplay was underrated. Many critics praised Huffman but denigrated the bulk of the film itself, and I could not disagree more with that, either. It's just a shame when such a great work at this is so completely unappreciated.

It's always refreshing around awards season to witness a performance by an actress that you know is going to make a big impression. In Transamerica, Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman just astounds, in a feat of acting that is nothing short of extraordinary. This is a poignant and often deliriously funny road-trip film and Huffman sinks her teeth into playing a sensitive, yet conflicted preoperative transsexual with such a refreshing candor that most viewers will be just blown away by the film.

The film marks an auspicious debut for writer-director Duncan Tucker, who spins a marvelous tale of a reluctant but curious dad who learns he has a son. The dad, however is soon to become a woman, and is now decked out in tasteful and chic pastels, but the film cleverly avoids the cliché's, thanks to Tucker's sensitive hand and the subtle work of Huffman and the rest of the pitch-perfect cast, especially Kevin Zegers as the lost-and-found offspring.

Huffman plays Bree/Stanley a self-contained preoperative transsexual who lives in her little Los Angeles bungalow, and works as a waitress in a local colourful Mexican restaurant. We first meet her a week before she is to have her gender reassignment surgery and her closest friend is her compassionate and kindly therapist, Margaret (Elizabeth Pena).

But just before the ultimate surgical step is due to take place, she receives a phone call from a 17-year-old New York inmate, who claims to be Stanley's son. Of course, Bree has come too far to let anything derail her surgery - she is so single-minded that she dismisses the unwanted disruption. However, when Margaret learns of the phone call and her patient's offspring, she refuses to OK the medical procedure until Bree goes to New York to address the matter.

Bree flies East to help the boy, who has run away from home after his mother's suicide. Allowing him to think that she is a Christian missionary - her upright, churchly bearing makes it easy to believe - she decides to take him back to rural Kentucky, where his stepfather lives. She buys a chartreuse station wagon to drive Toby cross-country, but Toby, rather than returning to Kentucky, wants to go to Los Angles where he expects to find his father living large and hopes to break into movies -- of the San Fernando Valley sort.

The film is full of unexpected twists and turns, as Bree and Toby traverse the country eating in homey little roadside cafes, staying in comfy hotels, and even camping out. Soon they're developing an uncommon and strangely likable bond. This is the land where banjos and acoustic guitars compete with the crickets and loons, and along the way they meet a variety of characters from a free-spirited vegan hitcher (Grant Monohon) to a gentlemanly New Mexico rancher (Graham Greene) who gallantly comes to Bree's assistance, more than a bit smitten.

It is only after an incident on the road that the couple is forced to confront Bree's parents in their kitsch Phoenix mansion. Her father, Murray (Burt Young), is an easygoing fellow in loose-fitting linen, but it is her mother, Elizabeth (the astonishing Fionnula Flanagan), who commands our attention. With her peroxide curls, silk pantsuits and heavy makeup, she might be an aging movie diva, and she has the volatile temperament to prove it. She's absolutely repulsed by her son's new look, but underneath the cold exterior, she's desperately trying to understand him.

The performances are all astounding, but this is Huffman's movie, and she totally steals the show, brilliantly embodying the complex layers of self-awareness and denial. She's prim and proper, but also raw and gutsy, and although she may not yet have totally got womanhood right, she's a lovely, sensitive kind hearted person, who we all know will end up being an absolutely gorgeous woman. It is not just that the actress plays a man who plays a woman, but also that she must impersonate a performer in the midst of learning a complicated role. Her performance is a complex metamorphosis - it is thrilling to watch and totally Oscar worthy.

As she each day she paints on a face and puts on a voice to become more truly herself, her uneasy self-consciousness is a constant, especially when a child's innocent but discerning question plunges Bree into despair. As a boy who is tempted by cheap drugs and uses the art of seduction to get his way, Zegers conveys Toby's essential sweetness and hunger for real affection, making him much more than just a vain or damaged kid.

But what makes Transamerica one of the year's best films is the sensitive and intuitive way that Tucker presents the world of transexualism. He never judges Bree, or preaches, and throughout the story there is much to be learned about the history and place transsexuals once had in society. The astute and intelligent script weaves laugh-out-loud humor into his characters' longing for acceptance, but most importantly, the director treats Bree as a fully rounded person, with all her quirks, insecurities and foibles, rather than some kind of objective, and scientific case study. Mike Leonard December 05.

Felicity Huffman plays desperate housewife Lynette Scavo on the popular TV miniseries DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, which, though occasionally immensely entertaining, is also Desperately Silly. In TRANSAMERICA, Huffman has a Big Screen gig that should indisputably prove that she's an actress of considerable ability. The other desperate housewives, actresses Teri Hatcher, Marcia Cross, Eva Longoria, and Nicolette Sheridan, can only stand back and envy.

Here, Huffman is Bree Osbourne, born Stanley, a California man on the verge of the very last stage of his transgender transference, i.e. genital surgery that will, as he puts it, convert his "outey" to an "inney". In every other way, Stanley/Bree already presents to society as a female. What has otherwise been a relatively smooth transition hits a bump when Bree discovers, and must bail out of a New York City jail, his 17-year old transient son, Toby (Kevin Zegers), conceived in a long-ago liaison with a since-deceased girlfriend. Bree's problem is how to get Toby back to the Golden State without revealing to the teenager their biological relationship and the former's genetic gender. What's a poor girl to do?

When the creators were sitting around the table discussing casting for this clever film, there had to have been some argument. Do they find a man to play a man morphing to a woman, or a woman to play a man morphing to a woman? Their choice of Huffman was inspired, and it pays off brilliantly. This is perhaps not surprising as the excellent actor William H. Macy is the movie's producer (and, also, Huffman's real-life hubby). Indeed, Felicity's performance is eminently Oscar-worthy, and will be a definite eye-opener to audiences that are only familiar with her DH persona. Also notable in brief supporting roles are Graham Greene as the Navaho rancher, Calvin Manygoats, who gives Bree and Toby a ride after their car is stolen in New Mexico, and Fionnula Flanagan as Bree's distraught and resentful Jewish mother.

On the surface, TRANSAMERICA is a four-star, insightful, poignant, and amusing look at the practical problems associated with transgender transition. Huffman's performance, the best I can recall by an actress since Charlize Theron's triumph in MONSTER, elevates it to five-star, must-see status.

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