Transamerica (Widescreen Edition)
by Duncan Tucker
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Andrea James, Danny Burstein, Felicity Huffman, Fionnula Flanagan, Kevin ZegersDirector: Duncan Tucker
Brand: Wellspring Media INC
Cinematographer: Stephen Kazmierski
Writer: Duncan Tucker
Producer: Linda Moran
Producer: Lucy Cooper
Producer: Rene Bastian
Producer: Sebastian Dungan
Producer: William H. Macy
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 103 minutes
Published: 2006-05-01
DVD Release Date: 2006-05-23
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Model: 79039
Studio: Weinstein Company
Movie Reviews of Transamerica (Widescreen Edition)
Movie Review: "They were once considered to have two souls"
Summary: 5 Stars
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 was the real Best Actress performance of 2005.
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.
Summary of Transamerica (Widescreen Edition)
Emmy® winner Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives) won the Best Actress (Drama) Golden Globe® Award for her "fiercely funny and deeply powerful" performance (Pete Hammond, Maxim) that is "thrilling to watch." (A.O. Scott, The New York Times) Huffman plays Bree Osbourne, a conservative transsexual woman, who learns she is the parent of a long-lost 17-year-old son (Kevin Zegers). The wheels of fortune take Bree and son on a cross-country adventure, including a memorable visit with Bree?s parents, that will change both of their lives. A funny, touching, completely original look at the modern American family, "TRANSAMERICA will leave you in a state of movie euphoria. It?s hilarious and deeply affecting." (Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal. "Felicity Huffman is incredible. One of the year?s most unforgettable performances." -Stephen Mooallem, InterviewFelicity Huffman deserves every award she's received for her outstanding performance in Transamerica, a small but rich movie about Bree--formerly Stanley--a pre-operative male-to-female transexual awaiting gender-reassignment surgery who learns she has a wayward teenage son named Toby. When her therapist (Elizabeth Peña, Jacob's Ladder) strongarms Bree into facing her past, she bails Toby (Kevin Zegers, Dawn of the Dead) out of jail and they end up on a road trip across the country. Such a premise could feel forced, but the script and performances make it persuasive and natural. Bree wrestles with discomfort and compassion as she learns about Toby's own troubles, even while her own grow worse when she's forced to ask for help from her hostile parents (the superb Fionnula Flanagan, The Others, and Burt Young, Rocky). Transamerica doesn't push for any great catharsis, but instead slowly peels away the layers of Bree's defenses, laying bare her basic struggle for respect and a chance at happiness. In many ways it's a showy role, but Huffman (Desperate Housewives) keeps her acting simple, direct, and thoroughly compelling. --Bret Fetzer