New Transgender movie

A new movie about a trans woman was just screened in New York.  It looks promising.  I hope they find a distributor for it; I'd like to see it. MSNBC has the full story.

The movie, "Transamerica," screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, which ends Sunday, and earned [actress Felicity] Huffman a rave review from the New York Times for her portrayal of a woman, Bree, who was born in a man’s body and who goes on a cross-country journey after learning she fathered a son.

Bree is desperate for her therapist to give her a final OK so she can complete sex-change surgery and desperate to escape the idea that she fathered a son.

Other than desperation, Bree seems to have nothing in common with Lynette Scavo, Huffman’s housekeeping mother on "Desperate Housewives." But Huffman said the two characters both face feelings of loneliness and alienation.

"Stay-at-home moms are marginalized, so are transgender people," said Huffman, who has two daughters with her husband, the award-winning actor William H. Macy.

"The difficulties of motherhood are hidden or are not spoken about in depth.

The difficulties of being transgender, no one knows about," she said.

I love that this woman seems to have feeling for this role and that the movie is, apparently, done with compassion and sensitivity.  But, I have to wonder why the director chose a natal woman to play the lead role. When will they have to courage to let us play our own roles? I don't know many transsexual actresses, but I'm sure they'd be coming out of the woodwork if roles started opening up to them (hey, I'm a pretty good actress myself -- hint, hint).  Take Calpernia Addams, for instance.  I think she would have been a perfect choice for the role!

Even Ms. Huffman questioned the decision after she was asked to do the role, wondering why a man hadn't been selected to play the role.  That would have, in my opinion at least, been a step in the right direction.  To wit, look at the movie Boys Don't Cry where they got a woman (Hilary Swank) to play the lead as a female-to-male transsexual.

But [director] Tucker was persistent, telling Huffman she possessed the emotional heft and comic flair to make Bree believable.

Became 'more feminine'

Huffman said she was stumped at first at how to play the part, whether to become a man first, then the man living in a woman’s body, or whether she should just play a woman.

She started reading about transgender women, then met with them and finally took lessons from coaches who train transgendered individuals to become women.

"Oddly enough it became a process of becoming more feminine," Huffman said.

"Once I found the speaking voice, then Bree came to life," she added.

New York Times critic Stephen Holden said Huffman’s Bree is "a sensitive, convincing portrait of someone in the throes of change who has yet to settle comfortably into a new self."

Don't get me wrong.  I'm thrilled at having a sensitive protrayal of trans people out there (even if the movie hasn't found a US distributor yet).  When Hilary Swank gave her acceptance speech for her Best Actress award for Boys Don't Cry and she acknowledged publicly the trials and strife of being transgendered, I wept.

But, I do wish more people could see our real faces.