Irishchatter It was quite a very sad film, I felt so sorry for Bree that she wasn't accepted by her family in the first place and having realised she had a troubled son. I understand that Toby was angry at his dad for not telling him the truth about why she got him out of jail but he had no right to punch her. I would absolutely shake him to hell in order for him to wake up because she was his dad after all!This movie really does a good intake of being a transsexual and how you deal with it. The character Bree in my opinion really did a good example of herself on showing off and being brave who she truly is! She really doesn't stand any messing! I honestly wish herself and that singing cowboy Calvin were together. I mean, they literally locked eyes when they first met and even when they had said goodbye, they looked inseparable together! Now why no happily there?It's a good movie I have to admit regardless!

statuskuo I regret that I came across this gem late. It is an fascinating road trip movie that has some of the most original characters I've seen in a long time. Felicity Huffman's portrayal of main character is amazing. Simply put...amazing. It skates the line between male/female so fine, you are absorbed by her characterization of Bree/Stanley over anything else. Whatever award that was sift by her, is well deserved.The performance all around is great. What is even more attention grabbing, is that it isn't preachy. It doesn't give you the wrong of right of whether the decision that she needs to make is political. It's not. It's a choice. And at the point you think it's about to get overly maudlin, it pulls back to comedy. A joy of a movie to watch.

tieman64 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.

eric262003 Felicity Huffman turns in one of the most complex and engaging performances I've seen in a long time as Sabrina "Bree" Osbourne, a transsexual who's down to her final stages of her final operation as she's about to lose the man jewels as she is finally rid of the horrid past she encountered when she was a man named Stanley. It's a misnomer to some who think that this is a goofy zany comedy film, or a preachy film about the trials and tribulations of becoming transsexual. It is a vulgar satire that uplifts the dramatic elements from the obstacles of the plot and the surprising outcomes that manifest at the principal elements as the movie progresses.In his directorial debut, Duncan Tucker has took on the classic road movie to a new direction that pits Bree and her re-acquaintance with the son she only once fathered. Toby is a juvenile homeless kid who is the biological son of the former Stanley who was once in a relationship with his recently deceased mother. Bree and Toby embark on a cross-country journey from New York to Los Angeles. Sure people might scoff by saying that this is another cross-country road movie. But if you look into the movie beyond the surface, it's really about a journey of a man trying to adapt into womanhood and the hardships it is in trying to adjust to the new life that has become of Bree.Tucker cleverly uses Bree's dreadful occupation as a telemarketer as a symbol of the obstacles Stanley faced during his quest of becoming a woman and Huffman utilizes her character's vulnerable traits and stiff posture. Sure it looked like open field for comical farce, but her acting it pitch perfect and takes her training and regiments very seriously which is all very believable. With the help from Jason Hayes (wig designer) we get to see the gradual physical molding of a man turn woman right before our very eyes and the fear of Bree returning to her old alter ego.The supporting cast backs Huffman up nicely. Young Kevin Zegers was accurate as the poor young confused misunderstood soul Toby who's oblivious that his father is now a mother and that Bree cowardly lied to Toby saying she was a church missionary when really she's really his biological father. Elizabeth Pena of "Lone Star" fame was sublime as Bree's strong-opinioned therapist. Graham Greene ("Dances With Wolves") was in top form as Bree's suitor Calvin Manygoats. And the scene-stealing comes from Bree's parents played by Bert Young and Fionnula Flanagan who are in perpetual denial over their son's life-rendering decision.Along with the parents, Carrie Preston as Bree's sister Sidney make the perfect dysfunctional family comedy foil as they easily go into Bree's self-loathing which is par for the course in most families who try to deal with problems. The film sporadically shifts into being overly sentimental tear-jerker and instead Tucker focuses more on the comedy elements and the absurd scenes that follow. This is a film worthy of its accolades and I'm sure you'll enjoy it too.