 | 映画原題: Transamerica [ 映画邦題:トランスアメリカ ] |  | |  |  | |
 | Transamerica : Hollywood Cinema Director : シネマ作品監督紹介 |
| Transamerica : Hollywood Actor [CAST・CREW] : 出演ハリウッド俳優(男優・女優・声優)&ミュージシャン・アーティスト紹介 |
| Transamerica : 現地ハリウッド市民の評価 : 英語批評版 : Native Evaluation |  |  |  |  |  Fearless Performance by Huffman Elevates a Uniquely Enthralling Road Movie / 2005-12-27
Felicity Huffman gives, hands down, one of the sharpest and bravest performances I have seen this year as Sabrina "Bree" Osbourne, a LA-based transsexual a week away from his/her final operation to rid himself/herself of the genitalia that reminds him/her that he/she was once an unhappy man named Stanley. However, this is not an extended, over-the-top comedy skit, nor a preachy social commentary film on changing sexual roles. Rather, it is an often ribald farce that gains its dramatic resonance from the spiraling convolutions of the plot and an unexpected poignancy at key moments along the way.
With his first feature-length film, director-writer Duncan Tucker has fashioned a spirited road movie that matches Bree with the 17-year old son he/she ever knew existed, Toby, a homeless, teenaged delinquent who was the product of Stanley's fumbling attempt at sexual relations with a long-ago girlfriend who recently died. A true odd couple along the lines of Walter Salles's "Central Station", Bree and Toby make a cross-country trek from New York, where Toby was in custody, back to LA. It all sounds pretty contrived. However, in conveying Bree's prim manner, academic wellspring of knowledge and droll humor, Huffman grounds the film with an amazingly convincing impersonation of a man on the threshold of becoming a woman physically and struggling to keep up with the gender transition emotionally.
Tucker wisely paints Bree's menial job as a telemarketer as a way to disclose that Stanley has been struggling for years to build the self-worth to become a woman, and Huffman responds with her character's weary demeanor and tense posture. In what could have been a minefield of burlesque comedy opportunities, there is not a single false note in her acting, as she makes the controlled lady-like movements and studied vocal intonations believable traits of Bree. She is also made up simply without fuss (an expert job by Jason Hayes) to look credibly like she is precariously on the male-female border with a constant fear of falling back to her character's old self.
Fortunately, Huffman is surrounded by a strong supporting cast. Although he often seems to be channeling Edward Furlong and Leonardo Di Caprio in portraying Toby's sullenness, Kevin Zegers captures his character's confusion and angst with emotional accuracy. Tucker also wisely uses some wonderful, under-the-radar actors in key roles - Elizabeth Peﾃｱa (whom I have not seen since her poignant turn in John Sayles's 1996 "Lone Star") as Bree's strong-minded therapist Margaret; Graham Greene (Kicking Bird in "Dances with Wolves") as Bree's wishful suitor Calvin Manygoats in a sweetly rendered episode of unrequited love; and a surprisingly laid-back Burt Young (Paulie in all the Rocky films) and an especially histrionic Fionnula Flanagan as Bree's parents heavy in denial over their offspring's decision.
In fact, Young, Flanagan and Carrie Preston as Bree's cynical, addiction-recovering sister Sidney are all hilarious in the movie's comedy peak as the dysfunctional family from hell when Bree and Toby barely make it to her hometown, Phoenix, prior to her operation. The family feeds almost too easily into Bree's self-doubt but ultimately act as most families do when crises occur. The film has a few serious moments that veer toward melodrama to heighten the revelations involved, but Tucker thankfully does not belabor them, favoring instead the shrewd, absurdist comedy elements. This is definitely an unexpected gem worth seeking out. |  |  |  |  | | | | | | | | "They were once considered to have two souls" / 2005-12-05
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 clichﾃｩ'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's wry performance is Oscar quality / 2005-10-11
The main character, Bree (Felicity Huffman), a week before her sex reassignment surgery, is forced by her therapist to fly from LA to New York to bail out of jail the 17 year old street hustler son, Toby (Kevin Zegers,) she she had been unaware even existed. They embark on a cross country road trip filled with self discovery, wry comedy, and pathos. The plot line is the tried and true formula of the transformational road trip, yet the irony of Bree's concurrent sexual transformation freshens a story that could easily have been clichﾃｩ.
Kevin Zegers and the rest of the supporting cast are superb, but Huffman's characterization of Bree is Oscar caliber.
Transamerica has been making the film festival circuit, winning awards at the Berlin Film festival, the Tribeca Film festival in New York, and the Frameline International Gay and Lesbian film festival in San Francisco.
Obviously a labor of love, Duncan Tucker wrote, directed, and wisely cast Felicity Huffman as Bree (before she had been cast as a "desperate housewife"). Huffman's husband William Macy is executive producer.
The Weinstein brothers recognized just how outstanding this indie is and have slated it for December 2, 2005 limited general release--one of the first post Miramax films to be released by their new company. | | | | | | | |  |  | | |
