Transamerica

Bree is a trans woman waiting for her surgery date. A week before it, a phone call comes: there is a seventeen-year-old boy in jail in New York and he is her child. Her therapist says she will not sign off until Bree faces this. She goes to post his bail and starts driving him to Los Angeles without telling him who she is. The subject is not transition but a lie carried the length of a journey. Bree introduces herself as a church worker and Toby hides his own past; both of them go on being someone else in the car. The form is a road movie: motel rooms, petrol stations, desert. The emotional scenes happen at the roadside and on foot. The production is remembered for a contested casting decision: a trans woman played by an actress who is not trans. Felicity Huffman worked on voice and posture for the part, the film was Duncan Tucker's first feature, and Huffman was nominated for the best actress Oscar. In later years the argument that such roles should go to trans performers grew stronger, and this film is frequently cited in it. Kevin Zegers plays Toby and Fionnula Flanagan plays Bree's mother. Who it is for: viewers who like road movies and two-hander relationship stories. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot set aside the question of representation; the film's own history is inseparable from that argument.