Transamerica review

 Number 834 on the top 1000 films of all time is the 2005 comedy-drama 'Transamerica'.

Sabrina "Bree" Osborne (Felicity Huffman) is a transwoman in Los Angeles who is soon going to have surgery to fully complete her transition. However, a week beforehand, she discovers that she has a son Toby (Kevin Zegers) who has just been arrested in New York City. He prostitutes himself to feed his drug habit. Bree flies to New York to bail him out of jail with the intention of driving him back to the West Coast.

Can we just discuss the Felicity Huffman shaped elephant in the room. I question whether she was miscast. I don't mean how she as a cis-woman was cast as a trans character - this was the early noughties after all. But I found it strange that a woman, full stop, was playing a trans woman. It would have made more sense to have cast a man in the past. At the very least they wouldn't have needed to worry about a prosthetic penis.

Having said that, Felicity Huffman was good as Bree. She endeared the character with a lot of humanity. But also a lot of resolution. Despite the protestations of her mother, she is sure of who she is and what she wants. And that's to complete her surgery. Yet she is also internally conflicted, determined to keep her true identity to Toby a secret.

Kevin Zegers was equally good as Toby. He is your standard emotionally confused and frustrated teenager. But he is also effectively an orphan who never had any proper parents to take care of him. When he discovers that Bree has lied to him, in more than one way, he initially rejects her, before slowly changing his mind.

I think the two were great together. They had good chemistry, as two people who were just trying their best to make things work. I've heard some who would class this as a road film, which would be an accurate description. Over the long drive back to LA, the two discover a lot about each other.

This was a powerful and sensitive character drama that earned Felicity Huffman her only Oscar nod. Since her involvement in the college admissions scandal, I don't think she'll be getting anymore anytime soon.