Huffman Transamerica
Saturday, August 9th, 2008
Transamerica is an independent 2005 comedy drama starring Felicity Huffman.
Huffman plays the role of Bree, a transsexual woman on a road trip with her son Toby. Toby had been jailed and was searching for his father to bail him out; however Bree, who is one week away from having a vaginoplasty, wants to disown the boy. Her therapist forces her to face up to her past, however, before the operation can be carried through.
Bree locates Toby and travels with him, pretending to be a female missionary; however this ruse doesn’t last forever, and Toby learns through several mishaps that Bree is actually his father. Toby doesn’t care that Bree is a transsexual - he’s surprisingly open-minded - but he’s angry that his father couldn’t admit the truth, and they separate.
Eventually, after Bree has had her surgery and Toby gets into gay pornograph, the two meet again and reconcile, having found a measure of respect for one another.
Though it received only limited release Transamerica was critically lauded for treating a difficult topic in a respectable - if somewhat unorthodox - light.