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A different story >> Is Different for Girls a trans-positive love story? by OLIVIA JENSEN
Of course, I relate more directly to the transsexual character Kim because I live something of her life; I too am a transsexual. But I easily understood Prentice, Kim's sister, Jean, and even her husband Neil. For me they were real characters. Kim is just a year from her sex-change surgery. She is still trying to live her life in a secure closet in which her history as Carl has been completely suppressed. She is 34 years old and beautiful, with that certain masculine prettiness of transsexual women. As her taxi careens through the city streets, it collides with a motorcycle courier just in front of the office building where she works as a verse writer for a greeting card company. The motorcyclist is an old friend from her public school days. After recognizing her, they arrange to meet for a drink. Prentice is a punkish bloke, while Kim is an overly prim and practiced woman. Her past has rejoined her and eventually it will liberate her from the closet of her hidden transsexuality. Steven Mackintosh plays the role of Kim perfectly. He, as she, carries off the style with just enough discomfort to reveal her new achievement of womanhood. Transsexual women characters are not often played well by female actresses, and Jaye Davidson's Dil in The Crying Game is perhaps the only transsexual role I have seen played better than Mackintosh's Kim. From the other side of the transsexual relationship, Rupert Graves' Prentice and his evolution from discomfort to acceptance mimics well what I have observed of this willing progression in many of my own high-school friends. Prentice and Kim seem to have little beyond their schooldays' friendship in common, but they are truly attracted to each other. Prentice wants to understand and Kim wants his acceptance. She longs for love. Prentice faces all the evident self-doubts as he realizes his growing attraction to Kim as a woman. "I'm straight, you know," he says, and Kim replies with the obvious: "So am I!" Unfortunately, though, this film is perhaps too didactic in the style of almost all films which deal with transsexual or transgendered characters. We are told of the process of achieving sex-change surgery in Britain; we learn of the effects of hormones on body form and skin; we learn that Kim's drive to find herself was not because she was sexually attracted to men but because of her dislike of her own maleness. Kim is a woman. There should be no need to explain her further. Most people now know enough about the dilemma of transsexuality to not be surprised by educational trivia. Overall, however, Different for Girls is a very positive portrayal of a transgendered person. Just as the camera is kind to Kim, the director, Richard Spence, is especially sympathetic to her transsexual dilemma. Olivia Jensen is the only transsexual professor at McGill University, where she teaches in the department of earth and planetary sciences. She frequently speaks out on issues of concern to the transgendered community Different for Girls opens this Friday, Feb. 19 at the Cinéma du Parc. See repertory listings for showtimes
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While some audiences of Different for Girls might well see this film as a cast of unreal and dimensionless characters, I found myself easily slipping into the celluloid skins of many of them.