Transamerica by Rachel Arms

Transamerica is about a transgender woman that goes by the name Bree. Bree was born Stanley and throughout his life transformed into a woman. In the film Bree is waiting for the approval of her therapist to go on with a complete sex change. The therapist, however; will not allow it until Bree goes to meet her son, Toby, which she never knew she had. Once Bree goes to New York to bail her son out of prison, she pretended to be a church woman from California, in fear of telling Toby that she is really his father.

Bree and Toby start to travel cross country together to California. When driving back to California, Bree stops by Toby’s step-fathers home in hopes of leaving him there. During their time there Bree is informed that Toby’s mother has committed suicide and left him with a sexually abusive step-father. So Bree allows Toby to continue to travel with her.

During the road trip they do many father-son activities. They went camping, they rough housed, they drank together, and Bree even let Toby drive part way. At times Bree acts as if she is Toby’s mother by telling him to eat his vegetables and even saving his toy monkey from his step-father’s garage.

Throughout their week long car trip, Toby and Bree become close to one another. Bree starts to care about Toby in a parent-child relationship. Toby also comes to care for Bree, but in a different perspective. Toby, a young man that was molested by his step-father and prostituted for drug money, comes on sexually to Bree. Toby, unaware that he is hitting on his own biological father, is disappointed when Bree turns him down. Toby is showing Bree he cares in the only way he knows how. Toby being abused by a trusted father figure in his life gives him a screwed up image of how people show that they care for one another.

Some think that if a child is brought up by a homosexual or a transgender that the child automatically is raised to be gay. In this film it shows how the biological transgender father had no part of his son’s life growing up but the child still preformed sexual acts on men which questions his sexuality. It shows that his step-father, who is a molester, is the one that makes Toby sexually confused.

When Bree tells Toby that she really is not a woman from the church and that she is, in fact, his biological father, Toby runs away. Once again Toby is let down by someone he began to trust.

Once getting to California Toby beings to play role in a gay pornography film. Toby loves sex but also finds a productive use for it. Toby prostitutes and makes films performing sexual acts for money, means of survival. Toby comes off as sexually confused but could possibly be a straight man using sexual experiments for money.

Bree was played by a woman being a man who wants to be a woman (Felicity Huffman). They chose a woman rather than a man for the role because many people have more sympathy for women rather than men. They woman playing the role would give more emotion and let the audience know how the struggle of the life of a transgender is.

This film was made to allow people in the lives of transgender people. This film allows the audience to help understand the struggles of transsexual going through the transformation from one sex to another.


REFRENCES

http://movies.about.com/od/transamerica/a/transamrc120105.htm

http://www.musicomh.com/films/transamerica_0306.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transamerica_(film)