Movie Review

Directed by Jane Anderson, based on the play "Looking For Normal" starring Tom Wilkinson (Roy), and Jessica Lange (Irma), 108 minutes, 2007.

Roy and Irma live in a small farming town in the Midwest, U.S.A. He works in a farm implement factory and she is at home. Their son Wayne has left home to play in a rock band and their daughter Patty-Anne is at home and at the edge of adolescence. Roy's parents live on a farm close by and there is an extensive extended family. They're very active in their local church ( First Lutheran), devoted to each other and pillars of the community. What could shake this?

At their 25th wedding anniversary party in the parish hall Roy suddenly collapses and is whisked off to the hospital. Sometime afterwards they are in their Pastor Dale's study. Roy has been under some stress at work but not enough to account for the collapse. After much humming and hawing Roy "confesses" that for a long time he has been a woman trapped in a man's body. He wants to have The Operation. Irma is shocked, storms out and that evening demands that Roy leave the house. The pastor is at a loss but gamely and earnestly promises to research the question and find out more.

Roy moves out and sets about slowly to make the year long transition to womanhood. He begins by shaving his armpits, wearing a little perfume to the factory, growing out his hair, shopping for dresses at the thrift shop and wearing ear rings with his plaid shirt and jeans. He cuts a ridiculous figure and I squirmed in embarrassment for him.

In the bemused irony with which God must often view Creation Patty-Anne does not want to wear dresses and a bra at exactly the same time that her father does! At one point she triumphantly announces to her mother "Did you know that Dad's and my breasts are the same size?!"

In a meeting with Irma, Pastor Dale is pleased to report that he has found some help on The Web though the closest parallel he can find is a Baptist site that talks about homosexuality. He cites Ephesians 5:28 "… no man yet ever hated his own flesh". He interprets this to mean that men need women for completion, they 'couple' with women to bring out their own female side and it is just egotistical for Roy to believe that he can do it all himself. It's a game try but it doesn't help.

Roy gets kicked out of the choir because he tries to sing high and can't. He dresses in a dress and sits in the back row with Patty-Anne but an usher asks him to leave. Irma sees this from the choir and also leaves. Neither the congregation nor the pastor is portrayed in stark caricature as hateful and prejudiced. They're puzzled, baffled, at a loss to find anything in their experience that would help them cope. Roy himself is clumsy and unsure. Who wouldn't be? The wisest person in the story is Patty-Anne who copes with her own gender identity issues and recognizes in her father a fellow traveler. She thinks it's cool. In biblical stories of transition and transformation we often are not told how the story continues. Were people in general composed and clear about their new roles when Zaccheus came down from the tree, when Lazarus came out of the grave, when the Gadarene shook off his demons, when Jesus made breakfast and when The Prodigal showed up at the party? These are largely unfinished stories into which we are invited to project ourselves. One of the early church fathers, Irenaeus had a phrase; "The glory of God is a person, fully alive". Are we most fully alive when we are most ourselves? Is that what 'normal' is? Who decides?

Normal is a very poignant story with a sound track that will make you smile and maybe sniffle at the paradox and pathos found in certain popular love songs. In parish life we see people faithfully and even ridiculously love one another through dementia, abandonment, infidelity, cross dressing and 'switch hitting'. In the final scene, the night before Roy is to have The Operation, he and Irma are in bed together. She lifts the covers and asks "to see him one last time". He says "Irma, Thank you." She replies "Sweet Roy, sweet, sweet Roy. What we do for love…." The fade out is with the song "I'll be lovin' you, always". Indeed!