Movie Review

Written and directed by Duncan Tucker, starring: Felicity Huffman (Brie), Kevin Zegers (Toby), Graham Greene (Calvin), 101 minutes, 2005.

When we meet Brie (Sabrina Claire Osborne) she is in the final stages of getting medical and psychological approval for her gender reassignment surgery. She had been Stanley. At the very last minute she receives a phone call from New York (she lives in Los Angeles) from a juvenile inmate of a correction facility looking for his father, Stanley. This comes as a total shock to her as her/ his recollection is only of a brief and hapless encounter in college; so hapless in fact, that Brie had claimed to be a virgin. Brie/ Stanley had no knowledge of a child.

She is desperate for the surgery (it is a week away) but her psychiatrist will not approve it until she deals with the young man. "This is not part of a body that can be discarded", says her psychiatrist.

So, she goes to New York with the intent of seeing her son, reporting to her shrink that all is well and carrying on with the surgery. Not so fast… As one might expect, explaining her relationship to the boy is not so easy. She poses as a pastoral care worker from "The Church of the Potential Father". In the end they set out together to drive back to L.A. and Transamerica becomes a play on words, both a Road Movie with many adventures and a revelation of a significant sub culture.

Her intention is to stop in Kentucky and reunite Toby with his stepfather. This is a disastrous encounter since the boy ran away to get away from the father's abuse. They stay in Dallas with a woman who is a friend of her psychiatrist and walk into a meeting of other gender reassigned persons. Slowly Toby comes to realize that Brie is a guy and he is angry and scornful. She pleads, "My body may be a work in progress but there is nothing wrong with my soul! Jesus made me this way for a reason; that I could suffer and be reborn as He was."

They give a ride to a 'stage four vegan' hippie who turns out to be very accepting of Brie's trans-gendered life. "Trans-sexuality is a highly evolved state of being". There is a very amusing scene that captures the ambiguity of Brie's state when the boys swim au natural in a pond while Stanley/ Brie sits primly on a rock in the hot sun, fully clothed. Alas, the kind stranger turns out to be a bounder and steals their car and wallets.

Calvin, a Native American who knows something about life on the margins, gives them a ride. He drops them off in Dallas at her parents' home. Here the central metaphor of the Prodigal Son (returns home, returns to him/ herself) is played out. They are a family from hell but when Brie's mother discovers that Toby is actually her grandson she tries to bargain his staying with them (they are quite wealthy) for the giving of money to Brie so she can get back to L.A. ("took him up unto an high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the earth"). He steals her car and runs off.

While the Parable of the Prodigal Son is essentially a story of the prodigal gracefulness of the father (parables are about the "first mentioned" in the story and that's the father), it still works as a metaphor to understand the theology in the film. Stanley travels many far countries including the far country of his own family before he "comes home" to Brie. The parable is an unfinished story in Jesus' telling because we do not know what happens the next day; can the son stand the attention or does he leave again?

Each of us travels our own far country to self-acceptance. Others are helpful but in the end the journey from life of the ego to life of the soul is a journey we all must make by our Selves. In this sense, Brie/ Stanley's journey is not so different from our own.