![Normal [DVD]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61Mr1zPSNpL._AC_UL165_SR165,165_.jpg)
This film will surprise you with its honest, direct, engaging, heart-felt story. The script is clever and well written. The acting is superb and Felicity Huffman could not have done better. Hopefully the super job she did playing the transgender Bree will provide her with more opportunities to reveal her considerable talents. Kevin Zegers deserves praise for the excellent performance as Toby, Bree's son. It is highly recommended entertainment.
Underneath the compelling storyline, there is an exploration of the concept of identity that is a great strength of the film. Bree was once a man named Stanley, reared in an upper middle-class home in Phoenix with a controlling Irish-Catholic mother and quite but supportive Jewish father. After ten years of college without ever getting a degree, Stanley flounders around in phone marketing and as Bree works in a Mexican restaurant as a waitress as part of the gender re-assignment process. But Bree is going into surgery thinking that this is the answer to her transgender sexual identity but also without regard to reconciling the past so that she moves toward the future with no burdens from her past clinging to her psychological well-being. This is the gift of the phone call from her son, locked up in NYC for street hustling. It is the reconciliation adventures with her son that eventually leads to the reconciliation with her parents and with herself.
The character of Toby is equally complex in that he is a child that has been abandoned by his natural mother through her suicide and that has been sexually molested by his step-father until he runs away from home to escape the sexual abuse. A very painful and touching scene in the film is when Toby, finally grateful for the physical protection and parental disciplinary limits that Bree offers, offers the one thing he feels he has to offer, which is his body, to Bree. She realizes that his perception of her must be based on more honest information and she reveals that she is Toby's father.
Bree has thought that the day after her sexual reassignment surgery would be the best day of her life, and yet when that day comes she cries with her therapist. She cries because whereas her body has now changed, she is unfulfilled as a parent, a role that she began to adopt in her journey across the USA with Toby. The film is reconciled around this issue rather than around the issue of sexual-reassignment. Toby needs a parent and he senses this and Bree has awakened not only to her new sexual identity role but also to her role as a parent, one that will greatly enhance her growth and fulfillment in life.
It is the basic human fulfillment needs of all human beings that is the under grid of this excellent film, which has been made very entertaining by the less than typical story line and characters, the excellent script, and the outstanding performance of the actors.
Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Customers who bought this item also bought
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2007
Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2014
Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2023
Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2015
Top reviews from other countries
ks-koeln
Eine gelungene Roadmovie-Dramödie mit einer herausragenden Hauptdarstellerin
Reviewed in Germany on October 14, 2017A from Canada
Makes you laugh and cry all at the same time
Reviewed in Canada on February 19, 2015
