Felicity Huffman, best known as the harried mom of “Desperate Housewives,” gives the performance of her career as a man on the verge of finally becoming a woman in “Transamerica.”
It’s a smart, subtle, slyly comic and haunting portrait of what it means to be a woman — or a man, for that matter.
Huffman is both hilarious and heart-breaking as she transitions subtly through surgery. She looks in a mirror at her face — ears sticking out, stringy hair — and tries to see herself as glamorous. If she stares hard enough, maybe she will magically become beautiful.
Huffman, nominated for an Oscar as best actress, deserves it hands down for these poignantly hopeful but brutally honest moments of self-assessment.
She plays Bree, who was born Stanley, but who always knew she was a woman. Now close to 40, she has been undergoing hormone treatments, electrolysis and therapy for two years in preparation for her final surgery.
But on the verge of her new life, she gets a call that yanks her back into her unhappy past. As a man, she tried to prove herself with a one-night stand. It was a humiliating mistake, only confirming her worst fears.
But that fling resulted in a son, now 17, that she never knew about. When the boy’s mother dies, Bree finds herself confronted by a hostile, troubled young stranger named Toby (Kevin Zegers, the kid of the “Air Bud” series).
If she couldn’t be a father for him before, how can she dare be a mother to him now? And what if he discovers her secret?
The boy, a runaway trying to survive as a gay hustler on the streets, also has dark secrets she can’t begin to imagine.
Writer-director Duncan Tucker throws them together for an impromptu cross-country trek to find what they really want from themselves and each other.
