Transamerica’s Bree, (Huffman), is a pre-operative transsexual who is forced to take a journey across America to bail out a son she didn’t know shed fathered.

This multi-award winning film is director/writer Duncan Tucker’s first feature. He picks a tricky topic for his comedy drama. Transgender issues are not inherently funny, but critics, audiences and the LGBT community in this country and the States largely approved.

Transamerica is a road movie and, as well as the tarmac covered, we expect personal journeys and hardcore emotional bonding to figure in this genre. And we get all this. But we get something else as well a terrific central performance from Oscar-nominated Felicity Huffman ably supported by Kevin Zegers (Toby).

Huffman’s interpretation of Tuckers finely written character helps us increase our understanding of some peoples need to reassign their gender, what it means to them and what they have to go through in physical and emotional terms and in terms of society’s attitudes.

The outcome is that by the end of the film after the fun and melodrama and we see Bree for who she is, intrinsically good and kind, and as fallible as the next person, and maybe we no longer see her as a gender label – a pre-operative transsexual.

“That Transamerica, works as a film is because Bree is so persistently and patiently herself. If she had been wilder, stranger, more extroverted, the movie might fly off the rails.” Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times.

“The film is an absolute delight, and Huffman is a treat, giving one of the funniest, subtlest performances to be seen this year.” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian.

This is an LGBT History Month screening.