All About Trannies

It has been quite some time since I last wrote about films I recently watched. I have really been doing a lot of watching the past weeks but I was just too lazy to write about them. So far I've seen amazing, amazing films such as Terms of Endearment, The Last Emperor, Crash, Cinema Paradiso and a few others that I could not recall right now.

For this weekend without meaning to I watched three films that prominently featured transexual characters (so I use tranny here to mean transexuals, not transvestites).

I picked a DVD containing some of Pedro Almodovar's films in Quiapo yesterday (more about this excursion on the next post) simply because I've long been dying to see All About My Mother, which was released in 1999. It has a wonderful cast including Penelope Cruz and some familiar Spanish actresses I recognized from watching a slew of Spanish films last year. One of these actresses is the brilliant Candela Pena from Princesas. Very usual with Almodovar's films, this one has an ensemble of strange characters under absurd circumstances. For one, Penelope is a nun who is impregnated and infected with HIV. The father of the kid is a transexual who has a son from a previous relationship with Manuela, a character played by the resplendent Cecilia Roth. Basta, just watch the film if only for the fine performances.

I also found a DVD of Transamerica in Quiapo. Felicity Huffman was nominated and won in countless award-giving bodies for this film. Of course her acclaimed performance is truly deserving. Imagine a woman acting the role of a man trying to become a woman. What comes out is a truly nuanced and engaging performance, unexpected from a character who's supposedly flamboyant and over the top. It helps a lot as well that the film is an accomplishment in writing. Bonus is the supremely lovely Kevin Zegers who plays the son of Felicity's character.

Having already seen an Almodovar, I pulled an old copy of another of his film, Bad Education, which I first saw when I was still living in Davao. (Back then my pirated DVDs were bought from the area outside JS Gaisano.) Playing yet another tranny (or at least a transvestite) in this film is the luscious and smashing Gael Garcia Bernal. It's a very twisted film of an actor assuming the identity of his brother (the latter is the original tranny), a priest doing very nasty things to choirboys, and a film within a film. Nakakahilo noh? But then that's Almodovar for you guys.

I'm not going to rate each film individually. Since they are all superb masterpieces I'm giving them five bamboos each.

Mabuhay ang mga kapatid nating tranny!... And happy mother's day.

Photo Credit: Rotten Tomatoes