LOVE IN TRANSITION
Transgender stories in TIFF films are family stories at heart,
Filmmakers often struggle with finding ways to reflect cultural moments, the lengthy moviemaking process making immediacy challenging.
With Caitlyn Jenner, TV’s Transparent and more, transgender people are now part of daily conversations. Programmers at the Toronto International Film Festival have managed to reflect these evolving stories with three films on the festival’s lineup: The Danish Girl, About Ray and Girls Lost.
“Art comes as a result of whatever is the topic of society and this (film) is really proof that is the case,” Alicia Vikander, star of The Danish Girl, told the Star before the drama had its first TIFF screening.
The rapid pace of change is reflected in press notes for The Danish Girl, which include a page of “terms to know” for media perhaps not familiar with trans terminology, including definitions of cisgender (sex assigned at birth) and transition (“a complex process”).
Vikander stars opposite Eddie Redmayne, who is earning critical praise for his sensitive portrayal of Copenhagen artist Einar Wegener. Wegener’s groundbreaking gender reassignment surgeries in the late 1920s and early ’30s allowed him to physically become Lili Elbe.
But that is only one element of the effective drama. It’s also a love story, explained Vikander, who plays Wegener’s wife, Gerda, his “soulmate” and the one who encourages the emergence of Lili.
“It is a very unique love story,” said Vikander, who is exceptional as Gerda.
She believes the film, which took 12 years to finally be made, comes at a watershed moment in the “social rights movement” for trans people, although she pointed out many still struggle for acceptance.
“It almost feels like a gender-bender revolution,” says Swedish director Alexandra-Therese Keining.
Her teen fantasy-drama, Girls Lost, recently had its world premiere at TIFF. It’s about three 14-year-old friends magically transformed into boys, allowing one girl to realize her secret dream.
Also making its world bow is About Ray, in which Elle Fanning plays Ray, born Ramona, a teen desperate to begin the medical transition to physically becoming the boy he has always known himself to be.
Each film approaches its transgender characters differently, from change experienced through a marriage ( The Danish Girl), to girls who find they are treated differently as boys, to the modern story of a boy who struggles to persuade the adults in his life — mom Maggie (Naomi Watts), lesbian grandmother Dolly (Susan Sarandon) and long-estranged father Craig (Tate Donovan) — he knows exactly what he wants.
About Ray writer-director Gaby Dellal isn’t sure why transgender stories are having their movie moment. (Add to that the low-budget indie Tangerine, about two trans prostitutes in L.A., which opened this year to critical praise.)
“Is it because people are more vocal? Is it because issues are moving sort of cyclical? Is it because sudden- ly being gay is of no interest anymore and now there’s the next echelon of issue that rises up?” pondered Dellal.
“I guess there’s always a pioneer. And with Caitlyn Jenner, it suddenly exploded.”
Keining also credits the global influence of Jenner with raising awareness and acceptance, although she began working on the Girls Lost script from Jessica Schiefauer’s 2011 teen bestseller Pojkarna two years ago.
She hopes more films will embrace transgender or third-gender characters.
“I think it may be a phase right now, maybe, a pop culture phase . . . we have a transgender phase, like the vampire phase or the supernatural phase, but I would be fantastically happy if there was a third gender.”
But filmmakers must also look at a larger question: will audiences come to the multiplex to watch a film about transgender characters?
“I’d rather they went to the cinema to see a movie about a load of women dealing with their kid and that’s exactly how I’d like it known, a family dramedy,” said Dellal of About Ray.
“That’s what it is, a coming-of-age story for all of them.”