Bree is about to have surgery that will complete her transformation from male -- she was born Stanley -- to female, when she learns that a fumbling sexual encounter in Stanley's youth resulted in a son. Toby is 17 now, and calls looking for Stanley, hoping that his father will bail him out of jail.
Bree's therapist refuses to authorize her surgery until she meets her son, so Bree goes to New York and gets Toby out of jail; he thinks she's a do-gooder missionary and has no idea that she's his father. (Oy, pronouns can get complicated in stories like this...) The two set out on a cross-country road trip to Los Angeles, Bree returning home for surgery, Toby planning to make a name for himself in porn.
The trip itself follows the standard road-trip-of-discovery formula. There are unhappy reunions with families (both Bree's and Toby's), potential romantic interests, hitchhikers with questionable motives, and so forth and so on.
But Felicity Huffman's performance as Bree is so remarkable that the movie is absolutely worth seeing, despite its frequent lapses into predictability. Start with Huffman's physical transformation; her shoulders and jaws are squarer, her hands larger and clumsier, her voice pushed to the bottom of her range. Then notice the careful attention to details -- makeup that's not applied quite right, fingernails that are just a bit too long and too square.
And finally, Huffman nails the emotional turmoil of someone who's still not sure who she is and how to be that person. Teaming her with a 17-year-old boy for most of the movie is a clever move; both characters are (to descend into academic jargon for a bit) still learning how to perform their own identities.
The rest of the movie really isn't up to the level of Huffman's work. Kevin Zegers is adequate, if not particularly memorable, as Toby; in his defense, the character's not very well written. It boggles the mind that he doesn't put the pieces together to figure out who Bree really is long before she finally tells him; Toby may not be a genuis, but he's not that stupid.
Graham Greene has a few nice scenes as one of the many strangers we meet along the way. Fionnula Flanagan, usually such a good actress, is a shrieking harpy as Bree's mother, and seems to think she's doing daytime soap opera.
But oh my, Felicity Huffman is magnificent here. It's an astonishing piece of work, and it should not be missed.
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