The overwhelming amount of emotions that submerge Bree render strong anxiety with her.  In order to cope she sees a psychologist, Margaret (Elizabeth Peña), who also has helped her jump the hurdles to complete her transformation.  With the date of the surgery rapidly approaching, her anxiety intensifies and her feelings about her operation only strengthen in the shadow of fear.  Thus, when an unexpected phone call raises her awareness that she has a son, fear digs its claws deep within her persona.  It elevates the defenses within her, as she develops a cold and callous wall around herself towards anything that presents a threat of preventing her surgery.  However, Margaret will not sign the approval papers of Bree’s sex reassignment surgery until Bree travels across the United States from California to New York to see what help her 17-year old son Toby (Kevin Zegers) needs.

The reunion between Bree and Toby is not what the audience expects, as Bree pretends being someone else and not Toby’s dad.  Instead, Bree takes the role of a female Samaritan Christian helping Toby get out of his doomed situation that surrounds drugs and prostitution.  It is a fitting character, as Bree appears both uptight and frigid.  In all honesty, she needs to get out in the sun far more.  However, it seems to be her way of protecting her identity in the fear of what others might think of her.  In addition, Toby is not anything that Bree, or the audience would imagine, as a scruffy looking teenager emerge from within the New York City’s police station.  Yet, together they make a perfect couple, as parent and son.  The only issue is that Bree never allows Toby to know the truth when they meet.

Through some of the initial conversations, Bree learns that Toby wants to go to California and become an actor, and offers him a ride all the way to California.  This trip across America sets up the story, but it also has an allegorical function, as it presents the idea that transgender people and people with gender identity issues exist all through the American continent.  A notion strengthened through their Texas stop along the way to the Orange state. However, the story is so much more than a mere “more power to film.”  The story exposes genuine coming of age issues within a dysfunctional family, the reunion of two lost (one young and one old) souls that empower each other, the connection between a parent and their teen and much more.  It is even fascinatingly poignant how both Bree and Toby get on each others nerves in a genuine manner such as Bree correcting Toby’s grammar and Toby not listening to the older and wiser Bree.  The trip has many bumps along the road, but it is though these anxiously painful bumps that true humanity and compassion emerge.

It is true that the film has an empowering message, but it also displays the importance of understanding and acceptance from both sides.  As mentioned, Transamerica does not display a one-tracked thought through Bree and Toby, but a complex mix of human emotions that creates turmoil, anxiety, and happiness.  In essence, the film does portray an authentic perspective on life with all of its hardships including all of its tangible and intangible aspects (i.e., physical, psychological, or social), as social restriction exercises its power of what people find acceptable, or not.  Ultimately, Transamerica transcends through poignant resolution and acceptance that radiates absolute recognition of the individual identity regardless of beliefs, morals, and values.

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COUNTRY

USA

Filmography links and data courtesy of