Acting will only get you so far during the awards season, especially when you’re a woman working with the characteristically fluffy parts made available to that gender. A crafted performance may be a thing of beauty, but if you really want to rack up nominations and gongs, you’ve got to ditch the mascara and start looking like last week’s leftovers. Nothing seems to impress the Academy more than a starlet suffering for her art. How they marvelled when Charlize Theron ate an entire donut before filming Aileen or Nicole Kidman bravely rejected lip-liner for her performance in The Hours.
Felicity Huffman has gone one better in Transamerica, adopting a prosthetic penis - yes, there’s a money shot – for her Oscar nominated turn (Reese Witherspoon rightly triumphed on the night) as Bree, a prissy in pink pre-op transsexual. To be fair, the Desperate Housewives star hits all the right notes. Shame the film itself is pure musak, a soap-opera road trip that sees Bree bond with the rent boy son (Zegers) s/he’s never met. And erm, that’s it really.
Though perfectly pleasant and diverting, were it not for Ms. Huffman or Fionnula Flanagan’s stupendously gauche turn as Bree’s disapproving harpy mother, you’d be forgiven for not remembering a thing about Transamerica five minutes after the final credits. We’re talking about Rocky V now, right?