Life is more than the sum of its parts

Life is more than the sum of its parts.
I just love this tagline, and the movie.

Literally, transamerica means "across America"; but I knew there must be something behind this word first time I saw it...yup! you can guess and get it: trans as in "transgender" or "transsexual".

As Bree 'Stanley' Osbourne(Felicity Huffman) walks out of her house, looking very "authentic" in pink dress while keeping a low profile (with a slouch hat and sunglasses), I was still wondering whether that was Lynette from Desperate Housewives(I really didn't notice she was taking the leading role when I downloaded the movie...shame on me-,-). Then her voice(although much coarsened), confirmed my guess.

Bree is very excited about her final sexual-reassignment-surgery, male to female, which is scheduled one week later. Then she receives a call from her/his alleged son Toby(Kevin Zegers), the result of some sexual fling many years ago when she was still Stanley. The 17-year-old motherless troubled (but very handsome) kid is a hustler and imprisoned in 紐約.

Unwillingly but out of no other choice(under direct instructions from her therapist), Bree flies from LA to NY and bails him out of jail, pretending to be a Christian missionary, and invites Toby to travel with her driving back to LA(again, unwillingly under direct instructions from her therapist), secretly planning to drop him off at his stepfather's on the way.

So the journey starts, with Bree's little secret undiscovered yet. We know this trick, again, cat-out-of-the-bag thing, either the cat comes out the bag on its own willing, or someone opens the bag and finds the cat. But Duncan played the trick in a more sophisticated way. As the two protagonists become more and more connected along the way, Toby finds out that Bree is a transsexual; calls she a f*cking lying freak; but later on he accepts, and even feels attached to her(not knowing she is his father). After innocently robbed by a hitchhiker, Bree takes Toby to her wealthy parents' house, where under certain circumstance(which I decide not to talk about) Bree tells the truth, and Toby leaves in rage (along with his grandmother's purse).
...
Of course, happy ending in the end, the son goes back to his "father" after her surgery, and proudly demonstrates a poster proving that he has (partly) fulfilled his aspiration of becoming a porn star-,-

Felicity Huffman's impersonation is said to be stunning, which also just won her the Golden Globe Award. She really did a good job, although, I bet whoever has watched DH will find it hard not to connect the two roles. Something just wouldn't change: the way she moves her lips and eyes, some of the gestures, her intonation...Like...yes a good example is Jennifer Anniston, in Friends or the Good Girl, serious role or not, she just couldn't make a completely different person, or even closer. (Sure we cannot expect them to be Dustin Hoffman)

To me this is also kind of a "road movie", with two protagonists on the road turning from total strangers to father and son, also with some funny scenes dotted along the road: 17-year-old-boy making out with 12-year-old-girl, gay sexual trade, a little romantic affair, cute grandma...
I was even quite moved when the vegan hitchhiker takes their car along with everything in it, Bree groans in despair: "my surgery...I have to be in LA in two days, what am I going to do?" The pennies she's been saving up for this last surgery taking two jobs are all gone. And when she cries and cries in hospital after the surgery, saying "I f*cked up...it hurts.". And when she lies in the bathtub, awaring of and touching her own female body, and a smile tenderly blossoms in her face.

As Duncan the director also says, this film isn't about transsexuals(fishee: not exclusively), and 「It's about parenting. It's about growing up.」 Hmmmmmm in one word, it's about the L word: LOVE...or LIFE.