Now, 'trans' can compete with 'cis'?

Emilia Pérez (2025)

Director: Jacques Audiard

mvtimes.com/es/2024/10/29/emilia-
perez-film-musical-genre-bender/

This musical offering would not have garnered as much airtime if it had not been for an openly transgender individual who won the Best Actress awards at both the Cannes and the Oscars. Interestingly, a female actor (a cis woman) insists on being referred to strictly as an 'actor', not an 'actress'. They are particularly keen on this, demanding to be addressed as 'actors'. I suppose this does not apply to transgender actors. A quick glance at Karla Sofía Gascón's Wikipedia page states her occupation as an actress. For a transgender person, being addressed as female represents the ultimate victory of her transition. 

It continues to be one of the most nominated films of the year and the most nominated non-English language film in the Academy's history.

When it comes to the basics, this is a gangster film with a twist. The twist is that one can never conceive of a mob film as a musical. What's more, it makes the feared mobster, Manitas, want to leave it all behind to transition into becoming a woman after abandoning his wife and two children. To facilitate this, he hires an aspiring and desperate lawyer, Rita, to arrange all the medical and legal matters for him to disappear. After months of painful gender reassignment surgery and cosmetic procedures in Thailand and Israel, Manitas becomes Emilia Pérez. His wife and children are relocated to Switzerland. Manitas' death is staged.

Four years later, Manitas, now Emilia, must long for her family. She meets the family and introduces herself as Manitas' distant cousin. With the assistance of Rita, the lawyer, they relocate to Mexico City and live as one large, happy family. Trouble arises when Manitas' widowed wife rekindles her romance with an old flame. Emilia also runs a non-profit organisation that seeks justice for individuals killed by gangsters in Mexico.

Interspersed and woven into the story are actors bursting into song, occasionally with quite catchy tunes.

 

It's amusing that we used to laugh at Indian films when actors broke into song and dance back in the day. A 1932 Hindi film, Indersabha, along with its Tamil counterpart, Indrasabha, featured 70 songs. Now, Hollywood musicals are receiving awards—garnering all the nominations for highlighting the LGBTQ agenda, which is currently in vogue, though not so much for their artistic merit.

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Get Back!

Aruvi (Tamil அருவி; 2017)

This is a compelling sociopolitical drama which must have surely been written by a card-carrying member of the socialist/communist party. Who else would paint such a bleak picture of modern life and the self-defeating trappings that line every aspect of our lives? Human values take a back seat. A pre-set path is made for us to follow and feel contended. Any deviation from the norm is frowned upon. The whole purpose of life is to promote consumerism, be awed by materialism and to fatten the multinational conglomerates.

This is an absorbing saga of a young girl, Aruvi, who acquired HIV most unconventionally - at the roadside coconut vendor as she savoured a probably contaminated freshly cut coconut! Long story short - she falls seriously ill, is diagnosed, hurled abuses of promiscuity and is chased away by the previously loving family. She wanders around, living with friends and working menial jobs. At every corner, the men in her life misbehaved. They demand sexual favours in return for help.

Lakshmi Gopalaswamy

Aruvi befriends a fellow HIV victim, a transexual, Emily. Together they plot an act of appropriate revenge to expose the hypocrisy of the society, the wolves in sheep's clothing in community and the foolhardy of the people in the business of peddling news who are more interested in sensationalism than actually highlighting the plight of the people.

Aruvi and Emily walk into a television studio in the pretext of exposing the plight of the society's transgender population. Cleverly, they hoodwinked a self-absorbed talk show compère and took the studio staff hostage at gunpoint. 

It takes a swipe at a TV reality-justice talk show of the Tamil little screen,  'Solvathellam Sathyam'. It works along the same line as 'Jeremy Kyle Show' and 'Jerry Springer Show' where people wash dirty linen in public. The movie, even though, uncredited is supposed to be based on an Egyptian 2011 film, 'Asmaa' as alleged by some critics. It is obviously not copied as we will find out later.

A refreshing story with completely fresh faces and a debutante director. 4.5/5.

Also, see: on Asmaa https://www.riflerangeboy.com/2019/07/walk-mile-in-her-shoes.html 

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A look into the subaltern...

Tangerine 2015

It is Christmas Eve. What do you expect most people to do? Do last-minute shopping, wrap their presents or be on their way to their loved one's place or sit down cosily awaiting Santa Claus to slide down the chimney to sip their milk and chocolate cookie?

Unfortunately, not everybody's life is cut out so fine. Many in the essential services have to slog through the festivities. For some, it is just another day, another big expenditure.

This film deals with a small section of the population who are kind of cast out from the public eye. They are seen but preferred not to be associated with.

The spirit of Yuletide is in the air in the streets of the bad side of Los Angeles. For transexuals, Sin-dee Rella and Alexandra, it is just a day in their dog-eat-dog life. They just live off the street, earning enough to scrape by offering sexual favours. Sin-Dee had just been released after a 28-day stint in jail for soliciting. She is all riled out to discover that her pimp boyfriend has been cheating on her with a cis-female. In midst of all this are an Armenian immigrant cab driver, a married man with a daughter, and his penchant for transgender prostitutes.

The whole movie, a low-budget endeavour, was shot entirely on iPhone5 using actual transexuals in their natural habitat and showcasing the not so glamorous part of Hollywood. It is a loud movie with a lot of shouting and strong street language. Sin-dee goes in search of her boyfriend after finding out about his new girlfriend. The Armenian cab driver has to deal with his 'infidelity' after his liaison with transexual sex workers is put up in the open by his nosy mother-in-law.

Not everything is hunky-dory in the land of American dreams and Tinseltown.

(P.S. Why 'Tangerine' as the title of the movie I wondered? Well, probably because tangerine is not quite an orange but wants to be one; just like the trans individuals are not females but want to very much be one! Or maybe it is the background colour of the film when it is shot an iPhone5! Mmmm...)

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Anarchy or Evolution?

That is what the world has come to. There is sadly no 'one-answer-fit-all' response. The people who argue against the grain are smart people with intelligence quotients higher than the general public. 

Everyone is concerned only of his own self. There is an inner desire to live life to the fullest; enough of living under the pretence that something sacrosanct needed to be protected. If all this while they had cowed to societal pressures and suppressed their inner needs, it was the time that they let their hair down. They do as they please.

Over generations, through trials and error, regulations have been put in the system. Each sex had their gender roles. Each gender had their duties and expectations. It was not a perfect arrangement, but there was a semblance of order. The general public accepted it as necessary to continue our existence. 

Nothing does not offend anyone any more. This signage in 

an Italian B and B with an 'alien' in a coquettish pose is not 

acceptable by the LGBT Rights Association there.

Now, a section of the population has started questioning the status quo. These people do not want to be confined in boxes assigned to them. They find it difficult to tick their nature (or is Man's) assigned social expectations. They do not feel comfortable using gender allocated toilet facilities. Through no fault of theirs, they appear trapped in the wrong body, and they want out. They want to fight back. There is no more two sexes. There is a third, fourth, fifth and maybe more.

It seems that there is no necessity to fill up the gender box anymore. The blurring of capability and roles of the sexes are more blurred than ever. Their voices are growing stronger by the day. Their contributions to society cannot be denied. They do not cause the wrath of the Almighty. They are here to stay whether we like it or not. If this would lead to anarchy as the traditionalists predict, it is up to us as thinking humans to accept this change, utilise it to our own benefit and help to steer civilisation towards a future that includes the people who are different and do not confirm. Our journey from the caves to the skyscrapers is rife with outliers who merely refuse to conform to the societal norm.

The first fearless caveman who dared to sit on the tree trunk floating by the river managed to reach on the other side to open the door of opportunities.

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

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This will never make it here!

Danish Girl 2015

I know this movie will not make its way to this coast anytime this lifetime. Artworks using LGBT issues are a sure ‘no-no’ for the censorship board. The beholders of morality have no qualms in sweeping matters of corruption and another overt disservice to humanity, issues related to sexuality and sex would alert their antennas and they would go that two extra miles to ensure these productions do not see the living daylights in this country.

This film is an attempt to narrate, with artistic licence, as the story is altered to suit the audience’s appetite, the dilemma that a certain Danish painter went through to fulfil her inner needs. Eddie Redmayne (who acted as Prof Stephen Hawking) gives an effeminate depiction of Einar Wegener, an artist who lived in the 1920s who feels that she is a woman trapped in a man’s body. Discovering this when he posed in a female garb when his wife’s, another painter, model turned up late, fights the urge and seeks medical help who finally labels him as schizophrenic.

His wife, Gerda, initially thinks it is all foolhardy, but realises the gravity of the situation when Einar is seen intimate with a man. Einar’s old childhood friend comes to the scene who helps in their problem but also end up being a problem when he confesses his love to Gerda.

Einar, now Lili Elbe, lands in a Parisian clinic where she undergoes gender reassignment surgeries but succumbs to complications that occurred during the second operation of vaginal creation.

In real life, Lili had undergone five surgeries. The fifth one which involved uterine transplantation proved fatal.

The questions here are aplenty. Is there a genetic basis for LGBT? Is it acquired through ‘faulty’ nurturing? Has there been a baseline prevalence all through human civilisation and only now people have the courage to express their inner trapped desire? Is love independent of physical beauty and external biological feature? Can a woman love a man as a man even though of his cross-dressing and his chosen sexuality? Can gays be 'treated'? If they can be accepted into societies all through our existence, how come there is a need to correct this? 

Pushing the boundaries of self expression

Transparent (TV miniseries, Season 1; 2014)

Living is easy with eyes closed. When you start analysing your existence in life, the purpose of life and start questioning every shred of existentialism, life becomes too complicated. It make living impossible for you and those around you.
When you feel discontented and yearn for the perpetual unattainable pleasures in life without appreciating the joy and magic that is around you, life can be a living hell. This, in essence, is the bane of modern living. We are unsure what we actually want in life. We are forever lamenting that life sucks and things could be better. We reach out beyond borders that are accepted as norm only to realise that that is not we were looking in the first place.
This new TV show just completed its first season, released for binge consumption by Amazon. The ten 30-minutes episodes narrate the saga of a dysfunctional family. The father, Mort/Maura, is a respected professor, who decide to come out in the open about his desire to cross dress, at the age of 60 plus. His struggle to live to his inner needs predates 10 years before the present and is told in flashback - how he used to secretly try out dresses and sneak out to a transgender camp. His wife, Shelly (Judith Light, we knew her as the main character of the 80s sitcom 'Who's the Boss'), left him after his confession for another man, Ed. This Ed is now demented and finally dies at the end of the series.

The season tells us how Mort/Maura slowly informs his kids (2 ladies and a man) of his cross dressing desires. This creates many error of comedy in this Jewish family. For a start, their Papa has become a Mama, so they address him as Mapa.

The kids themselves have the own sexuality problems. The elder daughter, a mother of two, decide to rekindle her lesbian relationship with her former college roommate. Another crisis that she has to handle is her issues with her husband and her desire to marry her partner.

The son, a confused chap in the music industry, jumps from bed to bed to partners unwilling to commit themselves. He finally finds love in a female Rabbi who had earlier vowed celibacy.
The younger daughter who is just pondering on her own true desires in life gets confessed to by her best friend who used to be her brother's girlfriend.
As the mother's boyfriend becomes more difficult to manage, the family comes together to decide whether they should pull the plug on him, by overdosing him. Luckily, they did not. He falls into the pool and drowns instead.

As you can see, this comedy is satire of sorts. On one hand, it highlights the plight of the transgender community and educate us that their transformation is not solely on fulfilling sexual gratifications. On the other, we wonder if he is creating further confusion as the transgenders start falling in love with the gender that they were biologically born to love! (Transgender male falling for females).

There is nothing sacred anymore - Boy & Boy; Boy & Girl; Girl & Girl; Boy & Girl & Girl; Girl & Boy & Boy.....

One theory that explains the increased incidence of gender identity crisis is the fact that oral contraceptive pills get metabolised in the kidneys and gets excreted into water cycle of nature and comes back to us in our drinking water, albeit in ultra low doses, screwing up the masculinity of mankind! Just a theory! Of course, people are more assertive these days on their likes and dislikes as well as demand their rights under the shield of the right to live as a human being.
Those afflicted with this aberrance insist that they are also God's creatures made in his mold. The opposers insist that The Divine is infallible and their conduct is self imposed and can be corrected.