Great plot; but redundant and minimal relationships

Rating: 8/10 (26 May 2016)

If you are going to watch this film, don't gaze upon the 70% Rotten Tomato's score and think not highly of this film. It is a tear, and it is evident in the critic reviews, that there was a high level of division of whether the film was great or blandly minimal, redundant, and stereotypical toward the transgender community and gay men in general. I would have to pin my review somewhere in the middle. If you are or are in close contact with any LGBTQ person, you may find this film to stereotype certain members of that community. Eddie Redmayne did portray the character as a slightly feminine and characterized version of a gay man soon to be transgender, which makes his performance look a little bit lazy. In interviews, he did state that he talked to several transgender people and it seems that he just attempted to generalize what they all said into his own portrayal, which is understandable in some respects. But for me, the major upset was Alcia Vkandir. In the scenes that she was in, she was so elegant and persuasive, and human. She and Redmayne worked beautifully together. But, I wanted more drama between the two. I need that crying sensation that Vkandir can pull of so well. That didn't happen as glorified in the initial trailer. Further more, the relationships that occur toward the start of act two tend to become fuzzy and difficult to understand as the movie progresses. I was bored throughout the ending of act 2 and into act 3, due to redundancy and the extremely slow pacing of the story, that it had come to be. Overall, it needed to speed up, and it needed more attention to detail toward the later parts in the movie. However, there was some exceptional moments in this film, one's that began to bring the humanity of the situation into full view. Artsy is the word that some of the scenes portray. Such as the scene where "Lilly" is experimenting with the feelings of wanting to be a woman, by playing with his gentiles while looking in the mirror, to see what it would look like if he had a feminine vagina. In addition, when Vkandir's character comes home from the art gallery, and finds her husband still in the costume of a woman, what she thought he was doing, the emotion is real. Please be aware of the subject manner, and the brief nudity in about four scenes, and be sure that everyone you are watching with understands that the subject is heavy and could bring slight shock or misunderstanding. And if you are a member of the LGBTQ community, go into this movie with an open mind, and remind yourself that this is long ago, and the community has changed in the extremity since then. Try to find yourself in this film, and give yourself time to reflect after seeing it, for you will catch things that you never knew existed in the film. Enjoy!