Polanski meets Campion in this unique and alluring psychosexual noir. Francis Girod has a history of tormenting the screen lives of icons or ingénues, making Romy Schneider empty a dissolved corpse out of an acid bath bucketful by bucketful in Le Trio Infernal (1974) and then teenage star Sophie Marceau battle her older, alcoholic husband after he murders a local in Haiti in Descente aux Enfers (Descent into Hell, 1986). This time, it’s gorgeous Robinson Stévenin, one of France’s hottest teen boy stars, who cops the role of Bo, a masochistic pre-op transsexual runaway living by her wits in Brussels.
Bo's father, who she hasn't seen for years, is arrested on sex abuse charges and she, as one of his early victims, is called as a witness. She's reluctant to testify as she seems to be immersed in her family-free life and pending gender reassignment surgery. The police station becomes her second home, however, as a serial killer begins to strike at the Brussels tranny community, with Bo at the center, and even suspiciously on the scene, of most of the killings. While Bo falls in love with her handsome but cruel neighbour, a male escort who breaks her arm, gets her beaten up and spits on her, every character seems to appear mysteriously after each murder with blood spatters on their clothing, or some other red-herring that eventually makes everyone a suspect. Black-cloaked mystery men with eye patches, corrupt cops and plot threads that cast doubt on who may be secretly related to who complete the over-the-top picture and needless to say the killer plays symbolic carve-up games with his victims' corpses and cuts out their tongues.
As with Mandragora, Transfixed teeters on the edge of the ridiculous and you never really know if the next scene is going to be just that little bit too much, making the whole thing a turkey, or whether you're watching some kind of eccentric masterpiece. It landed on the plus side for me, though, as I think Transfixed is great.
The greatest thing about it is Stévenin who is completely convincing and quite affecting as the tough-on-the-outside, puff-on-the-inside Bo. When Polanski dressed up as his female neighbour in The Tenant and ended up falling off her balcony in full drag, over-sized pumps askew at the bottom of his chunky French man's legs, now that was just plain hilarious. Great auteurship, mind, but hilarious to look at. Stévenin's androgynous beauty is bewitching, and even in subsequent male roles, he looks like Bo. In this role, he wears light make up, fake boobs and a conservative female wardrobe replete with bouncy, healthy hair and the occasional alice band as he zips from scene to scene with dignity and panache. Like the similarly fine-featured River Phoenix Stévenin comes from an all-star, oddly-named family including brother Sagamore and sister Salomé, both popular actors in France, and his father is director Jean-François Stévenin.
Stévenin won a César Award as Most Promising Actor for this film, and he seems like a fascinating artist with an interesting future. He doesn't miss a beat in Transfixed in a demanding role that has him on screen in almost every scene and which could have easily been made ridiculous. He plays Bo with sensitivity and intelligence. Even when she's moping after her loser love-interest, she carries her head high and teary later scenes involving Bo's confrontations with her father are superbly acted. If Jodie Foster had done something like this, she'd have won twelve Oscars for it. Somehow, though, I think an actor with the edginess of Stévenin would never crossover into American success. History teaches us that in the queer respect, suit-and-tie Rupert Everett is about as far as it goes and if you're French, you either have to be an actress with great skin and sexual mystique (Deneuve, Binoche) or a wine scarfing director-of-importance (Malles, Truffaut) to have Hollywood success. So Stévenin's future work will probably have to be tracked down by non-French speakers. It should be worth the search.
Stévenin in male roles in Deux, left, and Son Frère, right.
There's also something marvellous in the film's almost silly noir elements. Misty midnight wharves with chatting drag queen prostitutes, black-clad killers that the camera never allows us to fully see, glamourous clues (half torn opera tickets, for example) clandestine romances between cops and suspects saturate Transfixed and give the film a fun Cluedo air. Throw in a cast that's 75% transsexual, replete with Diana, who looks exactly like the dead Princess, and you have a wonderfully unique film that's quality enough to not just be something quirky and different.
Alexandre Desplat's original music is beautiful and kudos should also go to the hair, make up and costume team, who keep our beautiful heroine/possible killer poised and soap-clean pretty even when she's splattered with blood.
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