Different for Girls

Simple (if that's the right word) British tale of a hot headed rebel who meets up with an old school chum who's now a transsexual.

The script as filmed is almost (but not quite) as cloying as a Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks vehicle: it never really panders to the love story and it sacks trite 'witticisms' for honest language but it has just as faux-romantic of an ending as You've Got Mail or some other bit of schmaltz. However, the riveting performances by its leads help lift this film high above any mainstream pandering mush.

Rupert Graves has a high-voltage sexuality and never slips in his characterization of Paul; it's so common for actors to give some kind of Kabuki-like performance when playing volatility but he's amazingly real.

Steven Mackintosh is a revelation as Kim and his heartbreaking nuances capture an inner struggle between the mind and the heart with wonderful simplicity.

Saskia Reeves (perfect in Antonia & Jane) and Neil Dudgeon also stand out as the married couple who Kim turns to for support.

While far from being a great film, it trumps many, many, MANY other movies that try to be honest and believable in their depiction of gay or transsexual romance.

This film hit me like a lightning bolt. It brought tears to my face and almost restored my faith in the human race. It tries to tell us that even the unthinkable can be done if we accept the combined power of feelings and imagination. We see people struggle with age old morals, their youth and upbringing. We can almost taste the bitter loneliness of the adapted transsexual as we can actually feel the pain of the struggling rebel that (almost) cannot accept the discrepancies between memory and perception, between love, lust and friendship, between what's done and not done. The actors make it all believable and enjoyable. They live the parts that show true bravery in crossing holy borders.

I am a male to female transsexual, and all I can say is this is the first and ONLY film I have seen handle this subject matter with taste and tact.

It sat on my shelf for two years before I watched it. I have seen this theme abused and twisted too many times, and I had assumed the worst. I'm very happy to say I got a very pleasant surprise.

Steven Makintosh did a wonderful job of playing Kim, and the fact that Kim's body is not "perfect" is a touch of reality seldom shown when movies or television fictionalize transition.

It was an honest approach, as opposed to the the usual "and far less realistic" sexy female actress that a Hollywood would have insisted on using.

Kim does not live as a "transgendered person" as is implied in some reviews but as a normal white collar woman in London, her old school friend comes into her structured and very low profile life and turns it upside down from emotional outbursts in restaurants, to a confrontation with the police.

His growing acceptance of Kim as a woman, and their growing relationship are wonderful to behold.

I don't want to give anything away, but from yet another person who's "been there" the film went between having me on the edge of my seat to having me in tears.

I cannot rate this film too highly.

"For people who NEED a nitpick, I think seeing Pauls girl friends reaction to goings on would have been good, she sort of just drops out of the plot and you never really know why"

Missed this first time round, but unintentionally caught a late night/early hours TV airing in the UK. Steve Mackintosh sustains a serious dramatic presence and role as Kim against the heavily scripted comedic/stereotype 'unreformed male' buffoonery of the friend/partner Paul Prentice played by Rupert Graves. Although at times the dynamic of the two styles gives an uneven feel to the whole narrative, the underlying point of apparent complete contrasts, but underlying and overlapping commonality of involvement and feeling is well made. Some of the scenes are intensely moving, particularly those in the police station when Kim is facing arrest and conviction and is placed alone in a cell, uncertain of whether she will face the immediate unwelcome company of another unknown male cellmate, and/or eventual consignment to a male prison. This is hardly comedy, certainly real life drama, and contains the essence of real tragedy. Other scenes in the film evoke similar high tensions in emotional colour and reading.

Overall delivery was a little uneven, but well worth viewing again. Would be worth a full 'in-line drama' remake of the theme, as other commentators have also hinted. A good attempt at a very difficult subject which manages to hit the right emotional responses without actually falling off the tightrope between banality and exploitation.

Aside from any psycho-analytical considerations (in which I have no competence), this film really worked for me. I typically give a wide berth to pictures of this ilk, but I was really captivated by the sense that these characters were really living the circumstances in which they found themselves. I'm not going to blather on about how relevant blah blah, but the fact is that Nobody is immune from the possibility that an experience like this might present itself in real life, and it is thought-provoking to reflect on how it might affect ME. This is a complex subject, uncomfortable to many, but explored here in a way that was good sociology, good psychology, and damned fine cinema. Whatever your hang-ups are (or aren't), enjoy this film.