This is an early review of a film scheduled to open next year.
A GOOD MAN **
IDEA: When it's discovered that his wife is unable to conceive, trans man Benjamin decides to temporarily halt his transition and carry the child himself.
BLURB: A Good Man. There’s nothing remarkable about that title, until it’s spoken to the transgender Benjamin by one of his patients halfway through the film. Having already witnessed much of his unique reproductive journey, in which his gender identity and choice to bear a child have been challenged by family, science, and the law, these words take on a peculiar tenor. “A good man.” It’s a gendered collocation, almost never seen or heard with the subject as another sex. This attention to how language shapes our perception and understanding of identity gives Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar’s film its most surprising source of insight, cutting through the director’s often earnest, sentimental didacticism, and proving more matter-of-factly potent than any moment of teary family conflict. When the tears do come, however, actress Noémie Merlant makes it work. Putting aside the questionable casting of a cis actress in this trans role, Merlant is entirely and almost eerily convincing in what feels like a truly empathetic embodiment of Benjamin’s pride and pain. The actress disappears into the part not only physically but emotionally, effectively delineating the inner struggle of someone postponing, or at least complicating, a self-actualization that feels so in reach. She is remarkable, even when A Good Man isn’t.
No comments:
Post a Comment