2022 Entry #012 01-29-22 “Different for Girls” is a 1996 British / French dramedy film which was written by Tony Marchant and directed by Richard Spence. The film stars Steven Mackintosh (“Prick Up Your Ears”, “Rocketman”) as Kim Foyle, a post-op trans woman who has an unexpected run-in with an old school chum named Paul Prentice, played by Rupert Graves (“Maurice”, “Bent”, “Room to Rent”, “V for Vendetta”, “Swimming with Men”) – a longtime crush of mine.
At first, Kim wishes to avoid Prentice, who knew Kim before her change and defended her in school (when he believed she was a gay man). Although he’s confused by her choices and is at first ignorant of transgender issues, to his credit he sees no reason why they can’t continue their friendship and chooses to educate himself. There are complications due to family, other relationships, police brutality and other unexpected turns, but the film gives us the happy ending that these characters deserve.
I should note that there is a school of thought (which I agree with) that trans roles should be played by trans actors, because having cis actors play these roles contributes to violence against trans people. For more information on this topic, I highly recommend the fantastic Netflix documentary “Disclosure”. But having said that, this film was made before such information was widely known, the story is sensitively told and it has a lot of important information in an entertaining film. For instance, the film goes out of its way to inform the audience that Kim is a woman and that her attraction to men is heterosexual…which seems brilliant for a film from 1996. Nicely done.
This is another film that I’ve owned for decades and had seen once before. I remembered that I enjoyed it and I’m happy to say that I probably enjoyed it even more the second time through.
