Related articles, background features and opinions about this topic.
By Damien McGuinness
"Brokeback Mountain" may have proven to Hollywood that showing two men kissing on the silver screen does not necessarily lead to riots in the cinema. But if you’ve only just managed to get your head around the idea of two cowboys sharing a saddle, then hang on to your Stetson because things are about to get even more complicated. Compared to what is being screened at the Berlin International Film Festival this week, a gay love story seems about as radical as a Doris Day movie.
Welcome to the world of feature-length looks at gender confusion. What is male? What's female? And can one be both? Such are the conundrums presented to Berlin film goers this week -- in the form of up-close-and-personal looks at hermaphrodites, sex-change patients, transsexuals and all the gendernauts in between.
"A Soap," for example, is a Danish film in the running for the festival's top prize, the Golden Bear. The plot? The touching story of a man -- who is about to become a woman through gender reassignment surgery -- and a woman who fall in love with each other. In the film "Breakfast on Pluto," by Neil Jordan, a transvestite prostitute is on a quest to find love and a stable home life. Along the way, s/he has a number of relationships with straight men. The moving Austrian documentary "Octopus Alarm," on the other hand, spends two years in the life of Alex Jürgen, who, as he puts it on the film's Web site, "belongs to the two percent of people who were born without determinate sexual characteristics." And "Container" is an avant-garde piece by cult Swedish director Lukas Moodysson about a corpulent man who believes that under his folds of fat, he is actually a pretty Asian-American girl.
"You have to mold your own gender"
Given Berlin's reputation as one of the homosexual capitals of Europe and the world, it's hardly surprising that the city's film festival would take the next step and play host to so many films about gender dysphoria. And it's likely that most Berlin viewers will take the films in stride. But why the sudden cinematic interest in issues of gender?
According to Pernille Fischer Christensen, the director of "A Soap," the break-down of definitions of gender and sexuality in cinema simply reflect the realities of today’s world. “In modern life, I as a woman, live and work very much like a man. Women have taken on things from men, which you have to do if you want to survive,” she says. “In the same way, men have had to learn lots from women in order to survive emotionally. Traditional roles don’t exist anymore.”
Indeed. Traditional families have become scarce even in mass-market productions. But "Boys Don't Cry" aside, what seems avant-garde in Hollywood is blasé in Berlin.
“I think it’s a very beautiful thing, that you have to mold your own gender nowadays,” Christensen says. “But I also think a lot of people are very frustrated. On the outside I am a woman, but how much am I also a man inside? And how much is the man that you meet, actually a woman inside? The transsexual is just a symbol right now for how, in the Western world, we all feel a little bit confused.”
"Marriage is dead"
"A Soap" attacks virtually every barrier that exists between men and women. The main character Charlotte is aggressive, has problems with intimacy and lacks empathy. Kristian, her ex-boyfriend, on the other hand, is sensitive, talks openly about his feelings and wants to settle down. “Because she uses her sexuality in a very masculine way, Charlotte is actually much more shocking for audiences than the character of Veronica the transsexual,” says Trine Dyrholm who plays Charlotte in the film.
Dyrholm agrees with Christensen that a fundamental change is taking place in the way people approach gender these days. “People are starting to ask a lot of questions about gender and sexuality right now," she says. "Marriage is kind of dead, and love has a lot more faces. It’s a very interesting time.”
“Society has really matured,” says Alex Jürgen the hermaphrodite who bravely tells, and even more bravely shows, what it is like to be born without a specific gender in the no-holds barred documentary "Octopus Alarm." “Twenty years ago, for example, you wouldn’t even have imagined that Berlin would have a gay mayor," Jürgen says, referring to Berlin's homosexual mayor, Klaus Wowereit. "These films show that people are now ready for the next level."
Jürgen says that in Germany alone, some 350 children are born with genital characteristics of both sexes every year. Most undergo numerous operations as babies or children to become female -- so-called "gender alignment" surgery -- with often painful psychological and physical consequences when they reach adulthood. “I agreed to be in the film to try to prevent this happening to more children,” Jürgen says.
For the producer of "Breakfast on Pluto", Stephen Woolley, the fact that such films can be made at all, is a sign of how tolerant European society has become. The film's main character, Patrick "Kitten" Braden, played by Cillian Murphy, grows up questioning his gender and challenging authority in 1960s small-town Ireland. “Making a film is such a battle with the powers that be, because it’s all about whether you’ll be able to reach an audience,” he says. “The fact that it is now possible to make a film like this, and attract an audience which is not going to run out of the cinema screaming when they see it, shows how things have developed. It proves that people can deal with these issues.”
Packed houses for transvestites
Although the appeal of avant-garde films like "Container" is undoubtedly limited -- it has virtually no plot, the commentary rarely fits the pictures and even director Lukas Moodysson said after the press screening at the Berlin festival that he thought the film was “irritating” -- many of the other films are destined for much wider release. "Breakfast on Pluto," for example, which is decidedly mainstream in style, if not content, has already been playing in Ireland to packed houses.
So when might Berlin's broad-mindedness become part of American movie mainstream? Wieland Speck, head of the Berlin International Film Festival's Panorama program, points out that "Brokeback Mountain" has its roots in films screened decades ago in Berlin.
This time though, it doesn't seem to have taken quite as long. The independent film "Transamerica" has enjoyed remarkable success in the United States having received a Golden Globe and generating two Oscar nominations, one for lead actress Felicity Huffman. Her role? A transsexual about to take the final surgical step into womanhood.
Post to other social networks:
Stay informed with our free news services:
| All news from SPIEGEL International | Twitter | RSS |
| All news from Under the Scope section | RSS |
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2006
All Rights Reserved
Reproduction only allowed with the permission of SPIEGELnet GmbH
