Second Serve

This is a telemovie, but make no mistake about its quality. There are better production and performance values here than in many big screen Hollywood flicks.

Get it if you can! I'm lucky enough to have found an ex-rental copy many years ago.

Vanessa Redgrave delivers a performance characteristic of her extraordinary body of work - stirring, believable, assured, compelling - in fact you will wonder where the 90 minutes went as she takes you on an incredible trip through the life of an extraordinary individual.

Redgrave is totally convincing as a man, and as the movie progresses she remains totally convincing as a woman who was once a man. She clearly has enormous empathy for the difficulties faced by Richard Radley in his long and arduous quest to live the life he wants, as Renee Richards.

There are some other fine performances in this film (Louise Fletcher, however, is surprisingly stilted) but it is Vanessa Redgrave's breathtaking portrayal that makes this movie unmissable, and will make you forgive the glib, all-too-convenient telemovie-style moments of plot development, of which there are mercifully few.

"Second Serve" is a stunning made for TV movie done at a time when TV films seemed to have a little more thought put into them than they do now. In later years, they have descended into true crime and women in crisis, drawing largely from the headlines. This film is drawn from the headlines, too, but a different kind. It's the story of Richard Radley, who becomes Renee Richards. Back in 1986, these stories were uncommon - there were no MSNBC documentaries on sex changes, no true stories shown on The Learning Channel. Renee Richards, of course, is a tremendously accomplished woman, an ophthalmologist and tennis pro, who gains a great deal of publicity by suing the tennis association for discrimination.

I found this to be a very uplifting story of a brave person who fought for what she believed in so that she and others like her could have a better life. Vanessa Redgrave is perfect in the role - tall and big-boned, she has an androgeny that she can turn on when a role calls for it, and of course, she is a great actress. I saw her several years ago in "Long Day's Journey into Night" and was blown away, as I was when I saw her in this 19 years ago. If you get a chance to see this, it's beautifully done.

Much after the book which inspired Second Serve came out and the film was broadcast on television, Renee Richards wrote a second autobiography in which she says that while she does not regret the transition surgery from man to woman, she does regret the notoriety that came with it. Who can say what she feels now because there certainly is a fine line between fame and notoriety.

As the film shows if it were not for a curious investigative reporter Renee would have had a modest career in amateur tennis while pursuing her real career as opthamologist.

I've met and talked with enough transgender individuals to know that what Renee formerly Robert felt was portrayed accurately enough, this is a private thing and most would like to do it privately. No one in the transgender world is groomed to be a Jackie Robinson, as Jackie Robinson himself was. It just happens. It happened in my area a few years earlier when a man who was teaching at a high school in Batavia over the summer transitioned. All kinds of noise was made about it and certainly the teacher didn't bargain for it. Curiously enough not any of her students had any problem and the hoopla has died down now.

Vanessa Redgrave did a superb job playing both the male and female versions of the character. As for Renee herself, she's probably got the quieter and gentler life now.

Vanessa Redgrave's follow up project with producer Linda Yellen after Playing for Time. Here She is New York opthalmologist Richard Radley who has a sex change operation to become Renee Richards, and earns fame as a champion female tennis player. Redgrave's largeness - her height, broad shoulders, wide hips, flat chest, and large feet help in making Richard in drag look unlike a woman, and Redgrave lowers her natural speaking voice. This disparity, brave for an actress playing a male transexual, carries over after Richard becomes Rene, and although she is legally a woman and is heterosexual, her presence retains the memory of her change. The moment of Rene's first romantic kiss with a man is handled particularly delicately.

The teleplay by Stephanie Liss and Gavin Lambert, based on the autobiography by Richards with James Ames, has Richard define his predicament as "gender confusion", having "a woman inside of him raging to get out", and a "compulsive disorder", and clinically defined as a "compartmentalised psychosis". We are presented with a scenario of a strong mother and weak father, with Richard as a child dressed by his mother as a girl and being "pleased" by the attention he got, as his reasons for cross-dressing. However one doctor explans it simply - "When the spirit refuses to fit the body, why not make the body fit the spirit". Richard's path to the operation is so convulated that when it is finally done, the news is announced with little fuss. Director Anthony Page has echoed voices in flashbacks, a drag queen singing Put the Blame on Mame with a gag at the end when he uses his own deep voice, and montages of previous scenes in times of stress. He intercuts between Renee's tennis match and her trial where she sued the tennis organisers for discrimination, and makes use of the subtle music score of Brad Fiedel.

Ms. Redgrave is no less than stunning as Richard. This is so much the case that when she finally won her hard-fought battle to become Renee, I was worried that she'd have a hard time passing as female. Her performance really grabbed me that much. The supporting cast is also very professional, and they wisely defer to Redgrave's presence in every scene. This film walks the line between the clinical and the emotional better than any other I have seen on the subject including the recent TransAmerica. There can be no greater fighting for the dignity of one's soul than when the world insists that your apparent gender is true but you are certain it is a lie and that you really can never life your own life until you correct that lie.