Second Serve

I'am a Vanessa Redgrave fan. However, that does not mean that every performance she gives and every film she makes will be "Oscar" worthy in my eyes. This film DESERVED every Emmy it was nominated for (3) and deserved the 2 wins. However, Redgrave was cheated out of her Emmy. I have never seen a woman pass so greatly as a man before. Redgrave is wonderful! She even got down the movements of a man! There are times you can tell it's her. But if you don't know her, you can't. She looks like a man 100% of the time and only when she turns slightly do you get a glimpse of the real person.

The movie is wonderful. It's brilliant. Redgrave is brilliant! You see her struggle time after time with her identity and you feel for this character. She really jumps into character. She even fights like a man! If you can get your hands on this, get it! It is wonderful!

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.

"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.

I've just read a local paper bemoaning the fact that very few films or books had been made with tennis as a central theme. I was waiting for the author to mention "Second Serve" - and the fact that he didn't proves that he must not have seen this movie.

It would be fully 15 years since it was shown here on TV, but I remember how superb Vanessa Redgrave is in the lead role (true to form - she is one of my all-time favourite actors).

Since becoming an activist in the local gay community, I have come to know personally several transgenders and to appreciate even more just how honest a representation "Second Serve" makes.

Significantly it is just this month that the Olympics governing body have declared that transgenders will be included in the next Games. I believe that Renee Richards personal strength and public honesty was the first step in achieving this statement of equity.

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.