Febre de Viver

Sebastian Cole (Adrian Grenier) is a teenager of seventeen years old, living in a small town with his mother Joan Cole (Margaret Colin), his stepfather Hank (Clark Gregg) and his sister Jessica (Marni Lustig). His father Hartley (John Shea) is an architect and his grandparents are persons very traditional, conservatives and arrogant. One day, his stepfather gathers the family and informs that he will make an operation for changing his sex. This communication is enough to leave the members of the family astonished and break the structure of the family. Jessica decides to leave home immediately with her boyfriend. Joan decides to move to England with Sebastian. A few months later, Sebastian decides to come back to USA and to live with his stepfather, now called Henriette. He joins the high school and becomes a very rebel teenager, certainly affected by the whole situation, shocking the elders in most of his attitudes. This low budget and independent movie has a very original screenplay. The excellent cast and direction are sharp. The story is not indicated for all audiences, but the viewer who appreciates a different story will have the chance to watch a good movie. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Febre de Viver" ("Fever of Living"

Sebastian chooses to live with his step dad, Hank, who's fast on his way to becoming Henrietta, and to graduate high school early so he can have adventures and become a writer.

This movie successfully renders a young man's last troubled year in high school without stooping to such heavy handed tactics as voice overs and the like. Adrian Grenier, as Sebastian, is remarkable.

A comical and realistic view of the real world of high school without all that American Pie/She's All That crap about just capitalizing off of what kids WISHED their high school life was like. This truly was a movie that had everything in it: great wit, great drama, a great plot, great music, and great acting. If the distributor had only allowed it to more theaters, it would have surely been more of a success as most people HEARD it was good, but were not able to see it since it was only released in a few places for a few days. Kudos to Tod Williams.

Sebastian Cole stars Adrien Grenier (Drive Me Crazy) as a teen struggling to come to grips with his father's transsexualism.

Director Tod Williams maintains a nice semi-comedic, yet always surefooted tone, which keeps the film grounded, yet also prevents it from becoming too serious.

Grenier too often reminds us of a run-of-the-mill wise street-kid type, not too dissimilar from his role in Drive Me Crazy. Yet, he is effective in both films and has considerable appeal.

The film is at times uneven as we follow the antics of Grenier, along with his longtime buddies, his "girlfriend" Mary, and the rest of his family. Yet, the movie does a good job in its depiction of several disparate family members trying to cope with a family crisis.

Despite a vague ending and the occasional unevenness mentioned above, the film is worth seeing for its honesty and candid portrayal of a father struggling with his sexuality and how it affects the family unit.

Far from flawless, yet ultimately convincing.

Coming of age in a dysfunctional family has been worked and overworked in recent years, but "The Adventures of Sebastian Cole" presents a somewhat different slant on the story. It also contains characters that are not written as "can-you-top-this?" stereotypes: the clueless fathers, slut stepmothers, stormtrooper school administrators, you've seen them over and over. In this movie, the focal relationship between stepfather and teenage son is rather realistic and touching, even though the stepfather is in the process of changing his sex. Quirky, yes, very much so, but nonetheless the characters have a natural charm that is missing from many films of this genre. This is not an A-list movie with high production values, but I recommend it when in the mood for something a tad different.