20 centimètres

An underrated piece of foreign queer cinema! I stumbled across this film on a "disturbing movie" binge and was surprised with a genuinely fun and heartwarming little musical with absolutely lovely cinematography and music. Absolutely lovely!

This is a completely fabulous movie. Imagine a Bollywood version of Transamerica directed by Pedro Almodovar from a script by Dennis Potter. Imagine taking LSD and going to a showing of Breakfast On Pluto which has had its IRA scenes replaced by scenes from Nights of Cabiria. This is perhaps not a date movie for the faint of heart but if genre-bending and gender-bending don't scare you, this movie is relentlessly, joyfully entertaining. There's Something About Mary all right, and it's eight inches long! The dance sequences are great; they had so much delicious stuff to look at all over the frame that I had decided that I didn't have a moment to spare for looking at the subtitles during them and was relieved when our heroine starting singing in English. Given the difficulties of foreign film distribution in this country, you may have to root around for this movie but once you find it it's a handful and a half!

"20 Centímetros" (2005), written and directed by Ramón Salazar, is the story of a transvestite who would like to be rid of the 20 centimeters-- about 8 inches--of sexual organ that prevents her from being the woman she wants to be. The plot becomes more complex because Marieta (Mónica Cervera) falls in love with a man who likes her just the way she is.

There are two more subplots--one involves Marieta's house-mate, who is a wildly inept businessman, and the other is about a woman who lives in Marieta's apartment house and who is involved with some very shady deals, that are often frustrated because she can't find a babysitter.

The supposed charm of the movie comes from the fact that Marieta has narcolepsy. When she falls into a trance, she dreams of herself in Technicolor musical production numbers.

The problem with this film for me was that the musical numbers, which should have kept the movie from just being a Spanish "Transamerica," weren't very charming. The classic movie musicals are colorful and vibrant--these were more cutting edge and threatening.

I don't see "20 Centimetros" as a GLBT film any more than "Transamerica" was a GLBT film. However, when it was shown at Rochester's Dryden Theatre, the crowd was composed almost exclusively of gay male couples. The man who introduced the film said the he chose it because of the musical numbers. I'm not sure if he had previewed it before he selected it. It's the kind of movie that looks better on paper than it plays on the screen.

Writer/actor/director Ramón Salazar ('Amnèsia', 'Piedras') is becoming a formidable presence on the Spanish cinema scene. He takes risks, he knows he takes them, and he makes them turn out in his favor. '20 Centimeters' is a mix of a story that is part hilarious musical comedy and part sensitive character portrayal of people who live just outside the edge of what is cruelly called 'normal': the mix makes for a jolly fluffy cake that smacks of Salazar's predecessors Almodóvar and Fellini.

Marieta (the enormously talented Mónica Cervera) is a work in progress: she dresses as a woman, has breast implants, is on painful steroid injections, but still retains the 20 centimeter remnant that prevents her from becoming the totally feminine woman she desires. She has a heart of gold, works the streets as a prostitute with special gifts to earn money for her transgender surgery. But at home she shares an apartment with a dwarf Tomás (the very handsome and talented Miguel O'Dogherty) who squanders Marieta's money on ticket scams that don't work, cares for her friend Berta's (Concha Galán) son, and provides emotional support to her fellow sex workers. She has a major problem: she has narcolepsy and falls asleep for several hours at a time in the most inappropriate places (!) and during these sleep periods dreams of Broadway musical numbers occur in which she is the singing (in Spanish, French and English) and dancing star with a cast of hundreds in the wildest of costumes! Marieta yearns for love and when she notices on Raul (the very hunky and talented Pablo Puyol) she feels she is in love, especially when Raul returns her attention, takes her home to meet his rather low class gross parents and family, and most importantly physically falls in love with her - AND her 20 centimeter unwanted obstruction to happiness. How Marieta comes to grips with her focal surgical dream versus her chance for love is the tender way the film concludes.

Mónica Cervera carries this very difficult role extremely well, not only allowing us to see the inner suffering being she truly is but also popping the cork off the champagne bottle of musical production numbers that pepper this fun movie. The cast is uniformly fine (Pilar Bardem, the mother of superstar Javier Bardem, has a fine little cameo role) and the direction show that Ramón Salazar has tight reins on his talent. This is a film that is bawdy fun without ever spilling over into the realm of bad taste. Watching it is a toe-tapping good time! Grady Harp

The movie is a fraud, a joke that has nothing to do with real-life transsexuals. It is a macho fantasy invested in the huge penis and the fraudulent make-believe that it belongs to a man who in fact is a woman--an actress. The casting would be honest to life if the role was played by a man-- why not cast her gay boy friend actor as the cross-dresser to wants to have his penis removed? Transamerica is more honest in presenting a man, who although played by an actress, is more convincing as someone who is genuinely born with a female genetic make up and by virtue of that wants to go cross genders to finally become as fully female as possible. In 20 Centímetros, which is in fact a male gay phallus fantasy, the man who wants a new gender as a female is never established as a genetic case of someone who was born in the wrong sex anatomy and resulting gender social identity as a boy--who was more female than male although he was a boy. What we have here is a male sex worker (played by a woman) who enhances her sex trade (as they do in Bahia, Brazil, with silicone) by keeping her penis, in order to better satisfy clients who are gays or bisexuals and who find it easier to have sex with men who do not look like men with the help of silicone. 20 Centímetros is a gay farce that exploits the vogue of transsexuals in Spain and elsewhere