Director's Chair: Boxcar...

So, when I first saw Boxcar Bertha...

Watcha mean you haven't heard of Boxcar Bertha? I suppose you're one of those people who think Indie movies started with Reservoir Dogs and El Mariachi.

OK, let's go back to the dawn of time. Before Tarantino was a gleam in Mr Pink's eye. It's 1972, boys and girls, and yes I know that's a long time ago. Hollywood had discovered the youth market, and young directors who did all kinds of things that the studio bosses didn't know how to do. Not smoke grass and snort white stuff, the bosses were quite capable of doing that on their own. No, what these fine young hippies could do was get money out of other young hippies and Hollywood liked that.

One such was a young up-and-coming director called Marty Scorsese. (Remember the name - he'll go far). Another was not-quite-so-young producer Roger Corman. Mr Corman was a producer of B-features and movies for drive-ins, expert at making movies for next to no money, using up-and-coming talent and targeted accurately at the wallets of the youth of his day.

Together they were dynamite - more or less literally. (See body count below). Boxcar Bertha is Bonnie and Clyde by way of Easy Rider. In this true(ish) story of early 20th century crime, Bertha Thompson (Barbara Hershey and younger than you thought she'd ever been) leads her easygoing, freedom-loving, establishment hating team of unfairly put-upon strikers and assorted nefarious types against a vicious, freedom-hating, red-necked railway who will stop at nothing to break a strike.

There's probably some truth in there somewhere. But who cares? Expect an in-your-face, ball-grabbing storyline where gun-toting cops and money-loving railway owners are Bad. And gun-toting kids, robbing the rich to pay the Union are Good. Did I say I disagreed? Expect also a fair dose of in-your-face Jean-Luc Godard in the crash-cutting, bouncy camera style. It smells so much of its time that the odour of a thousand joints wafts from behind the camera and through the screen (inhale at your own risk).

But don't despair. By the Harris count you also get more than your fair share of naked flesh and premarital sex, with much gunfire and blood-splattering and a high enough body-count to make up for the leftie sentiments. Something for everyone, then.

Fast forward from the first Indie film-makers to the last (or at least the latest). Forget left-wing sex and gunfire, your modern Indie must have, at the least, incest, child abuse, Native American Indians, skinny dipping and transsexual surgery. The balls that are being grabbed now belong not to the audience but to the central characters. Especially if it's a tender piece about personal discovery.

Step forward, Transamerica, (Trans - geddit? Do keep up). In this very personal, wistful survey of father-son relationships by writer-director Duncan Tucker, it's a matter of: boy wants to be girl; boy discovers he has drug-dealing, male prostitute son; boy (dressed as girl) drives son across the States to long-lost stepfather to prove he is psychologically ready to have his bits chopped off. What could be simpler?

It's good, don't get me wrong. Good relationships, strong feelings, nice intelligent story line. There are some great scenes and twists, good laughs, and a few genuine moments of insight. If I have one criticism it's that Tucker has cast a woman to play the man who wants to be a woman. Now Felicity Huffman puts in a good sincere performance as the transsexual who wants to be fixed. I don't imagine another actress could have done it any better, but I don't think another actress should have.

The idea probably played wonderfully in pitch meetings, not least as Ms Huffman was (and is) Mrs (Executive Producer) William H Macy. "A brave creative idea," they would have said, as they raised their noses from the table.

But as you watch the film you're thinking she isn't a man who feels like he's a woman, she's a woman who's never felt any different. And so Felicity has to deepen her voice, pretend to sit like a man pretending to sit like a woman, pretend to want to chop off private parts she doesn't have. It does my head in, and I think it did hers too. All that pretending cramps her performance. Like a footballer playing out of position. I want her to cut loose (all puns intended) and be herself. But of course, she can't.

But, hey, watch it. Even without choppable body-parts, Transamerica is very nice movie, and a very honest movie (and they don't come around that often). And like Boxcar, it's got the best of Indie. I love much of what our Marty has done since, but both movies remind us of what he lost after Casino when he got Serious.

Now, Serious, that's the real devil. Lord, chop off our body parts if we ever get Serious.

Charles Harris