Alexis Arquette: She's My Brother (2007)

Director:

Matthew Barbato

Genre:

Documentary

Plot:

A documentary on Alexis Arquette and the process of her sex reassignment surgery. |

Plot Keywords:

Character Name In Title

Cast

Alexis Arquette
Ian Drew	...	Himself

Also Known As:

The Alexis Project (UK) (working title)

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Filming Locations:

Soho, London, England, UK

Company:

Cactus Three

Saw This at the Tribeca Film Fest

I caught this movie at the Tribeca Film Festival a couple of nights ago, and stayed around for the Q&A. For the most part, it was a very revealing look at Alexis Arquette's life and his friends and family. It also showed some clips from his movies, but for some reason it didn't include "Pulp Fiction" or "I Think I Do," two of my favorites.

I kept wanting to tell him throughout the movie not to go for the surgery. He was clearly ambivalent about it since he easily could have gone to Sweden or Mexico and had it done, and not bothered with the whole legal and psychiatric counseling process he went through. Besides, according to a report on the TV show "The Insider" that I saw last week in which he was interviewed, he hasn't actually had the surgery done anyway.

The weird thing about the movie is, though, that toward the end, after he gets signed permission from a counselor to go through with the surgery, he abruptly ends his contact with the filmmakers and his friends, and does just a few scenes at the end where he refuses to say whether he went for the surgery or not, or to indicate what he has ultimately decided.

After the screening, I tried to ask him about this during the Q&A, but as soon as I mentioned that "The Insider" segment said that he had not gone for the surgery yet, he abruptly cut me off (pun intended) mid-question and said in a nasty way, "Didn't you just see the movie?" Then he seemed to indicate that I got it all wrong. But in response to subsequent questions from other audience members, he reverted to the position he had at the end of the movie, which was along the lines of: this is a private decision, it's nobody's business what he decides to do with his body, etc.

Yet if that's the case, why make a movie about your sex change operation in the first place, and then go out and promote it on a TV celebrity news show and at the Tribeca Film Festival if you're then going to pretend that you want to keep the whole thing private (pun intended again)? Now, I think he's doing the right thing if he in fact has decided against the operation, and I can't blame him much either if he has ended contact with the "friends" they showed in the movie, because they mostly seemed like a bunch of shallow hangers-on who didn't have his best interests at heart. He is an excellent actor who is capable of doing great work, as in "Last Exit to Brooklyn." If he has the sex change operation, he is going to be limiting his future roles severely.

Also, I wanted to ask him if he had considered the physical ailments that sex change operations sometimes cause. I got the feeling from his physical appearance at the festival that he may have started taking hormones, which in the movie he said he was resisting, because those too can have some nasty side effects, as many women have discovered. But I don't really know, and I never got a chance to ask.

Anyway, it's definitely a fascinating movie, especially if you're interested in revelatory, autobiographical films like "Tarnation." It will be interesting to see what happens when it comes out (pun intended again) on DVD, and what the DVD extras reveal.