They do attempt to create a sensitive story involving a transgendered character played by British actress and Heywood, in the first half an hour as a young man named Roy fighting against how he was born. After a fight with his father, Harry Andrews, Roy decides to begin a new life as Wendy, moving into a boarding house and slowly makes the transformation. But as a woman, she must learn to deal with unwanted advances from men (Roy claims that he is not gay in the argument with his father), and of course the daily issues that women go through in their struggles in society, at least from the early 1970's point of view.
Giving this role her all, Heywood in her male guize looks like a young Asian boy, and the makeup when Wendy appears makes her appear to be much more masculine even though she is very feminine. The film's best scene shows Wendy walking down the Streets of London, paranoid that the secret that she carries will be revealed. Every look that she gets gives her a sense of fear that someone suspect something, and when she is confronted by two measures outside a public restroom on the street, must make the important choice of which bathroom to walk into. Her fear when a police officer asks her if she is okay is also very convincing.
So this is an issue film way ahead of its time that does not play for camp but Heywood isn't consistently convincing. The film is also a product of its time so the early seventies sensibilities in fashion and attitudes are very dated. Jill Bennett has a key role as her neighbor in the boarding house. I never got a key sense of confidence in the performance Heywood didn't know who either Roy or Wendy were, yet it still a brave step to take in an acting career. Something tells me that this film didn't garner much attention in the first place and probably didn't play in more conservative cities. You know that this is going to have possible tragic consequences, and at least the filmmakers didn't go down the road a bad taste and turn it into a John Waters movie.
Giving this role her all, Heywood in her male guize looks like a young Asian boy, and the makeup when Wendy appears makes her appear to be much more masculine even though she is very feminine. The film's best scene shows Wendy walking down the Streets of London, paranoid that the secret that she carries will be revealed. Every look that she gets gives her a sense of fear that someone suspect something, and when she is confronted by two measures outside a public restroom on the street, must make the important choice of which bathroom to walk into. Her fear when a police officer asks her if she is okay is also very convincing.
So this is an issue film way ahead of its time that does not play for camp but Heywood isn't consistently convincing. The film is also a product of its time so the early seventies sensibilities in fashion and attitudes are very dated. Jill Bennett has a key role as her neighbor in the boarding house. I never got a key sense of confidence in the performance Heywood didn't know who either Roy or Wendy were, yet it still a brave step to take in an acting career. Something tells me that this film didn't garner much attention in the first place and probably didn't play in more conservative cities. You know that this is going to have possible tragic consequences, and at least the filmmakers didn't go down the road a bad taste and turn it into a John Waters movie.