Quirky `Different For Girls' Doesn't Overplay Highly Provocative Subject

Movie review XX 1/2 "Different For Girls," with Rupert Graves, Steven Mackintosh, Miriam Margolyes. Directed by Richard Spence, from a script by Tony Marchant. Broadway Market. 101 minutes. "R" - Restricted because of adult situations, language, nudity.

Quirky and amiable, "Different For Girls" succeeds where other post-operative transsexual films of the past have failed.

What? No post-operative transsexual films readily leap to mind? I can't think of any either. But that shouldn't stop you from seeing "Different." It is an agreeable, if not very memorable, film, partly because it refuses to sensationalize its highly provocative subject matter.

What "Different For Girls" focuses on instead is the tentative courtship of Paul Prentice and Kim Foyle. The big barrier in this boy-meets-girl tale is that the girl in question used to be a boy. In fact, Kim (Steven Mackintosh) was formerly named Karl and was Prentice's friend when they were in preparatory school.

The opening scene shows Prentice bravely rescuing Karl in the school shower, where he's being unmercifully attacked by a group of boys for his effeminate ways. A chance meeting 17 years later leads to a reacquaintance with the shiftless Prentice (Rupert Graves) discovering that his old mate now goes by Kim and is, in the most committed way, now a woman.

Kim lives a painfully quiet life. She works at a greeting-card firm and has an unassuming flat. Prentice, on the other hand, lives the most desultory existence; he's 34, delivering parcels and still listening to punk. (Before all you 34-year-old Fed Ex employees with "Sid Vicious Lives" tattoos start phoning in, even Prentice calls his life aimless and unsatisfactory.)

Prentice also hasn't abandoned his rebellious "fight the establishment" doctrines that subsequently land both Kim and him in jail. After a policeman insults Kim and Prentice once again sticks up for her, the policeman gives Prentice a good thrashing. Prentice presses charges, but Kim, who is deathly afraid of possibly being put in a prison for men, refuses to give evidence and corroborate Prentice's version of the events.

The film spends much more time on this issue than on the fact that the main character is a woman who used to be a man. That's good and bad for "Different"; it diminishes the importance of the sex change, which helps give the film its light touch, but it also takes away from the importance significance of the sex change, which just leaves us with the romance. And they're just not that interesting a couple.

Kim isn't idealized, she's actually a bit of a coward, and Mackintosh plays her fragility and timorous nature convincingly. Graves' Prentice is harder to take. He's incorrigible, immature, brash and kind of a nuisance, like a loud drinking buddy who won't stop cheering for the opposing team in a hometown bar.

His fascination with Kim is evident, but it's never really believable when the two finally become intimate; it seems to stem from curiosity rather than attraction or affection. There's also a subplot involving Kim's sister, her military husband and the questionable paternity of their child. Barring the weak "unconditional love" tie-in, it seems more of a heartfelt afterthought than a necessary part of the tale.

Surprisingly, "Different" won the Grand Prix of the Americas award at the 1996 Montreal Film Festival, which probably is owed more to its subject matter than its middling quality.