I liked this movie, but casting Rick Okon as Lukas was a serious problem for me. I never for one second believed he was or had ever been female, so I couldn't help relating to that character as a man and only a man.
It's a sharp contrast to the casting 15 years ago of Steven Mackintosh in the mirror-image role of Kim in Different for Girls. Kim is a transgendered male-to-female, and Mackintosh is SO believable as a woman that I had to do considerable research to ascertain that the actor himself wasn't transgendered. He wasn't, and, in fact, he doesn't look the least bit feminine in real life, which makes his casting as Kim all the more remarkable.
Romeos is a pretty good movie anyway, but it doesn't depict the transgender experiences of the character as successfully as it does his experiences as a man. The movie would have been better with someone else cast as Lukas or if Lukas had just been a gay man, which is how he comes across anyway.
In order to make sense of the character Okon was portraying, I had to ignore all the transgender issues, which simply were absurd for that entirely male character, and I'm sure that's not what the director intended.
It's a sharp contrast to the casting 15 years ago of Steven Mackintosh in the mirror-image role of Kim in Different for Girls. Kim is a transgendered male-to-female, and Mackintosh is SO believable as a woman that I had to do considerable research to ascertain that the actor himself wasn't transgendered. He wasn't, and, in fact, he doesn't look the least bit feminine in real life, which makes his casting as Kim all the more remarkable.
Romeos is a pretty good movie anyway, but it doesn't depict the transgender experiences of the character as successfully as it does his experiences as a man. The movie would have been better with someone else cast as Lukas or if Lukas had just been a gay man, which is how he comes across anyway.
In order to make sense of the character Okon was portraying, I had to ignore all the transgender issues, which simply were absurd for that entirely male character, and I'm sure that's not what the director intended.