Reviews

This film is dreadful. The acting was like a elementary-school production of "Our Town", the music was cornier and more heavy-handed than the corniest music with heaviest hands ever made, and overall it was about as suspensful as the traditional Easter brunch at my Aunt Pearl's house. Added to which, Micheael Caine's character in this film is NOT -- utterly and decidedly NOT -- a transsexual, but a psychotic schizophrenic. As a transsexual myself, this annoyed the living daylights out of me. I urge you, if you are captured by a foreign power and forced to watch this film as part of a regimen of torture interrogation, to take the poison pill in your secret spy ring instead. You won't be sorry.

I think this movie is about transgenderism. It seems to me that not only the plot but the various symbols and episodes support this. The main character, a man, moves through the various aspects of his subconscious until he gives complete life to his female self. I'm interested to know if any other transsexuals have seen this film, or if anyone else has noticed the strong elements of gender dysphoria it. I think that Cocteau was making a film about transcending gender before that process was clearly understood.