I thought some of the strongest scenes in the movie were toward the end, when Bree and Toby visited the parents. Fionnula Flanagan as the dysfunctional, abnormally tanned matriarch was especially awesome. As soon as we meet her we get an immediate, palpable sense of what it must have been like to grow up with her as a "normal" kid, let alone a "special" kid, and it really adds a deep dimension to the film and our understanding of Bree. The affection that she lavishes on Toby — as a reward for being a "normal" masculine boy (little does she know) contrasts sharply with the vitriol and iciness she exhibits toward Bree. The pivotal moment in the movie for me was when she told Bree, "Don't do this awful thing to yourself, please. I miss my son." And Bree responds: "Mom, you never had a son." That was when I stopped thinking, "Oh, this is a guy who wants to be a woman," and started thinking, "Oh, this has always been a woman."
But what did you make of the mom being so over the top? Super bleached hair, permanent suntan, gaudy clothes, tiny "sex maniac" dog, dramatic mannerisms. She looked almost like a drag queen, I thought — sort of a caricature of a woman, or at least someone who went to great pains to maintain her "womanly" charms. Bree even points out that her mom, like her, has to take hormones, to prop up the illusion of femininity. Thoughts?
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I also loved the scenes with Bree's parents. I got the sense that Bree had issues that went beyond her gender identity, and meeting her mom explained why. She would be hard to take as a "normal" kid, as you say. And clearly Bree's sister has problems of her own.
The line "You never had a son" was very striking. I wondered if it made any impact on the mom. I mean, the mom is starting to come around by the time Bree leaves in the morning.
It's interesting to compare Bree with her mother. There's something almost masculine in the way her mother tries to hang on to her femininity.
I felt for both characters in that scene -- her mother's "I miss my son" showed just how confusing and frightening it was for her, and the "You never had a son" showed many things, including just how out of touch her mother always must have been to still be confused at that point.
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