Different for Girls

When a traffic accident brings together laddish biker Paul and greetings card versifier Kim, it takes a while for them to realise they're acquainted. True, it's nearly two decades since they left school, but Kim has changed - after all, before her operation, she used to be Paul's best mate Karl. As they try tentatively to revive their friendship, Kim (MacKintosh) finds herself attracted to Paul (Graves), whose own emotions are a confused blend of protectiveness, curiosity and ill-repressed desire. But wary of attracting unwanted attention, Kim prefers a life of tidy tranquil conformity, which Paul's hot headedness threatens to disrupt. While Tony Marchant's script and Spence's direction suffer from a certain stolid inevitability, the movie never degenerates into mere worthiness, and in narrative terms, special pleading about the plight of transsexuals is kept low. Crucial to the slim story is MacKintosh's extraordinarily subtle performance: every expression, gesture, glance and vocal nuance rings true. It's a performance, in fact, as frank, sensitive and brave as the troubled character he plays, and affecting enough even to triumph over the film's final predictability.