When a man is a woman
LYSIANE GAGNON
From Monday's Globe and Mail
Published Monday, May. 28, 2012 2:00AM EDT

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/lysiane-gagnon/when-a-man-is-a-woman/article2443939/

Laurence Anyways, the third movie from Quebec's wunderkind filmmaker Xavier Dolan – he's only 23 and already a habitué of the Cannes Festival – deals with a serious subject, ->-bleeped-<-, albeit in a baroque, exuberant way.

I just saw the movie in Montreal, where it opened at about the same time it was being shown in Cannes. As I was walking home, still shaken and moved by the story of Laurence, a 30-year-old teacher who desperately needs to become a woman but still clings to his relationship with his beloved Fred (a woman), I started thinking about the hidden agonies suffered by the two transsexuals I've met in my life.

The first was Claude, a journalist who used to work on the desk of a Montreal newspaper decades ago, at a time when most of us didn't even know ->-bleeped-<- existed.