52 Tuesdays (15)

Directed by Sophie Hyde

4/5

SIXTEEN-year-old Billie’s (Tilda-Cobham Harvey) once close relationship with her mother (Del Herbert-Jane) is completely traumatised when she returns from school to find her mother dressed as a man.

That shock is accentuated when Herbert-Jane tells her daughter that she is going to live her future life as a man and sends Billie to live with her father.

Only once a week, on Tuesdays, will mother and daughter be spending time together in future.

In synopsis, 52 Tuesdays might be seen as little more than an exploitation picture with a subject ripe for mockery and worse.

Which makes first-time director — and co-writer with Matthew Cormack — Sophie Hyde’s film all the more fascinating and emotionally potent in both subject and realisation.

Performances are natural and credible and, with much of the story told directly to camera as characters record reactions on video, there is considerable impact, notably in the case of Billie who, trying to come to terms with things, embarks on an odyssey of sexual exploration of her own.

Extraordinarily, the film was shot once a week, on Tuesdays, for a year, allowing it fascinatingly to grow with the characters and their inevitable, frequently heartbreaking, emotional mutations.

The process worked well for Richard Linklater and his (seasoned) cast with Boyhood.

And it works well for Hyde too.Says Hyde: “It seemed to me how we made the film, confining our narrative and shoot time to 52 consecutive Tuesdays, could inform the very ideas of what the characters were grappling with, especially around the pursuit of authenticity and the promise of change.”

She has succeeded fascinatingly. It’s an extraordinary, serious film, dominated by fine portrayals and vivid, compelling discussion of transgender sexual politics, impressively acted and put across without overmuch naked proselytising.

It’s no masterpiece — but brave and emotionally impressive, nonetheless.