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IF, LIKE me, your experience of cross-dressing is limited to the less-than-loveable, camera-hungry posing of transvestite artist Grayson Perry, that will help make Francois Ozon’s brilliant reworking of Ruth Rendell’s scary 15-page short story all the more compelling.
Ozon, also the film’s screenwriter, creates an extraordinary opening sequence which sets the film’s unique tone. A woman is being made up and dressed to the sound of Mendelsohn’s Wedding March and then she’s revealed to be in her coffin.
After an emotional eulogy for her at the funeral, the dead woman’s best friend Claire (Anais Demoustier) vows to help widower David (Romain Duris) raise his young daughter.
She is initially shocked to discover David dressing as a woman to bond with his daughter. But he tells her that he has “never left this house as a woman” and that he is not gay.
Slowly, though, Claire bonds with David. She joins him when he is “Virginia” in the outside world and a transformative sexual attraction grows between them.
Ozon’s credible and deeply moving examination of sexual identity without prurience or judgment never strikes a false note.
And, thanks to superb performances — Duris, in particular, creates an unforgettable and utterly credible character — the film grips from start to finish.
