Southern Comfort (2001)

A perfect antidote to the inanity of 100 Girls,, this was. It also provides a bitter spin to the old saw about truth being stranger than fiction -- it's also crueler and more senseless. Its main character is Robert Eads, a female-to-male transsexual who develops and eventually dies from ovarian cancer. (Really, it puts a new light on the idea of a man trapped in a woman's body -- the woman's body just refused to capitulate, I guess.) As I followed the lives of Eads and those around him, especially his girlfriend Lola (a male-to-female transsexual), it occured to me that this documentary is a sort of spirit kin to Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist, which remains one of the best docs I've ever seen. Both films are simply about love and the pain of losing a loved one. That pain crosses all boundaries, all sexual predilections or pecadillos -- death causes grief no matter what. This film doesn't have quite the force of Sick (keeping in tune with its subjects, it's far more low-key), but it's still quite affecting. Well worth seeking out.

Grade: B+