Different for Girls

(1997 Feature Film)

Starring
Rupert Graves and Steven Mackintosh

Reviewed by Blase DiStefano




THE '90s ODD COUPLE:
Rupert Graves (left) as Paul and Steven Mackintosh as Kim.

Yep—being different, especially as a kid in school, can be the pits. Just ask any effeminate guy—like the prim-and-proper Karl who was taunted by his classmates because they thought he was gay.

However, one straight classmate, the loud and volatile Paul Prentice, protected him from the jeers even though he too thought Karl might be gay. There always seemed to have been an odd attraction between the two of them, anyway.

Cut to 15 or so years later. Karl is now prim-and-proper Kim (Steven Mackinstosh), very afraid of being found out as a transsexual. Paul (Rupert Graves) is now a loud and volatile biker/dispatch rider, falling back into Kim's life, apparently to help her get through the fear. And though the relationship gets off to a rocky start, the ultimate '90s love story begins.

Different for Girls takes Kim and Paul through some nerve-wracking experiences—they barely miss a beating in a punk bar, and they're arrested when Paul exposes himself to Kim's neighbors. But the film is laced with humor. One of the best scenes has Kim seductively describing how her body has changed: ". . . My breasts changed first, and they've gotten bigger in the last two years. The nipples are darker. . . . My buttocks are rounder. My limbs feel lithe." When Paul says he better go, Kim asks why. Paul's reply: "I got a hard-on!"

Mackintosh is credible as the transsexual Kim, and Graves is INcredible as Kim's curious suitor. Director Richard Spence shows us that our relationships are more in our heads than in our anatomy.

["Different for Girls" played in October 1997
at Houston's Landmark Greenway Theatre.]

[The review ran in OutSmart, October 1997.]

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