Young filmmaker Teddy Chin has a background in acting and in 2020 he presents 3 films as a director: “In My Heart”, “Good Wealth 2020” and finally “Miss Andy”. The latter was actually completed in 2018, but it is having a festival run now after being screened at the 15th Osaka Asian Film Festival in March this year. The movie deals with a hot and difficult topic – the acceptance in society of transgender people – and tells the story of the sympathetic titular character and her struggle to be accepted by her makeshift new family.
“Miss Andy” is screening at New York Asian Film Festival
Before the title reveals, the camera slowly pans over expensive pieces of home furniture and their price tags. One of these items is a brightly lit aquarium with live, colorful fish, its tag saying “Life $0”. It is a bitter reminder that everything might have a price but a decent life is priceless and it abruptly introduces another kind of transaction. A transwoman's clumsy attempt to sell her sexual services to a violent ordinary-looking man in a back alley quickly degenerates in extreme violence. Director Chin doesn't use any lubricant to ease our introduction to Evon's (ex-Andy, Lee-zen Lee) troubled life. The initial sequences are, in fact, extremely violent and brutal as our protagonist is abused, threatened, bitten and almost killed, while an intervention of the police only adds humiliation and more physical violence to the shameful accident.
Evon is a sweet-natured middle-aged transgender and we learn from few details and fragments of her past life as Andy, that she was a caring husband and father of a boy and a girl. After the death of the wife, Evon has finally fully embraced her desire to be a woman but at the expenses of her job and her grownup kids' acceptance. In fact, they and their partners are harshly distancing from her. Nevertheless, Evon carries on with her quiet life (when not venturing in back alleys at night); she works occasionally as a van driver (a “manly” job), has a decent apartment, a joyful fellow transwoman as best friend, and a handsome and gentle working companion Teck (Jack Tan) who is half deaf and shares with Evon the feeling of being a “lesser” human. One day, when all these anchor points seems to crumble, a woman called Sophia (Ruby Lin), on the run from a violent partner and her little son Kang (Kyzer Tou) cross path with Evon who kindly offers them shelter in her home. A new chapter full of empathy and familial love starts for our melancholic protagonist, but will it last?
Transgender communities across Asia and the Pacific are painstaking fighting for their rights, but governments have a long way to go in recognizing these rights. Malaysia – where “Miss Andy” is set – enforces a state law that prohibit “a male person posing as a woman”, hence prosecuting people whose gender identity differs from the sex assigned to them at birth. “Miss Andy” explores one particular aspect of this struggle for justice, something that affects a large slice of the transgender community; the desire to be accepted by their families and the right to create their own family. Basic demands that nevertheless remain in stark contrast to the experiences of many Asian (and not only Asian) transgender people. To do so, the movie juxtaposes the extreme reaction and repulsion that Evon's blood family shows for her new persona, to the warmth of a surrogate family that Evon has to earn with love and trust.
The film has the great merit to use the popular language of classic melodrama to appeal to a large audience and spread the good deed; and it manages – in this contest – to make some characters and situations, like the over-the-top daughter's climatic reaction and the overly-adorable-kid just forgivable. However, it's hard not to notice that the script is somehow hit and miss and slightly clumsy, leaving few questions unanswered at the end, and few uncompleted plotlines, therefore barely meaningful. Has the man armed with a cutter anything to do with the murder? What is all the mystery about Sophie's past? And, most of all, what about the ending? Its function in the story and the message it wants to convey is confusing to say the least.
Lee-zen Lee's performance really helps to overcome the faults of the script, infusing the movie with warm sympathy (despite indulging on the coy mannerism a bit too often), and Jack Tan's effort as Tack is magnetic too and perceptually misleading; their chemistry is tender and palpable. On the other hand, Ruby Lin can't prevent from succumbing to the male actors' histrionic performances and appearing rather static in compare.
All in all, “Miss Andy” is an honest work that contributes greatly to the ongoing discourse about freedom from stigma and discrimination and is made compelling by its amiable protagonist, despite some flaws in the script.
