The genius of art is that the best of it transports us into a time and place of its own choosing, makes us witnesses to the lives and, sometimes, the deaths of those who live there. And when it returns us to our own homes again it leaves a mark on us that cannot be erased. The late advertising man David Ogilvy once said that the best advertising leaves something like a burr, stuck to the mind of the consumer; without comparing advertising to art, it is at least as true that the best art leaves a burr stuck to the mind and heart of the viewer, reader, or listener. For me, the burr comes from certain Bergman films, from Mizoguchi, from Kurosawa, from Bresson, from a few others. Perhaps oddly, I can't find an American filmmaker whose work moves me as deeply as theirs does.

I'm prompted to this by the Kimberly Peirce film "Boys Don't Cry," which by rights should tear our hearts out. It's the (true) story of Teena Brandon (Academy Award nominee Hilary Swank), a young girl from Lincoln, Nebraska, who cannot abide her body and wishes only to be male instead. In the course of her teenage years she's acted out enough to compile a serious juvenile and -- now that she's 18 -- an adult criminal record in Lincoln -- her latest is felony theft of a car -- but she's consumed so by her need to change and erase her femaleness that she calls herself Brandon Teena, has her cousin cut her hair like a boy, she binds her breasts, stuffs a sock down her jeans, and takes off for points west.

Where she ends up is the trailer-trash town of Falls City, not all that far away, and she hangs out at a karaoke bar with the other guys, until she meets Lana (Chloë Sevigny, also nominated, for best supporting actress). She courts Lana, she falls in love with her, she has hopes of making the fantasy come true -- her idea of the future is for the two of them to get to Memphis and visit Graceland -- and then she is undone by the two hoods she has befriended (Peter Sarsgaard and Brendan Sexton III).

Viewing the life and horrendous death of a dream can be a shattering experience for an audience, and yet I was strangely unmoved by the film. What is missing from "Boys Don't Cry" is any sense of the Teena who created her Brandon, who had to discover that she was mis-sexed and was compelled not just to love girls but to become a boy in order to do it. Not having that to help us, we're compelled to accept her creation as a given, and bridge the omission in whatever way we can. It simply isn't enough to give the film the depth it wants us to feel.

Nevertheless, there is a great deal to admire. Swank is a wonder; we share the light of pleasure, excitement, and pride that radiates from her as she sees her transformation work, we suffer the scary moments as she skips away from the mounting questions about her gender, as she wavers between bluff and fear. And Sevigny too is brilliant -- a not-too-bright factory worker whose dream is to make a career singing karaoke. And the moment when she spots Brandon's cleavage as they make love, and then abandons herself with pleasure to the love, is breathtaking.

Both the cinematography, by Jim Denault, and the editing, by Lee Percy, are extraordinary and make a short and simple story into a powerful and kinetically charged experience. Peirce directs with skill and an unerring feel for life in the trailer court, but the film ends up affecting us as a visceral rather than an emotional experience.