Roger Ebert, in his little dictionary of movie insights, has one that goes something like this: If only the character had revealed his or her secret at the beginning, there would have been no need for the movie. In other words, to base an entire film on a secret that everyone knows must be revealed sooner or later, a) shows a lack of scriptwriting imagination; and b) makes for great boredom in the audience.

In the case of "Transamerica," the film that got Felicity Huffman an Oscar nomination for best actress, revealing the secret would in fact have made for a better movie, because once the obstacle of the secret is out of the way - about an hour and a half into the film - it becomes a much more interesting experience. Huffman is Bree, a pre-operative transsexual working two jobs in L.A. to pay for the operation; she's just a week away from the date when she finds out that seventeen years ago she fathered a son, Toby (Kevin Zegers), who's now in detention in New York City for hustling on the street. Dealing with a newly-found son is the last thing in the world that Bree needs now, but her therapist won't let her have the operation until she resolves her relationship with him.

So she flies to New York and meets him, but instead of telling him who she is she pretends to be a social worker for a church. Already dressed and made up as a woman, having been on hormone therapy for years, she flounces in her platform shoes and long skirts and spends her time correcting Toby's grammar. The two begin a long road trip - back to Los Angeles for Bree, and to a small town in Kentucky, where his stepfather lives, for Toby. Bree's fantasy is that she'll restore Toby to his proper family and get on with her own life.

Naturally it doesn't work out - in a brutal and frightening sequence we learn why Toby left home - and so the two of them continue on their way west. Along the way they meet a warm and interesting Navajo man (Graham Greene) and end up in Phoenix at Bree's family home, where Bree's secret is finally - finally - revealed to Toby, who promptly runs away again.

A personal note: As a recent grandfather I found myself unexpectedly aligned most closely with Bree's harriden of a mother, who has hated her own son Nathan, now Bree, but who at the moment she discovers she has a grandchild becomes totally loving. I understand. But how much better a film this would have made had writer-director Duncan Tucker begun his film at this point instead of ending it there. There is in fact a kind of coda, set back in Los Angeles after the operation, but we already know how the film will end.

"Transamerica" does give us one marvelous moment, when Bree and Toby go out of their way to visit a 'friend of a friend of a friend' in Dallas and walk in on a vagina party of other transsexuals, which resembles nothing so much as a Tupperware party but is a lot more fun.