Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

I’m not normal. I don’t know anyone who is normal. Normal is an artificial constraint that doesn’t exist. Yet everyone, at some point in their lives, wishes they were normal. But what they really wish is to be different. Different from who they perceive themselves to be, more like they perceive others to be. What no one realizes at the time is that everyone around them is wishing the same thing.

The 2003 HBO production Normal takes a long, hard look at what it means to be normal, and at what cost. Roy (Tom Wilkinson) and Irma (Jessica Lange) have been married for 25 years. At the party for their anniversary we hear about how happy, devoted and, well, normal they are. Soon after, Roy breaks down and tells Irma that he is, and always has been, a woman. He was born with the wrong body, and the time has come to change that. He wants a sex change operation.

Roy’s admission to Irma is like a dam breaking. He’s free. Free to begin expressing himself as he has always wanted. Free to begin the transition from male to female. Deep in rural Illinois, Roy’s changes are met with confusion, disbelief and hostility. He expects and accepts this, not allowing his conviction to waver for a moment. He also never once wavers in his devotion to Irma. He loves her, and that hasn’t changed. And it won’t change. We follow Roy and Irma through the turbulent year that passes after he makes his decision to change his life, and by extension those of Irma and his adolescent daughter and grown son.

At the center of the story is the relationship between Roy and Irma. Understandably upset, we see Irma assess the life she has had with Roy, struggle with the idea of a life without him, take a tentative step into the world on her own. And come to some rather startling conclusions as to what she wants from this new life. Lange is wonderful as the housewife suddenly confronted with a situation beyond her imagination. Her slow re-evaluation of what love means is subtle, powerful and really quite beautiful.

Wilkinson is nothing short of incredible as Roy. This is no easy role he has taken on. He must portray Roy’s slow changes toward becoming a woman without being either campy or maudlin. There are scenes as he begins to experiment with women’s clothing that are gently funny, and scenes where he is dealing with a lifetime of self-loathing that are absolutely heartbreaking. At the beginning of the film it’s difficult to imagine this middle aged man as a woman in anything but a “Tootsie” kind of way, yet there is no trace of condescension in Wilkinson’s portrayal, no trace of excess in his physicality. His solid, quiet resolve to be happy embodies the very soul of stoic bravery.

Jane Anderson (who adapted her own play for the film, which she also directs) expertly walks a razor thin line in Normal. She never lets her characters become caricatures, yet she allows enough subtle humor to emerge to keep the story engaging and appealing (and avoids the “Movie of the Week” feel in the process). Her peripheral characters, including the children, the pastor and Roy’s boss, give the story a little societal texture. The teenage daughter is especially charming, as she bluntly asks medical questions and is so very adolescent in her playing of one parent off the other. As Roy begins to change physically, the daughter gently needles her mother with comparisons of her own breasts to those of her father. A thoroughly teenage moment, given a feather light treatment allowing it to build an exterior world without distracting too much from the central story of the relationship between Roy and Irma. And it’s this relationship, this complicated, unconventional, strained, evolving, beautiful relationship that shows, once again, that human sexuality will never, ever be cut and dried. These people love who they love, and trying to societally compartmentalize those feelings is doomed to failure. Whether it’s the cultural constraints or the people bound by them who ultimately buckle is the only real question. And this is a question worth asking and an answer worth seeking.

Normal is a decidedly atypical love story whose excellent core performances and stellar script and direction make it funny, touching and ultimately uplifting. Let’s face it. Nobody’s “normal”. And isn’t that what makes life grand? This is a movie that celebrates all that lovely “abnormality” that is life and love and devotion. Highly recommended - four and a half stars.


Recommended: Yes