FlickFilosopher
by MaryAnn Johanson
June 10, 2003
On Fourth of July weekend, 1999, army private Barry Winchell was murdered by a fellow soldier at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The provocation: disapproval of whom Winchell had fallen in love with, a transgendered nightclub performer, Calpernia Addams.
There's nothing the least bit titillating about this retelling of Winchell and Addams's story -- Soldier's Girl is, instead, half angry, raging against the institutionalized macho bullshit of the armed forces and its asinine "policy" of don't-ask-don't-tell, and half romantic and compassionate and seductive, refusing to box up human sexuality into neat categories and content enough to say plainly that we love whom we love and terms like "gay" and "straight" are too confining to define who we are.
But not everyone is content to with a concept so simple and so radical, of course, particularly not in the airborne infantry, where organized humiliation, which includes such regular debasement as calling male recruits "ladies," is the order of the day. For fun, the guys hang out at a drag bar in Nashville, where sexual confusion is on the menu... for the soldiers, that is, some of whom insist that the performers are NOT men (cuz then decent straight guys like them wouldn't find the performers attractive), and some of whom have created rigid rules for protecting their own twisted sense of masculinity, like a dude is NOT gay just because he gets a blow job from another dude. If there's one thing that distinguishes the sweet and secretly ardent Winchell, who finds himself attracted to Addams the moment he first sees her onstage, it's that while he may be confused by this unexpected emotion, he's never afraid of it.
Troy Garity, who plays Winchell, is a rarity among young actors today: He's passionate. That quality helped him steal his every scene in Barbershop and Bandits -- silly comedies they were, but it was the ineffable feeling his characters exuded that made him so memorable, and his slightly cocky edge that kept him from being too earnestly ingratiating. Here, that quality serves him very well, his Winchell honest and nervous and jittery, unable to fit into his new role with the army but easing comfortably into his new relationship with Addams. As Addams, newcomer Lee Pace (a handsome guy playing a beautiful woman) is a fragile presence, a person betrayed by her body and, only halfway through her bodily transformation, in a twilight zone emotionally, too, certain that Winchell -- who's attracted to her femininity, not to the male body parts she's still carrying around -- will abandon her at any moment. Together, Garity and Pace are just about the most romantic couple I've seen onscreen in a good while.
They might have been okay if not for Winchell's roommate, Specialist Justin Fisher (a terrifying Shawn Hatosy: John Q, Simpatico). Not all the guys on the base are homophobes, and some of the other soldiers lie to protect Winchell's secret from the base commanders. But Fisher is different: crude and lewd and seriously messed up, he talks of loyalty and betray friends, and he manipulates another soldier -- another tremendously unstable 17-year-old boy -- into beating Winchell. It would be hilarious if it weren't so pathetic -- these idiots threatened by perceived homosexuality, these losers who assume that any gay man would be interested in seducing them. And if the results of their ignorance weren't so savage.
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