Verdict: Never the Twain
Rating:
Only in the past few years have strained parent-child relationships been quite such a propulsive force in cinematic storytelling.
The subject has always popped up here and there. But now, you can t get away from mothers or fathers and their offspring either losing each other, or finding each other, or doing a little of both.
This week it s the dominant theme in no fewer than three new films. One of them even plays it partly for laughs.
Estrangement and abandonment, they re the new Laurel and Hardy. And each film also has a road trip or significant journey of some kind at its heart, almost as if they ve all been workshopped as part of a film-school project.
★★★☆☆
TRANSGENDER issues have never been as prominent as they are now – which makes director Anna Kerrigan’s Cowboys very timely indeed.
Set in the western US state of Montana, it tells the story of 11-year-old Joe (Sasha Knight) and his desperate battle to persuade his small-town and somewhat small-minded mum Sally (Jillian Bell) that he is not a girl.
3
There are hugely touching moments in this gentle film that shines a light on an issue happening to loving, decent parents
Joe has better luck with dad Troy (Steve Zahn), who is a bearded, plaid-shirt-wearing cowboy, but is surprisingly accepting when he is told, “I’m born in the wrong body”.
Cowboys: Questions of identity in macho America
Film review: Strong performances carry this good-hearted road movie
Film Title: Cowboys
Genre: Drama
Anna Kerrigan makes some admirable choices in her treatment of a child going through gender transition – a hot topic if ever there was one. It is Sally (Jillian Bell), the hard-working, caring mother, who wonders if young Joe (Sasha Knight) might not just be playing out. Who wouldn’t want to become a man in this patriarchal environment? “I don’t let her go out of the house like that,” she says of her “tomboy”, who has taken to jeans and cowboy hats. It is deadbeat dad Troy (Steve Zahn), a drunk with a line in hopeless fantasy, who takes the child’s aspirations seriously. Joe feels as if an alien has dumped him in a girl’s body. Not much at home in the world himself, Troy makes a connection that Sally at first can’t manage.
Cowboys was made during the twilight of Donald Trumpâs presidency, which saw the dialling back of health protections for trans people and a military ban, since overturned by Joe Biden. Right-wing commentators during the Trump era dedicated many hours to mocking transgender people, with trans kids being weaponised as evidence that the âtrans agendaâ has gone âtoo farâ, and that children are incapable of identifying as anything other than their assigned gender at birth.
In this context, Anna Kerriganâs Cowboys â in which Troy (Steve Zahn) goes on the run with his young trans son Joe (Sasha Knight) through rural Montana, a solid Republican state â stands as a forceful bid for tolerance and acceptance. The two males hope to cross over to Canada, a migration many Americans pledged to make following the election of Donald Trump in 2016, seeing the country as a liberal haven compared to the bigotry associated with Trumpism. Flashbacks show how Tro