About Ray (Three Generations) – Overview/ Review (with Spoilers)

Overview/ Review (with Spoilers)

When a movie gets pulled from a release schedule or pushed back, it leads you to believe it must be downright horrible. However, About Ray or Three Generations isn’t bad at all. It just, unfortunately, tries to balance out the mother’s personal drama with her trans son.

Trigger Warning(s):

Transphobia (One Scene of Bullying but mostly misgendering)

Noted Actor(s)

Ray (Elle Fanning) | Maggie (Naomi Watts) | Dolly (Susan Sarandon)

Characters & Storyline

Ray

Since Ray was 4 he knew he was born in the wrong body. Now 12 years later, after a lot of therapy, and dealing with his feminist grandma trying to convince him perhaps he was just a butch lesbian, it is time. However, in order to transition to becoming a male it requires not just his mom signing off on the various paperwork, which would include getting testosterone, but also the father he hasn’t seen in almost a decade.

Maggie

Your daughter is becoming your son, you live with your two moms and the one who is your biological mom seems to make snide comments about your life all the time. It’s a bit much to handle and no amount of books can really prep or help. But life happens and despite how uncomfortable things are, you have to learn to adapt right? If you don’t it could negatively affect your child and at the end of the day, that’s who matters the most right?

Highlights

A Different Perspective

Whether it is I Am Jazz, Redefining Realness, Star, Orange is the New Black, Gun Hill Road, Tangerine, Paris is Burning or countless other media out there, more often than not the focus is masculine assigned persons transitioning to women. Rarely is there anything about someone transitioning the other direction, outside of the various roles Elliot Fletcher (who pretty much corners that market) has played, that character on House of Lies, and Cole on The Fosters. Be it because less of an eye is bat when someone assigned a girl transitions to a boy, or because there isn’t the same curiosity and ability to sensationalize. Either way, it was nice to get a taste, just a taste mind you, of the issues FTM trans people go through. Be it boys who misgender you and bully you for it, girls who you have feelings for not seeing you for the man you are, your family adjusting and maybe some of them even feeling betrayed you’d leave the ranks of womanhood to become a man, much less your parents coming to terms with the change.

Susan Sarandon

A part of me wishes that Sarandon’s character was raising Ray as opposed to Maggie. If only because, as noted below, Maggie’s drama almost seems like it wants to compete for attention and eclipse the movie’s central topic. But it isn’t just because of Maggie’s drama I’d prefer Sarandon playing the parental role but also because Dolly, her character, brings something different to the complicated matter of a family member transitioning. She is the one which helps push the difference which comes from dealing with an MTF transitioning person vs. an FTM. Also, she is basically the comic relief but without making herself, or rather the character, a joke in the process.

Criticism

Maggie

Parents play a major role when it comes to the lives of trans people. They are perhaps one of the most important figures in finding acceptance and of course learning what it means to be a man or women. But the problem here with Maggie is as the movie tries to craft a life for Maggie it adds all this eye-roll inducing drama in terms of Ray’s father and her relationship with him. Which, at first, you’re ok with since we are invited into these characters’ lives while they are in their late teens, in Ray’s case, and likely the 40s of Maggie. However, slowly but surely, it seems like Maggie wasn’t there to share focus with Ray’s or even have her storyline support Ray’s. At a certain point, it seemed like Maggie’s storyline was competing with Ray’s for prominence and it was more about Maggie’s troubled relationship than her son trying to complete their transition and start a new life.

Overall: Mixed (Home Viewing)

You know how most MTF movies solely feature that character, their relationships with people, and tries to disillusion the viewer on their experience. Yeah, this movie kind of does that but then focuses too much on the mom and her drama, her relationships, to the point it makes it so while you may have watched this movie to learn about Ray, you end up learning a hell of a lot more about Maggie. Which would have been fine if that was how this was marketed, and maybe why the title was changed to Three Generations, but no one cares about Maggie. Maggie’s story is tired and old. Which is why this is being labeled Mixed (Home Viewing) because you come for Ray, to learn about his life and what it is like to be a young man transitioning, which we don’t really see except in supporting characters. Yet, instead, get another story about a privileged white woman trying to avoid responsibility and making things about her.