THE HUNG & THE RESTLESS

If you're crazy or perpetually high on paint fumes, the upcoming Spanish film 20 Centimeters will make perfect sense to you. The rest of you are on your own.

Cinematically speaking, this is the dawning of the age of transsexuals.
Transamerica garnered rave reviews for its insightful depiction of a male-to-female transsexual.
Now the sassy Spanish film 20 Centimeters offers a decidedly crazier spin on this formerly taboo theme. Like the films of bad boy auteur Pedro Almodóvar, it’s subversive, raunchy and visually dazzling. In terms of quality it has nothing on, say, All About My Mother. But writer and director Ramón Salazar one-ups Almodóvar’s antics by adding catchy and bizarre musical vignettes.
Three women sing Madonna's “True Blue” while scantily clad hunks simulate oral sex with barbecue foods. A lady vampire gets struck by lightening as she levitates. People sing and dance in the operating room before a sexual reassignment surgery.
Marieta, the main character, has a couple of big problems on her hands. For starters, she packs a 20 centimeter (that’s over 8 inches) penis that she wants to get rid of, but she can’t afford the surgery. She also has narcolepsy, causing her to fall asleep at inopportune times and drift into musical reveries.
As she serves out her sentence in gender limbo, she has the good fortune to fall for a gorgeous guy who happens to love sucking cock and taking it up the ass. But therein lies the rub: Marieta wants to be loved for her vagina-to-be, not the prodigious peter she doesn’t even want.
Marieta is not a particularly likable character, and the picture falls flat at times because it becomes increasingly difficult to give a damn about her fate. It’s unclear what – other than sex and MTV – goes on in her mind. Perhaps this is Salazar’s intention, but it makes for pretty unrewarding viewing in the long run.
Interestingly, the heart of the movie beats in the supporting characters, the misfits and malcontents who surround Marieta. Almodóvar veteran Rossy de Palma brings a welcome sense of melancholy to the film when she discusses the downside of transsexuality, and there’s a heartbreaking dwarf character who can’t play the cello because he’s not big enough.
In 20 Centimeters, there’s just no escaping the cliché that size really does matter.