"Le Sexe des Etoiles" ("The Sex of the Stars")
                             A film review by
                           Linda Lopez McAlister
                           on "The Women's Show"
                         WMNF-FM (88.5), Tampa, FL
                            September 17, 1994


   Each year for the last five years the Pride Film Festival has brought the
Tampa Bay community a windfall of cinematic treasures that we otherwise would
not, in all likelihood, get to see. This year's Festival, which opens
September 30 and runs until Sunday, October 9, is filled with interesting
films--some which you may have heard of (like Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein and
Pratiba Parmar's Warrior Marks) and others which will be new discoveries for
most in the audience. Because there are so many films (counted 68 in the
program) I'll only be able to review a fraction of them and, thanks to the
Pride Film Festival organizers who have made preview tapes available to me,
I'm going to get a head start on the festival by reviewing some of the films
in advance, this week and next.

    The film I want to talk about today is called "Le Sexe des Etoiles" ("The
Sex of the Stars") and it is the first film I've seen by the French Canadian
woman director, Paule Baillargeon, although it's actually the second feature
film she's directed. But I don't feel that she's a total stranger because I
know her work as an actor from that wonderful Canadian film Patricia Rozema
made a few years back, "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing," in which Paule
Baillargeon turned in a memorable performance as the lesbian art gallery
curator. She's no slouch behind the camera either. "Le Sexe des Etoiles" has
been raking in awards at film festivals since it was finished last year.

    This is not a lesbian-themed film, but it is a very beautifully realized
love story between a young girl, Camille, and her long-absent father. Camille
is "twelve and three quarters," as she likes to say, and at an age, on the
threshold of puberty where she is in denial about sexuality in general and
finds the concrete examples of it around her (her mother's liaisons, for
example, "disgusting." Her passion is for astronomy (for looking at the stars
is something she did with her father when she was younger) and writing letters
to her absent father whom she has built up in her imagination as this great
hero of a scientist who is in New York making great scientific discoveries.
She's a loner at school, a "brain" to the other kids but one who willfully
does badly because she'd rather be out in the field observing the heavens or
in her room full of star maps and fantasizing about moving to New York. Only
one boy, somewhat old and wise beyond his years, takes an interest in her
because, perhaps, he senses in her austere presence a kindred spirit.

   One day her father appears at Camille and Michelle's house, but he isn't
her father, Pierre, any more. He is Marie-Pierre, a transsexual. Camille is
stunned, Michelle is furious.  The rest of the film gives a nuanced and
sensitive portrayal of the emotional crises which Marie-Pierre's reappearance
in Montreal unleash, as Camille continues to try to reestablish with Marie-
Pierre the same relationship they had had previously, ignoring as best she can
that her father is now a woman. We see Michelle's rage and hurt and
vindictiveness at having lost her husband and now, perhaps, losing her
daughter, too. And we get a glimpse of Marie-Pierre's own struggles with her
sexuality and the various options open to her as she accustoms herself to
living as a woman, which doesn't all run as smoothly as it might.  Camille,
with the help of her young friend from school who figures out what is
happening with her, is forced to face her situation more directly and toy and
change her relationship to her father, who also does a great deal of changing
toward Camille and the implications of life as a transsexual by the end of the
film.

   There is much in this film that is ambiguous, much room for interpretation.
Nothing is as fixed and predictable as the movements of the stars; but the
stars have no sex.

      For the WMNF Women's Show this has been Linda Lopez McAlister on Women
and Film.

Linda Lopez McAlister is professor of women's studies and philosophy at the
University of South Florida.

Copyright 1994 by Linda Lopez McAlister. All rights reserved. Please do not
reprint this review without the permission of the author.