Janet McTeer Is Great, But She Doesn't Look Like A Man

i was thinking the same thing, was that supposed to be a shock to albert's character or the audience for both? because to the audience it wasn't a shock at all.

She looks more like man than Glenn Close does.

It ruins the film a bit, because I knew straight away, even before the big reveal. She doesn't even try to disguise the feminine lilt to her voice. If I knew nothing about the film going in then I might well be convinced by Glenn Close's performance, but the game is up for Mcteer, immediately.






"Your mother puts license plates in your underwear? How do you sit?!"

The thing about that is, in real life transpeople aren't always convincing either. I could tell Hubert's character was a woman from the beginning and it did feel like a big spoiler, but it was also realistic. If I cut my hair short and put on a suit, I wouldn't look like a convincing man. Hubert didn't have access to plastic surgery or hormone therapy to alter his face and voice and to make him grow body hair, so he looked as close to male as he could on his own—which happened to not be 100%.

Another thing to consider is in the time and setting of this movie, nobody was going to question that that was a guy because the idea wouldn't occur to them that someone might try to pass as another gender. People weren't familiar with the spectrum of sexual and gender identities back then. In all, it was kind of anti-climatic for the viewer, but I don't think it detracted from the movie any.

I agree with la_cinematheque. I think the fact that she didn't look very masculine lends more credibility to the story simply because some cross-dressers and/or transgendered people have features that quickly identify their birth gender. It's not that unbelievable and is more plausible than thinking all of them blended in completely because their birth features were so clearly of the opposite gender. That wasn't the case then and it's not the case now.


"Get busy living, or get busy dying." Andy (The Shawshank Redemption)

I think they gave it away on purpose, the way your saw her face at an angle from the side when she turned in bed, and they way she lay in the bed was woman like, I think you were supposed to realise

It was not a surprise to most moviegoers however one must keep in mind the movie is set in the 19th century and certainly the average person then would never dream someone is not the sex they present themselves as so I can see where Janet could fool the other characters and indeed she does rather credibly "act" like a man. I rather like the fact that Janet was apparently not given movie makeup to look more like a man, after all it's supposed to be real life and a woman just doing this on her own. I wish Glenn's Albert had less makeup on, that kind of ruined it a bit as a "movie character" rather than just a real woman trying on her on to present herself as a real man. Certainly Glenn is no coquette type and could have pulled it off with less help from cosmetics.