Miss * * *

 

Miss France loves animals and cripples and wants to save the world.

Another one from the French Film Festival.    

This one is causing a bit of controversy with it's depictions of transsexuals and sex work, even though that's not exactly what it is about.  

Alex is a young man with the face of a beautiful woman. He has always felt like an outsider. His own sexual proclivity is ambiguous. He lives in a share house with tenants made up of petty criminals, illegal immigrants and transexual sex workers.   

He doesn't have much direction in life, however, he does have a mirror and he knows what he's got so he decides he'd like to enter the Miss France event.

Supported by his housemates and his old school friend who is now a boxer, we watch him go through the procedure against overwhelming odds.   At times funny and charming, at times a bit awkward even for itself, its kind of a fairy tale and a gentle lesson in accepting non-binary persons.

The much maligned and scorned Beauty Pageant concept doesn't fair too badly either as it attempts to rise above it's anachronistic image.