Going into "Laurence Anyways," I hoped it wouldn't be a laundry list of transgender issues. Not because we shouldn't deal with them, but because we won't until they're sold to us as non-issues. I'm not giving anything away by saying "Laurence Anyways" is about a transgender woman. And though that element is central to the story, writer and director Xavier Dolan trusts us to assume that transwoman Laurence (Melvil Poupaud) will face discrimination. So rather than linger on inevitabilities, "Laurence Anyways" instead zeroes in on the impact of transgender on a relationship, and tries to understand what makes two people stay together or fall apart.
Almost right away, Laurence tells his long-time girlfriend Fred (Suzanne Clément) that he is a woman trapped in a man's body and wants to transition to the gender he was bereft of. Fred doesn't bite. "Everything I love about you is what you hate about yourself," she says. "That's everything you love about me?" Laurence asks.
Is gender what we love about another person? The film briefly introduces us to another couple, where one woman is transitioning to become a man. His girlfriend was a lesbian before, but she's sticking it out. "I love the person, not the body," she tells Fred, one-upping her. Just as Laurence can't help wanting to become a woman, Fred is naturally attracted to men, but she decides to give it a go anyway. Fred loves Laurence, the person, which seems like a good place to start.
The big "T" is still an elephant. Laurence, now committed to her transition, has to get people used to the idea. It tends to meet with preliminary outrage, but it progresses to indifference. We see that spectrum when Laurence tells her mother, who doesn't actually mind, but knows her husband won't accept it, so she and Laurence have to meet on the quiet. Ideally, both the parents would be on board, but Dolan refuses to dwell on pathos.
Though transphobia is always around the corner, it isn't Laurence's biggest hurdle. Her struggle is to achieve normalcy, and most of the time, Laurence manages to find acceptance. Fred even accompanies Laurence on her first day on the job as a woman. At the college where Laurence teaches, her students stare at her in her skirt suit. One of them breaks the ice by asking a question about the reading material. It turns out to bother the parents more than the students.
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