Prodigal Sons (Kimberly Reed, 2008): USA

Reviewed by David Smith.  Viewed at the Arclight theater, AFI Film Festival, Hollywood.

Being a native Californian I would expect a documentary like Prodigal Sons to be in the weekly cable TV line up.  Seeing as this story is based on a family from Montana my perception of the midwest has been broadened.  I here about peoples lives all the time but its usually people from southern California, this of course means anything goes.  My viewing of this film at the AFI Film Festival followed by a Q and A by most of the cast was quite an experience strictly due to its origin.

The director of the film Kimbery Reed tells a compelling life story of her own struggles as a transgender.  She works as a commercial editor and directed and produced travel documentaries.  This is her first full length feature documentary.

In the first twenty minutes she talks about how the relationship between her and adopted brother(Marc) would probably never be able to reconcile there differences.  One of these obstacles is the fact that she used to be a male.  Marc is the macho type of guy who wanted to be a joc but after a car accident wasn’t able to achieve doing.  Paul(kimberly) on the other hand was the high school quarterback who everyone adored.  Kimberly returns back home to Montana after several years of living in New York.  She is going to attend her high school reunion and try once more to hang out with Marc.  Everything seems to be OK while traveling back to their childhood home from the airport.  The Mother, Kimberly, Marc, and one of Kimberly’s girlfriends all meet up and then Marc starts up.  He is very self conscious that he wasn’t man enough as a teenager.  So he justifies it by bagging on kimberly for her gender preferences.  This goes on  and when Marc runs out of fuel he throws the fact that his other brother is gay.  Marc is severely ill and gets very violent.  This would seem to be the main conflict of the story but my opinion is that Kimberly’s coming out in the open with her transsexuality and blaming Marc for not being able to accept it is the true conflict.

The cinematography is done by John Keitel, and Kimberly Reed.  The camera shots are very informative in that the people speaking are always in view.  For a spare of the moment documentary, especially one with someone who can go off like Marc, this I’m sue was difficult.  I would suggest watching this film for the interesting content, and brutal honesty.