Different for Girls

What would you do if you ran into an old high-school buddy 15 years later and discovered that he was now a she? That's the crux of Rupert Graves's gender-bending vehicle, which should make a lovely, sexually offbeat endpiece to the soon-to-be-released Intimate Relations, where Graves becomes involved with a woman he refers to as his "mum."

Here Graves plays Prentice, a thirtysomething motorcycle hack who's the portrait of a British malcontent. Prentice literally bumps into Karl (Steve Mackintosh looking like Tom Hanks's roommate from the sit-com Bosom Buddies), who after a transsexual operation is going by the name of Kim. She's a stiff-upper-lipped recluse with a nine-to-five writing verse for a greeting-card company. The two reunite awkwardly, but after a scuffle with the law, an evening at a punk-rock club, and numerous conversations about sex, the relationship burgeons toward romance. Yet what should have been a bawdy good romp gets bogged down in anemic back stories and tiresome posturing. Only Graves's mercurial energy and a soundtrack loaded with '70s punk nostalgia keep the film interesting. At the Kendall Square.

-- Tom Meek