‘Just Like a Woman’ Movie Review

‘Just Like a Woman’ (NR)

By Rita Kempley
Washington Post Staff Writer
August 12, 1994

The bad news: You find out your boyfriend's a transvestite.

The good news: You both wear a 34B.

A London housewife finds bliss with a cross-dressing banker in "Just Like a Woman," a British film based on Monica Jay's book about her real-life romance with a transsexual. Given the topic -- women who love men who love their underwear -- the picture ought to at least be as interesting as an hour of "Sally Jessy Raphael." Instead it's surprisingly dull, a bit preachy and, Gerald/Geraldine's lingerie aside, rather tasteful.

A banker in a Wonderbra is still a banker after all. Or, as another transvestite's wife points out to Monica (Julie Walters), "It's 'is 'obby, luv ... like golf ... except you see more of him."

While most women would rather share sand wedges than satin teddies, Monica is the rare and absurdly noble exception. She is also lonely and needy after the breakup of her long, loveless marriage. The solution, she decides, is to take in boarders, one of whom is Gerald (Adrian Pasdar), a stud-muffinly American yuppie whose wife tosses him out of the town house upon finding another woman's knickers in their bedroom.

Gerald, a glib corporate whiz kid by day, doesn't dare explain that they are not another woman's, but his own fine washables. And without so much as a goodbye to his kids, he departs for Monica's comfortable Kensington row house. The other boarders are taken with his good looks and fall into convulsions over his lame, poorly delivered jokes.

Monica, who is absolutely smitten by the younger man, flowers under his attentions and shortly thereafter introduces him to her boudoir. Despite a passion for female fashions, Gerald -- like most transvestites -- is heterosexual. It's just that he likes making whoopee in fishnet stockings, a black lace garter belt and a slinky camisole. This doesn't seem to bother the seemingly sheltered and bourgeois Monica, who is briefly startled at the news but comes to see it as his being really in touch with his feminine side.

Alas, the lovers' idyllic existence -- shopping together, raiding each other's closets, attending masquerade balls -- is interrupted by a bit of plot: Gerald's secret is exposed, and his bigoted boss (Paul Freeman) fires him immediately. This in turn threatens to jeopardize the firm's delicate relationship with a prestigious Japanese firm and maybe even destroy the economy of northern England. Now Gerald faces the greatest challenge of his young life, but he does so with his seams straight and his head held high.

Nobody seems to notice that the leading man looks more like Mrs. Doubtfire than a human female. The folks in the film are always going on about how he'd probably go undetected at a gynecologist's office. Well, in Siberia maybe. It doesn't help that Pasdar, who played a pilot in "Top Gun," shows no true understanding of this character.

Walters, who is warm and appealing here, is a brilliant actor, but not even she can convince us that she likes sleeping with a guy in a corset. While she single-handedly saves her other new movie, "The Wedding Gift," here her best efforts can't compensate for producer-writer Nick Evans's poorly structured story line and director Christopher Monger's plodding pace and mechanical approach. To make matters worse, the filmmakers try to educate as they entertain. Among other things, they teach us that one in every 20 American men is a cross-dresser at some time in his life. So much for Victoria's Secret.

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