Between Two-Spirit

On the wrong side of fifty, having consulted a doctor/psychoanalyst friend, Christoph (“Chris”) feels ready to undergo a “sex reassignment”: in other words, to become the woman he has always carried deep inside like “an injured bird” (in the words of a song). He is operated in Bangkok, at a specialized clinic: Adam’s apple removed, neck nipped and tucked, cheeks lifted, jaw slimmed down… to give birth to Christiane… alias “Chris”. Laurence Périgaud has produced an intimate account of this transformation, body and soul, of an individual in quest of freedom. Entre il et ailes is the sensitive portrayal of a year of transition. Because Christoph does not become Christiane overnight: he has to prepare his acquaintances, in particular his colleagues, for his “coming out” and test or – better perhaps – tame his new identity. What is striking is Chris’s frankness and his confidence in the outcome of this migration to arrive at a position half way between male and female. And there is poetry, too: “Now at last I feel that I am at home in myself”.

Emmanuel Chicon  

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