Untucking “Girlfriends”

With a title like "Girlfriends???", I expected a film about the backstabbing duplicity of trophy wives or False Facebook Friends. But this tale of love on the bikini-line-lined streets of Brazil featured other subequatorial shenanigans.

Girlfriends???

Studio: Third World Media
Director: Ed Hunter
Cast: Talita, Paola Felix, Erika, Gisely, Nicole, Thays, Nataly, Paola Lima

Review by: Gram Ponante

When it became clear that Girlfriends? was about trannies in trysts with bio-women, I wondered if there'd be a part of each scene devoted to The Reveal. After all, it is well-documented that women only engage in Sapphic relationships because they've been hurt by, or wish to get back at, men, and to have the woman to whom you've entrusted your vengeance reveal that she, too, is a dude must be a Great Moment in Cinema.

I also wondered, as a pornologist, how the trannies themselves must feel about an encounter with less-Adam's Apple-y versions of themselves.

So this movie, with its simple but ambiguous title, has a lot of context in it already.

But if Talita and Paola Felix were surprised or jealous of each other in Girlfriends?' opening scene, none of it is made plain. This is probably because they have rich inner lives.

Talita, who looks like a combination of Elizabeth Berkeley and Jenny Hendrix (above the waist) and who has a penchant for looking at the camera, performs better and appears to be enjoying herself more than most trannies, perhaps because she feels she might be fucking a mermaid.

It is unclear from the credits who is who. International Porn Naming Standards dictate that the female be listed before the male in every pairing but IPNS are hazy on Tranny/bio-woman scenes. So I assume that Talita is the transsexual here, simply because it sounds a little Fabulous.

Erika, who is listed first in the credits in a scene also featuring Gisely, is less so. Gisely is a ripe Sao Paulo beauty and Erika seems to be her rough-talking cab driver.

A slightly disturbing scene is the one between Nicole and Thays. Nicole, you see, is uncircumcised and is the first of this group who seems like she might be not particularly attracted to her partner, who seems perfectly nice and would have no trouble catching hetero fellas. But in their post-coital shower scene (a staple in Ed Hunter's tranny movies, we've found), all seems forgiven.

Some sort of transsexual tectonic shift occurs in the final scene between Nataly and Paola Lima, however. Lima, the bio-woman, seems to be rocking the disaffected hooker look normally donned by transsexuals in such films, whereas the (again, uncircumcised) Nataly is, by comparison, all sweetness and light.

While I would have welcomed an attempt to dramatize The Reveal a little more, Girlfriends? is a good example of an emerging niche with somewhere to go; when confronted with the idea of trannies and bio-women, we think: "What might that look like?" and "That might actually happen!" as opposed to our feelings about Transsexual MILFs and Transsexual Babysitters and Barely Legal Trannies.

· Third World Media (thirdworldxxx.com)
· Buy "Girlfriends???" (gamelink.com)