Castration Movie Anthology I: Traps | 2024
Louise Weard in CASTRATION MOVIE ANTHOLOGY I: TRAPS.
A trans woman gets out of bed and pads across the room to the bathroom. She is naked. She goes to the bathroom. She brushes her teeth. It is a ritual I've performed so many times without a second thought, and now I'm watching it in a movie. I am struck by how commonplace this feels, how incredibly normal. I notice that her body isn't that different from mine. This is not a hyper-sexualized porn star; this is a regular transgender woman living a regular life. Our bodies are so often fetishized that it feels wholly transgressive to see a nude trans woman on screen simply existing - not being used as a sex object or an object of pity, just another woman going through motions that feel so mundane yet so familiar.
In that moment from Louise Weard's Castration Movie Anthology I: Traps, I realized I was watching something revolutionary. Not only did I feel like I was seeing someone like me represented on screen with a level of authenticity I had never seen before, I was also watching something truly important: a bold artistic statement proclaiming, "We are here, and we're going to make art on our own terms." Weard, a Canadian transgender filmmaker, also stars in the film as Michaela "Traps" Sinclair, a sex worker trying to navigate the complex realities of existing while trans. She hangs out with friends, she argues with lovers, she films scenes for Only Fans content with other trans women, and all the while she's dreaming of maybe one day starting a family.
The realities of her situation, however, make that decidedly difficult. Limited in her employment options due to her transness, Michaela turns to sex work to get by, further limiting her options and putting her in increasingly vulnerable situations, which ultimately lead to dangerous and self-destructive behaviors. Michaela isn't always a likable protagonist; she's messy, problematic, often unpleasant, and sometimes kind of bitchy - but she's real, and that's what makes her such a fascinating character.
Weard owns her sexuality as a trans woman, but she's also incredibly frank about it. She shaves her face before sexual encounters so insecure straight men don't get weirded out by her stubble. She has open discussions about hormone replacement therapy and its effects on her body. She's painfully honest about her self-image, experiences with self-harm, and perhaps most strikingly, fertility issues brought on by HRT. The emotional Catch-22 of both needing gender-affirming hormones and the yearning to start a family is a very real struggle, one that Weard tackles here with great sensitivity. She's out here exploring issues facing the trans community that no one else is talking about, and that's part of what makes Castration Movie so extraordinary.
If you've ever wondered what it feels like to hang out with a bunch of trans people, this is it. The film's low-res aesthetic is raw and beautiful, as if some unseen third party is capturing these people's lives with an old DV camera. At over four-and-a-half hours long, it's somewhat ungainly, filled with unusual rhythms, often feeling like it's going nowhere. Weard focuses on the in-between moments most filmmakers leave on the cutting room floor. Her shots linger not just seconds but often minutes longer than it feels like they should. The result is something quite mesmerizing, a woozy, uncompromising, fly-on-the-wall examination of trans existence that, like its queer protagonists, exists in the margins, rejecting good taste and respectability for a point of view and a style that is wholly and doggedly its own. At a time when trans people are under increasing assault, it's incredibly bracing to see a film about trans people not only being open and honest about their bodies and their struggles but embracing their sexuality in ways that are neither fetishized nor idealized. That in and of itself feels transgressive - when trans bodies are constantly being politicized and sexualized against our will, owning one's sexuality on one's own terms becomes a revolutionary act.
Castration Movie is a major work, an impassioned and sprawling epic of uncommon emotional acuity. The film was funded through a Kickstarter campaign and has received no formal theatrical release, giving it a kind of underground feel, the sort of thing you'd see in pop-up microcinemas or passed around on worn-out VHS tapes. It feels like the work of a community (other trans filmmakers like Vera Drew and Alice Maio Mackay also make an appearance), a trans film for a trans audience, defiantly disinterested in cisgender audiences' comfort or understanding. Those willing to take the journey will find something both deeply rewarding and completely unclassifiable; a singular, profoundly intimate work that feels pained and exposed like a raw nerve. With the second half due this year, Louise Weard is making an unforgettable statement that trans people are not a monolith, we live, thrive, and suffer in different ways, but our people cannot and will not be ignored. Our struggles may seem like niche issues to some, but they are real, and to realize that others are going through exactly what we are going through and telling those stories on screen right now is extraordinary indeed.
