Whoa!-man …

A pre-operative transsexual belatedly discovers she is the father of a son, who is a troubled teenager needing rescue from the world of drugs and prostitution. It would seem to be a tale ripe for lurid sensationalism and melodramatic excess. But Transamerica skillfully avoids most of those temptations.

It helps a good deal that Oscar-nominee Felicity Huffman plays Bree (a.k.a. Sabrina, but born Stanley) with nicely understated delicacy and wit. But writer-director Duncan Tucker has also had the good sense to present this outlandish-sounding drama with a kind of droll pathos, and to frame it as both domestic comedy and picaresque road movie..

The transcontinental journey (from New York back to L.A.) taken by Bree and her wily, sulkily rebellious offspring (Kevin Zegers) becomes a multi-faceted rite-of-passage for both. Bree’s transsexual drama proceeds, steadily if not always seamlessly, alongside both travelers’ reshaping of themselves and their recovered and revised family connections.

Their trek’s unabashedly programatic slice-of-(multicultural American) life brings the pair into the company of a pointedly instructive set of characters—the son’s predatory stepfather in Kentucky, Bree’s sister Sydney (Carrie Preston) and their parents (Fionnula Flanagan and Burt Young) in Arizona, a charmingly helpful Navajo cowboy (Graham Greene), Bree’s guiding light/psychiatrist (Elizabeth Pena), assorted thieves and hustlers all, and more, along the way.

The supporting work of Pena and Greene is especially good, but it’s the light, smart touches and quiet big-heartedness of Huffman and Tucker that give the film its saving graces.