Tiresia (2003)

AKA: –
Directed by: Bertrand Bonello
Starring: Laurent Lucas (Captor/Priest), Clara Choveaux (Tiresia 1), Thiago Teles (Tiresia 2), Celia Catalifo (Anna), Lou Castel (Charles)
Country: France; Effed Up European Cinema
Language: French (Eng Subs); Effed Up French Movies
Runtime: 01:50:58
Genres: Transsexual, Captivity, Religioous angle, Gruesome, Prostitution

Plot – Spoilers:
A disturbed Frenchman who obsessively prefers duplicates or mutations over the original, holds a transsexual prostitute Tiresia captive in his dreary home. She in turn responds to his passive dominance and control with passivity and makes no attempt to leave apart from shrieking early on. The man is spellbound at times by her and gets involuntary tremors while watching her nude, especially when her cock is on show. But he refuses to touch her for the longest while.

Eventually reality hits, as Tiresia without her hormones begins to look more and more male and the man can’t bear to have someone like that around him anymore. The cracked rear windshield of his car suggests he’s done this before and he dumps the repulsive being on a country road, but not before depriving it of something. (In another shot of the car, there doesn’t appear to be a crack, which could be a goof or just another annoying attempt at adding to the general confusion within the film)

Tiresia is then rescued by a quiet, perhaps mute teenager, and begins living in her care as a male. But the trauma endured snaps something, and he now finds himself with clairvoyant powers which brings local fame.

Random (Spoilers continue):
Based on the Greek myth of Tiresias who through a curse was transformed into a woman with prophetic powers when he disturbed a couple of mating snakes. A painting of a snake appears multiple times in the room where Tiresia is held captive, marking the beginning of her transformation back to male.

The actor playing Tiresia is actually a biological woman.

The same character of Tiresia is played by two different actors. In the spirit of keeping things opposite (in the Greek myth it’s m2f, here it’s transf2m), maybe the fact that the priest and the disturbed man are played by one actor – Laurent Lucas – suggests they are indeed two different characters. And almost to prevent us confirming this, we are also deprived of seeing the priest’s immediate reactions to Tiresia narrating her experience as a prostitute blinded by her captor, though he is quite cool when meeting her for the first time.