Now, the U.S. also can be transfixed

A foreign film’s journey to America can be a long one. Case in point: the French suspense thriller “Transfixed,” opening Friday at the Laemmle Fairfax theaters.

The film was released in France in 2001 and has spent the last 18 months playing various gay and lesbian international film festivals, including the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Film Festival, the Melbourne Queer Film Festival and the Toronto InsideOut Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival. “Transfixed” opened theatrically in late July in New York City.

Directed by veteran Francis Girod, “Transfixed,” which was released in France as “Mauvais genres,” is based on the novel “Transfixions” by Brigitte Aubert.

Robinson Stevenin plays Bo, a transsexual performer who becomes the chief suspect in a series of brutal slayings of transsexual prostitutes after Bo’s best friend becomes the serial killer’s latest victim. Along the way, Bo is forced to confront the father who sexually abused him as a child.

Stevenin won the 2002 Cesar for most promising newcomer for his performance. The actor, who has been performing since he was a child, is the son of Jean-Francois Stevenin, the veteran actor who appeared in the Francois Truffaut films “Day for Night” and “Small Change.”

The cast also includes a familiar face to French film fans -- Micheline Presle, who plays Bo’s senile grandmother. Presle, 82, has been in French movies since the late 1930s and made an unsuccessful bid at Hollywood stardom, appearing in a handful of films, including opposite Tyrone Power in 1950’s “American Guerrilla in the Philippines.”

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-- Susan King