Deconstructing Zoe

"Deconstructing Zoe," which has its World Premiere at Translations: Seattle Transgender Film Festival, sets about exploring the rather blurred lines of gender and sexuality of London-based Malayan Chinese actor/producer Chowee Lee (a.k.a., Zoe), who is a self-professed gender illusionist.

Initially, listening to interviews with Lee and friends is somewhat confusing, as no one seems to be able to agree on the correct pronoun when talking about Chowee/Zoe, but as the story evolves it gradually makes more sense: Lee identifies as genderqueer, and claims to be equally comfortable as a man or a transwoman.

What was different in Lee's story is that he has never experienced any gender dysphoria, and his desire to adopt his feminine profile, he claims, is not that unusual for Asian gay men (which he also identifies with) who live in the West and have difficulty assimilating in such an overtly masculine homosexual culture.

This profile, by filmmaker Rosa Wang, blends a series of talking heads with scenes from Zoe's own semi-auto biographical play, "An Occasional Orchid," which she/he wrote some 20 years ago when it started to become apparent that parts for Chinese actors in London were very rare and hideously stereotyped. It also allowed Zoe to openly discuss the fact that, in her own experiences, the life of a transgendered person is often about living in a kind of twilight.

What comes across in this documentary is Lee's self-assuredness. He is very comfortable in his own skin, having arrived at this point in his life without the usual trauma that one expects in journeys of discovery such as the one he/she has undertaken. Zoe is not conflicted at all with the reality that her choices are not easily defined, and that in itself will not sit easily in a society that still prefers to label people into definable categories.

The movie doesn't dig too deep, however, and although we learn a great deal about Zoe's preferences in clothes and makeup, we never discover much at all about her in other ways; what we do learn, we learn by inference, as with the handful of close friends who say that whether he chose to be Chowee or Zoe, they were equally happy with him/her.