Frameline: Red Without Blue

In large part due to the strength of a rave review in the Chronicle, the Victoria was packed to the gills for the Sunday afternoon screening of Red Without Blue, a documentary about a pair of (local) identical twins, one of whom is transgender, for the Frameline LGBT film festival.

Mark and Alex grew up as extremely close brothers in Missoula, Montana. As they entered adolescence, both realized they were gay, and in struggling to come to terms with that, both entered into abusive relationships (with the same man) and fell into drug use and depression. After returning from rehab, Alex announced to his twin and his family that he no longer identified as male, and was adopting the name Clair. The movie is about their family's in accepting, and then embracing, this new reality as the twins enter adulthood.

Red Without Blue was filmed over a three and a half year span, and as the twins grow up and become more comfortable in their own shared, yet separate, identities, it was truly moving to see their mother move herself from anger and denial to a whole-hearted happiness that both Clair and Mark had grown up so well. The twins are both extremely well-spoken and thoughtful, and speak eloquently about embracing ambiguity in themselves and their twin: Clair put it well when she says, "I wasn't born a man or a woman, I was born to make this change from one to another."

As someone in the question and answer session said, this is a movie where everyone -- not just Clair -- goes through a profound transformation: whether it's Clair growing more comfortable in her gendered identity, Mark learning to expand his boundaries through love, or their mother realizing that her child is still her child. And as someone else pointed out at the Father's Day screening, the Fairleys' father's unconditional support of Clair was a lifeline as well.

Red Without Blue screens again on Wednesday the 20th at the Castro at 2:30, and then will be showing on the Sundance Channel on June 25th at 9 p.m.

Picture of identical twins Mark and Clair Farley by Brooke Sebold.