Southern Comfort opens on the scene of a middle-aged man sitting alone in a lawn chair out in a field. He’s the rugged outdoors type -- wearing a cowboy hat, sunglasses, and a black leather jacket. He talks to no one in particular, mulling over his fate, while the camera studies his face – it is handsome and world weary, etched by lines that speak of the depth of his living. This is Robert. And this remarkable portrait becomes all the more remarkable when we find out shortly thereafter that he was born a woman.

So it begins. Robert is the first. And soon we meet another woman turned man and then men turned women as we enter the world of transsexuals -- where gender is literally refashioned -- a unusual concept, to say the least, and to some in the mainstream, frightening. A transsexual’s “rebellion” against the “normal” world seems to be at the most fundamental level. Transsexuals argue that they started out their lives in the wrong bodies. So much so that they finally changed their sex.

Robert insists that his former female body was a mistake – though he gave birth to two sons and has a grandchild. “I am and always have been a heterosexual male,” he claims. “I love women. I always have. I have never felt like a lesbian.” Robert’s best male friend is Max – also born a woman. As the story develops, Robert falls in love with a woman named Lola -- who was born a man named John. So doesn’t that mean…? Yes, it’s essentially a romance between a man and a woman no matter which way you look at it. And the mind begins to reel at the physical and philosophical possibilities.

But while Southern Comfort takes an exotic topic and draws on our fascination with the unusual and the alien it is leading us to our common ground. There are no flashy references here to “glam” transsexual cabaret stars of New York. Nor are there expert interviews of why and how people change gender. Instead we find out that transsexuals lead normal lives, just like you or me. They invite each other to barbeques and picnics. They talk about the weather. They argue and wash dishes.

Filmmaker Kate Davis guides the piece with an accomplished storyteller’s hand, and by film’s end we see Robert and Lola not only as outlander hero and heroine, but also as “regular folk.” She parallels their budding love story with a second --dealing with the discrimination and fear that transsexuals trigger in the straight world. Plagued by what he calls the last vestige of his womanhood, Robert has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. He looks for doctors, but is turned down again and again with variations of the same line: “It would be an embarrassment to my female patients.”

As Davis deftly develops our rapport with Robert and friends we become increasingly incensed at this treatment. We are stunned that doctors could turn down this affable and kind “Georgia hillbilly” as he calls himself. Angered that they could turn away this grandfather whose grandchild loves him so fiercely. Amazed that those who call themselves “healers” could so ignore that oath.

It’s not a new story and one that has happened to millions of disenfranchised people throughout the ages. But it provokes the same response in thoughtful citizens of every age --- how can man be so inhuman to his fellow man or woman – no matter their race, creed, color or, as in this case, chosen gender? Films like Southern Comfort do what even legislation cannot – they seep into our consciousness, and work their way into our collective growth until the establishment and mainstream society finally relent and expand their viewpoint of what constitutes human.