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A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story

Mothers, daughters, and sisters rule the network known as Lifetime, the cable empire built on tearjerker original movies about families in crisis. Aimed squarely at a female audience and telling its stories exclusively through the eyes of female characters, Lifetime is one of the most successful basic cable networks in history.

A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story, which premiers on June 19 at 9 PM ET/PT, applies the tried and true Lifetime formula to the story of California transgender teen Gwen Araujo, who was brutally killed by a group of boys when they discovered she was biologically male. It was written by Shelley Evans and directed by Oscar-nominated Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland (Europa, Europa).

The film focuses on Sylvia Guerrero (Oscar and Tony award winning actress Mercedes Ruehl), a single mother whose teenager (J.D. Pardo), born Eddie Araujo, gradually realizes he’s a girl. She grows her hair, wears makeup to school, starts wearing girl’s clothing, and takes the name of Gwen.

Guerrero and Gwen’s siblings don’t welcome Gwen’s realization nor the changes it brings to their lives, yet instinctively defend her when outsiders ridicule or reject her. Guerrero tells her traditional Latino family that accepting Gwen is non-negotiable, even while she herself is still struggling with negative feelings about Gwen’s identity, and begging her to be more discreet.

In a lovely scene at her sister’s wedding, Gwen meets an ex-Marine, Joey, and begins dating him. He stops seeing her when he discovers she is biologically male, but his former girlfriend, who he dumped for Gwen, takes revenge. She discovers Gwen has been sexually active with one or more boys she knows, and she suggests to them that Gwen is “really” male.

They lure her out by telling her Joey wants to see her, and in a harrowing scene, one of them drags Gwen into the bathroom and exposes her genitals. They then kill her. The real murder was particularly brutal, taking place over several hours, but much of what is shown onscreen is flashbacks of Gwen as a child intercut with very brief glimpses of the killing.

Gwen’s murder rocked the San Francisco Bay Area community where she lived, and made headlines across the nation. Gwen’s killers were tried, and after one mistrial, were found guilty of second degree murder. Her mother became an outspoken crusader for justice for Gwen and the rights of transgender people.

Ruehl portrays Guerrero’s combination of fear, love, rejection, and protectiveness brilliantly, neither coming too soon to acceptance to be believable, nor ever allowing her own conflicted feelings to overcome her desire for Gwen’s happiness. It’s a poignant mix.

The weakest link in A Girl Like Me is J.D. Pardo (American Dreams, Clubhouse), who plays Gwen. The 26-year-old actor holds absolutely nothing back in his portrayal, but is unfortunately so physically unsuited to the role that the net effect is jarring. It’s impossible to believe he is portraying a sixteen and seventeen year old girl. In addition to his obvious age, his hair and wardrobe are dowdy and wallflowerish, a world different from the real life Gwen Araujo, who looked like a club kid and had modeled herself on hip singer Gwen Stefani.

That in and of itself wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if the plot weren’t predicated on Gwen’s youthful appeal and sexiness. The boys and men shown being interested in her wouldn’t have looked twice at the tall, gawky, broad-shouldered, badly-dressed, badly-coiffed Pardo. His acting is passionate and accomplished, and he was deeply committed to doing justice to the role, but no amount of acting chops or passion can overcome his physical unsuitability for the part.

Although executive-produced by attorney Gloria Allred, who represented the family and authored a book on the trial of Gwen’s killers, A Girl Like Me lets drama trump reality whenever the two conflict.

In real life, Gwen’s struggle for self-acceptance was apparently much rockier than is depicted in the film, and her death more brutal than the cinematic version. But even judging it simply as a film and not an account of reality, A Girl Like Me can better be described as well-intentioned than powerful.

That’s not to say the movie doesn’t have its powerful moments. While like all such films it’s full of stock characters, from the struggling mother to the supportive grandfather to the gang-girl sister, sometimes this works very much to its advantage. The aggressive defense attorney is a cliché straight out of central casting, but his sneering cross-examinations of Gwen’s therapist and best friend actually lead to two of the film’s most powerful moments.

Gwen’s best friend takes the stand in the handkerchief-twisting, trembling-voiced tradition of courtroom dramas everywhere. The defense attorney questions her about her grades and involvement in student government, and then asks her if she knew Eddie Araujo. Which is the moment the transformation occurs.

“No,” she says, lifting her chin. Her answer takes him by surprise. “No?” “I knew Gwen.”

Gwen’s therapist is brought in for cross-examination as well, although the legal purpose of this testimony is not entirely clear. But it does lend itself to a blockbuster of a scene, when the defense attorney again tries to suggest that Gwen (or Eddie, as he persists in calling her) brought about her own murder by letting the boys who killed her believe she was biologically female before engaging in sexual activity with them. Didn’t Eddie, he asks, have an obligation to tell them?

The therapist spars with him for a while, and then finally says, “I was born a biological male. Should I have told you that before beginning this cross-examination?” “But we’re not in an intimate relationship,” he replies. “If we were, would you kill me?”

Such powerhouse moments aside, this is no Boys Don’t Cry. There is a formula for made-for-TV message movies, and A Girl Like Me fits into it seamlessly. This is paradoxically its greatest strength, not so much as drama but as social commentary. In the canon of Lifetime movies, where mothers stand strong beside their children and families love each other no matter what, A Girl Like Me raises no doubts about the place of a transgender daughter in her mother’s heart and home.

When asked by The Advocate for her thoughts on the impact of Lifetime’s enormous audience seeing the film, Ruehel said she thought it was a great opportunity for spreading a message to middle America that “there is a complex condition called transgender–something you’re born with.”

“This is a poignant story about a mother who loved her child unconditionally, but ultimately lost her daughter due to the ignorance and fear of four young men,” said Ruehl in a Lifetime interview. “Everyday, Sylvia and her family continue to endure the pain of Gwen’s death, but what we can all learn from the tragedy is tolerance for all people, regardless of sexual gender or identity.”

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