The Secret of Me
(UK, 90 min.)
Dir. Grace Hughes-Hallett
Prod. James Rogan, Flora Stewart
Jim Ambrose recalls an unconventional childhood and adolescence. But as his story reaches his later teenage years, new information crystalizes his perspective about his struggles to feel comfortable with his body and sexuality. The awkwardness of youth quickly becomes traumatic as Jim learns the truth about his identity.
As Jim, a soft-spoken fortysomething man with a bushy beard, tells the camera, he spent his youth as Kristi. A girl. “This is not a transgender story,” Jim adds, while noting (as he does frequently) his allegiance to trans people. Jim’s story is one that few children share, but the small number remains too great. He uses his personal history to excavate the inhumane treatment of intersex kids in contemporary history.
Director Grace Hughes-Hallett makes her feature debut while sharing Jim’s tale, and The Secret of Me has clear echoes of the hit documentary that she previously produced, Three Identical Strangers. As with that twist-a-minute tale, The Secret of Me almost plays like a true crime saga. Jim recounts revelations that robbed him of his youth and reframed his very being. It’s a gripping story that unfolds with an empathetic mission to enlighten. The film, while conventionally told in the fashion that many true crime docs are these days, arrives at a timely moment to add to the conversation about rights for people across the spectrum of gender identities.
Jim takes the audience through his life’s story from the beginning. But as he gets to his university years, Kristi’s struggles begin to make sense as Jim remembers telling his friends and coach that he was going away for “girl’s surgery.” Cue a sense of confusion from all parties as Kristi can’t really explain the situation, especially since, as she tells a friend, she “doesn’t have a hole down there.”
The complexity of Jim’s story becomes evident as the story unfolds via the various talking heads within the tale. Interviewees misgender Jim and dance around certain details, which reflects the time and place in which his story took place. People speak of Kristi and Jim as different people, and there’s a dissociative element to Jim’s story. It surely echoes the painful estrangement of which he speaks.
But then Jim remembers sitting in a college class and reading about the work of John Money, who led what were thought to be breakthrough studies in gender identity. Jim reflects upon reading about a pair of twins, both of whom were biologically boys at birth, but one was raised as a girl following a disastrous circumcision. It’s an aha moment if there ever was one.
The Secret of Me observes as Jim immerses himself in Money’s research and the reappraisals it received in later years. The case, which readers familiar with Julie Cohen’s intersex rights documentary Every Body may recall, tells of Manitoba’s David Reimer, who was raised as Brenda. Money’s publications proclaim the experiment a success, while other doctors disagree. They argue that David exhibited considerable discomfort presenting as female. In later years, Jim learns, David reclaimed his identity and lived as a man. But Money’s damage was done, as David died by suicide two decades ago.
Jim insists on breaking the cycle. The Secret of Me takes a risky twist here as Jim decides to confront the doctor who changed the course of his life. Jim’s research informs him that Dr. Richard Carter advised his parents to allow him to surgically alter their baby’s genitals shortly after birth. Jim learns that he was born with a small and underdeveloped penis, so Dr. Carter told the parents their kid would have a better life as a girl. Inherent with the conversations of The Secret of Me are wider stereotypes about gender and masculinity, and the simplification of gender through a mindset that emphasizes the binary.
The confrontation proves both surprising and dramatically unsatisfying, partly because the focus shifts from Jim to Dr. Carter. The doctor, now retired, does his best to avoid excuses. However, the conversation lends an air of “that’s the way things were” that’s accepted a little too readily given the passionate perspectives that precede it. There’s an inherent staginess to the encounter, too. One can predict where it will go as the men meet in an empty restaurant and revisit the past in front of the camera. But it’s an important reminder that minds can change, a point that The Secret of Me underscores in the pivotal moment in which it arrives.
More satisfying is the story of Jim’s other pivotal encounter: learning to be himself. The Secret of Me lets down the salacious true crime filter as Jim tells how Kristi walked out on her life and found a community among intersex advocates and allies. A pivotal activist period draws Jim out of isolation as he learns from people with similar experiences. He discover the steps he can take to be his authentic self. In these moments, the film’s as empowering as it is enlightening.
