The Aggressives

Peddle captures a vital and increasingly visible community that's easily misunderstood, and his film will undoubtedly help novices further understand the complex differences separating gays, transsexuals and the transgendered.

The charismatic young women who populate Daniel Peddle's illuminating documentary are vibrant proof that there's still an untold story waiting around every New York City corner.

In the film's briskly paced 72 minutes, any open-minded viewer will discover something about identity and about the comfort these women have obviously found in learning to be their unusual, unfettered selves.

Documaker Daniel Peddle also works as a casting director, and so it is small wonder his crisp, concise, intimate portrait of six very different, self-styled "aggressives" -- women who stress their masculine sides -- should reveal in each a curious integrity and beauty.

Thankfully, Peddle's film is much more illuminating than a grad school seminar.

What might just be this film's greatest strength is how it shows that no matter how "different" we might appear to be on the outside, what's on the inside is what provides our common bonds.

The Aggressives has plenty of character but no story; it would have done better to structure itself around a competition it briefly visits in which lesbians, in costume, compete to win prizes for looking masculine. That way the film would have had a direction.