The son of two doctors, Richard Raskind was a charismatic scholar-athlete and skirt-chaser at Yale who went on to graduate from medical school and continue his training as an ophthalmologist in the Navy. Raskind was also, however, an inveterate cross-dresser who for more than two decades grappled with confusion over issues of sexual identity. Later in life — after a five-year marriage and even the birth of a son — 41-year-old Raskind completed a sex change operation that he’d contemplated for years. Taking up the name Renée Richards and moving to California as part of the transformation, he (now she) went on to enter and win a handful of circuit-level tennis matches, and eventually enter into a protracted legal battle to win the right to play in the 1977 U.S. Open. Director Eric Drath’s Renée, which recently debuted at the Los Angeles Film Festival, tells the story of this transsexual trailblazer, shining a spotlight — whatever ones thinks of its subject — on a remarkable reservoir of personal perseverance.

Renée is fairly gripping, but chiefly just because of its subject matter, and the somewhat discombobulating sight of Richards, who is a weird blend of the skeletal and ethereal. Renée also benefits from its streamlined brevity; at a crisp, cool 78 minutes, the film doesn’t overstay its welcome. Still, one has to wonder about the subconscious motivations of a self-described “private person” who has a sex change operation, leaves behind a family and moves across the country, but then enters a high-profile tennis tournament knowing that any success will likely hoist them into the public arena. Richards’ hard-knock story and life is an amazing one, still laced with pockets of untapped mystery and intrigue. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (ESPN Films/Live Star Entertainment, unrated, 78 minutes)