Movie Review - The Way You Look Tonight (2020)

Country: United States

Language: English

Type of story: Shapeshifter

Is the protagonist Transgender? No.

Sexuality: Doesn’t change

Nudity: No

How I watched it: Roku Channel (Watch here)

When I last watched it: December 28, 2025

This one isn’t our typical TF/TG movie.  First, the main protagonist isn’t the one undergoing a transformation.  Second, the transformation is a daily natural occurrence.  Much like Every Day, except this isn’t a body swap. Heloise is transforming into a new person each time she wakes up.

It’s still worth a review because it has a lot of transgender themes associated with it; making it a much more thought-provoking movie than many of the other movies I’ve reviewed over the past year.

My synopsis (spoiler-free): Peter (Nick Fink) is single and meets this great girl on a dating website.  They hit it off that night, but in the morning, she’s gone.  Trying to get her out of his mind, he goes on more and more dates. But they all seem to have something in common.

Trigger Warning: This movie does include self-harm.

* * Spoilers ahead * *

Peter’s first date is Ellie (Bailey Noble). She is followed by Lois (Kimia Behpoornia), but they don’t go home together, which angers Lois.  The next week, Peter invites Elise (Maliabeth Johnson) over and they have yet another one night stand. He laments that each of his dates has been wearing the same green hoodie. On the fourth date, he goes over to Heloise’s (Emily Tremaine) place.  They don’t have sex, but Peter spends the night.  When he wakes up, a new girl (Stefanie Black) claiming to be Heloise is there.  She explains that she’s a Changeling and every time she falls asleep, she transforms into a different person. She was Ellie, Lois, and Elise as well. We follow Peter as he learns about this new class of people and learns how to love someone whose physical form is always changing.

The Transformation: 

Heloise’s transformation is only shown once. She recorded it for Peter to see.  It’s just a generic CGI morph.  Nothing to really see here.

Sexuality: Once Peter starts accepting that Heloise is a Changeling, and they start dating, he is totally taken by surprise when he wakes up cuddling a guy. Surprise! Changelings can also change gender! As it is described, how often a Changeling spends in a gender is fluid depending on the person.  For Heloise, she calls it, “that time of the month.”

At first, Peter is disgusted.  But then he realizes he’s overreacting, and continues to date Heloise— just without the intimacy when she’s in a male body.  Eventually after months of dating, Peter gets comfortable with Heloise-as-a-guy and they attempt more intimacy - eventually trying sex.  Peter isn’t entirely comfortable with this, but based on the ending of the movie, it appears that Peter can see beyond the physical form and just see the person he loves.

Gender: The whole movie is a parable to the struggles of LGBTQ people. 

In this fictional universe, Changelings just “came out of the closet.”  They’re fighting for equal rights.  Things like birth certificates and passports.  Changelings have support groups where they talk about their struggles with society.

When Peter invites Heloise to read a book she has written to his kindergarten class, she is physically a nonbinary person (Andi René Christensen). One of the kids asks her if she’s a boy or a girl. She replies, “I believe I’m a girl.” And the kids accept that easily. “OK.”  See how easy that is?  Society, I’m looking at you.

Peter’s reaction to the fact that Heloise is sometimes a guy is similar to cis guy’s reaction to learning that a woman he’s dating is trans. Trans panic. He’s angry. He claims she lied.

Peter, Heloise, and Peter’s roommates watch Changelings protest on TV.

Heloise also laments that she can never have children.

How it ends: Peter is ready to take the relationship to the next level.  He wants to introduce Heloise to his parents and grandmother.  Heloise is eager— until she falls asleep and wakes up as a bearded, overweight male. She’s embarrassed. Then she hurts herself. Peter is forgiving and tries to comfort her.  When Peter wakes up, Heloise has run off.

Peter goes to her father’s house looking for her.  He finds her as a middle-aged man, presumably her father. He realizes that the man is actually Heloise, meaning he finally sees her. He confronts her and tells her that none of the childhood trauma she went through is her fault. They reconcile and he eventually brings her to his parents house - as is.

While Peter’s parents are taken aback at Peter's girlfriend being a middle-aged man, his grandmother doesn’t care and welcomes Heloise with open arms.

Random Thoughts:

• According to the lore of this universe, Changelings are subject to body alterations including age, race, gender, and mass. We saw Heloise change all of those. She even recounted times in her childhood when she’d gone from a kid to an adult.

• Peter isn’t aware of Changelings at first.  In fact, he’s been taking his dates to a known Changeling bar, Leshy’s, where the owner and bartender are Changelings and Peter will unknowingly at first meet both of them multiple times.

• Date #2 doesn’t go as well for Peter and Heloise as opposed to Date #1 where Peter and Ellie had a one-night-stand. Heloise thinks it's because she’s currently “Lois” and she has brown skin.  Peter denies it, of course, and it is worth noting that Date #2 is on a Sunday night and Peter correctly specifies he has to get up early tomorrow for work.

• Date #3 is surprisingly at Peter’s place. Not sure why he’s cooking dinner for a first date.  They quickly have sex, making me wonder - did they even eat the dinner Peter cooked?

• Date #4 is at Heloise’s place. Again, a first date at a person’s place.

• Peter’s roommate, Jackson (Shane Coffey), is the first one to realize that Peter’s dates are likely the same Changeling.  Jackson shares his theory with their other roommate, Peter’s sister, Mia (Juliette Goglia).  When Peter comes home from Date #4 where he learned the truth, Jackson and Mia are eagerly waiting to see Peter’s reaction.

• After #4, Peter visits Heloise again, and this time he drives her to a meeting of her Changeling support group.  There he meets several other Changelings, including Leshy and the bartender, both of whom he had met previously.  Each Changeling has a “habit”, or rather an item that identifies them, since every other physical trait is fluid. Heloise’s habit is the green hoodie. Peter learns some of the hardships Changelings face - inability to get official IDs, credit cards, and leave the country.

• I love that everyone around Peter is a progressive ally. Jackson and Mia are very accepting of him dating a Changeling. Even his grandmother is cool with Heloise. There are no real regressive people - except Peter himself who’s character arc takes him from unaware cis hetero guy, to full acceptance and ally.

• I wanted to list out every version of Heloise we see, but even IMDB doesn’t list them all.

Overall impression: 

It's certainly an interesting movie.  An example of what makes science fiction great. Taking some crazy premise such as shapeshifting and turning it into a LGBTQ allegory. The film uses the Changeling concept to explore the unfair emotional burden placed on the marginalized person to manage the cis person's reality.