He calls himself Julian Noble, a name preposterous enough for us to assume that he invented it. Which is reasonable, given that he has one of those jobs where one would be loathe to use one’s real name: He kills people. Professionally, generally on corporate assignment. He laughs off the term “hit man,” but would never be so pretentious to call himself (as his employer does) a “facilitator of fatalities.”

Ralph Fiennes has been making a career out of fine-edged suffering for some time now. In last year’s The Constant Gardner his suddenly widowed British diplomat was so apologetically repressed that his political awakening and heroic response to his wife’s murder were a little implausible.

Having never seen “Desperate Housewives,” the popular television show for which actress Felicity Huffman won an Emmy Award, my experience of her performance in Transamerica is likely to be different from that of those of you who are already familiar with her. After about ten minutes of observing her performance as a male-to-female transsexual, I scribbled a note that it must be humiliating to be offered a role on the basis of being homely enough to pass for a man.