Should transgender celebrities feel obligated to share their personal journey with their fans? This is the issue explored by filmmaker Zackary Drucker in her recent HBO documentary Enigma, currently available for streaming on HBO Max. In the film, Drucker boldly questions French singer Amanda Lear about rumors of her gender transition. Lear, who is now in her 80s and has consistently refuted claims of being assigned male at birth, responds to the inquiry with evasiveness, ambiguity, and lukewarm denials. While these interactions create gripping television, they also evoke a sense of unease.

Enigma starts off as a queer history lesson of the underground Parisian nightclub, called Le Carrousel, a haven for trans women performers in the 1950s. Drucker—a trans woman herself, known for her award-winning 2023 documentary about trans sex workers, The Stroll—centers the story around two key figures: April Ashley and Amanda Lear. Ashley started out at Le Carrousel as a performer, and began a career as a Vogue model, until her public, messy divorce in 1970 outed her to the world as a trans woman. Since then, she has forged a new career as an author and trans activist.

Lear’s life took a very different path. She shot to success as a model, dated the Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí for decades, and released a number of disco albums, including the 1978 European bestseller, Sweet Revenge. In 1982, April Ashley revealed in her memoir that she knew Lear as a friend, colleague, and fellow trans performer working at Le Carrousel cabaret club in the 1950s, under the stage name Peki d’Oslo. Lear denied everything at the time. She still denies everything, now. But they way she does so is fascinating—almost as if, she knows that we know, accepts that we know, and is simply in too deep to back down now.

In the documentary, Drucker shows the present-day Lear newspaper clippings and photos of “Peki d’Oslo,” which seem to prove that, at the very least, Amanda used to go by that stage name. (Newspaper articles on drug charges and other things that happened in Amanda’s past, which she freely admits to doing in the documentary, refered to her as ‘Peki d’Oslo.’)

The present-day Lear responds to Drucker with a blank stare. “Who’s Peki? Who’s that?”

“Amanda,” Drucker replies, admonishment in her voice.

At this point, when it becomes clear that Drucker won’t play ball, Lear admits she knows of Peki. But, she claims, Peki is an entirely separate person, and not Lear’s alter-ego.

“That’s not me. She does look like me a lot, but that’s not me. That’s a total misunderstanding from the start.”

“So you’re not Peki?” Drucker presses, after showing Lear what appears to be many photos of younger herself.

“No, darling. I’m Amanda,” Lear answers, with a tired sigh. But while she speaks, Lear avoids eye contact, reaches for her water, and her heart doesn’t really seem to be in it.

This becomes a recurring motif in the documentary—Drucker pressing Lear, and Lear deflecting and denying. When Drucker asks Lear what her maiden name was before her marriage to Morgan Paul Lear, Lear replies, “I forgot,” paired with a finger wag and a cheeky smile.

When Drucker rewords the question to be what Lear’s parents’ surname was, Lear smiles wider. “Their last name was the same name I had,” she says, then adds with a laugh, “Clever.”

In other words, Lear doesn’t seem to be trying too terribly hard to cover her tracks.

Yet the aging singer is clearly uncomfortable when, at the end of the film, Drucker pushes her one last time—all but demanding that Lear come out as trans.

“I think you had not had the success then, if you had said [that you were trans],” Drucker tells Lear. “But I think you would have even more success now, if you do. Do you know what I mean?”

“It’s weird, it’s very weird,” Lear responds, and seems to seriously consider Drucker’s words.

Drucker continues, “I can understand how then, in your time, in the 1960s, in the 1970s, you wouldn’t have all of that.”

Here, Lear comes to the closest she ever has to coming out.

“Oh no, it was completely different from now,” Lear responds. “It’s very different. It’s easier, I suppose, for the girls now, today. The new generation. Things are a little easier. In my day, it was a little more difficult, because people were… not bad, but ‘We don’t understand, she’s strange,’ you know, all this going on. It’s easier today to be accepted as a… different person. But it hasn’t— well, perhaps our society has changed.”

When Drucker implores how much Lear has meant to herself and other trans woman she knows, Lear says, “I don’t really know what I can do for them.”

“I have an idea,” Drucker replies, quick and coy. Lear laughs. They both know what Drucker means. Drucker believes, if Lear came out, it would inspire and encourage the many trans women who look up to her. But while Lear seems to appreciate Drucker’s admiration, it’s clear from the way she fiddles with her fan, her water, and her body language that she’s not comfortable or ready to do what Drucker wants. She advises Drucker to stop fixating on the past, and that’s the end of that.

At times, this conversation borders on invasive. After all, shouldn’t trans people—and all people—have a right to keep their past to themselves? Is it fair that Lear still be scrutinized this way, all these years later?

But Drucker approaches her interviews from a place of empathy and respect, always. Perhaps that’s why she got Lear to open up as much as she did. Plus, you get the sense that Lear likes to keep that air of mystery about her. Perhaps it’s not that she’s scared to come out—perhaps she just likes being an enigma.