I Want What I Want is a moving and articulate film. Roy's problem is that he is physically a man but feels like a woman. He is unable to escape from an exaggerated devotion to the memory of his long dead mother, and is invariable at odds with his bluff, lecherous old father who thinks that all problems of Roy's kind can be cured by National Service or a good dose of boarding school. Roy runs away from home and shacks up in an obscure lodging house. It is here that he begins to train himself for the life of a woman.

"In this sympathetic transsexual portrait Anne Heywood reads so easily as female in her role as "Roy" that the queerest moments are probably unintentional. As "Wendy", Heywood comes off poofy, but the character has tons of femme pride and packs a copy of The Second Sex (like Simone said, one is not born a woman; rather, one becomes one). Cheesy yet effective attempted suicide scenes ties with a twist into the issue of genital surgery." - Susan Stryker