Review of XXY (2007) by Robert T — 09 Feb 2010

Argentine film about a young person who has been raised as a girl, although she has an extra Y chromosome. Her parents are aging leftists who did the right thing, didn't operate on her and raised with a specified gender, as the Intersex Society of North America recommends.

But now the heroine, named Alex, no longer identifies as a woman and the childhood performance of gender that her parents had orchestrated has come to an end. She's aggressive sexually, acts out violently, and stops taking her meds.

Cinematically, there were two particularly fascinating scenes. In one, Alvero, the hot skinny boy who has come with his hot mean surgeon father to visit the family, is listening to music on headphones. Alex takes them away and says when you listen to music on a headphone, it seems like the whole world is listening too. She then puts the headphones back on Alvero. We (the audience) hear the music for the first time--so we're in his world, where the whole world hears his music. And she starts dancing to it, even though she doesn't have the headphones on. So, Alex, Alvero and the audience are all united in that world, dancing--or at least tapping out toes--to the same music.

The other one isn't so happy. At the end, Alex offers Alvero a chance to see "it," her penis. This is what the town boys want to do when they assault her and take her pants off. The act of looking at her penis without her permissions is like rape. So she offers it to Alvero--but it's a very fraught moment where it's not clear whether this is redemptive or not. Does Alvero want this? Is it good for him as he comes to term with his own sexuality? Is it good for Alex? And unlike in the music scene, we the audience do not get to see "it." Fairly explicitly, we are excluded from the view of it. So are we like the boys, who want to see something that we're not allowed to see? But then it seems like the film is playing unfairly, dangling something in front of us and then telling us we're wrong to see it.

A little melodramatic at times, but definitely a fascinating and progressive film.