Review of XXY (2007) by Mauricio R — 18 Jan 2009

A part of many person's lives is to wish away the arbitrary and to refute the random. Alex is a 15 year old hermaphrodite whose features lean more toward the feminine (in no small part due to medicine) and who has been raised as a girl.

So Alex's Mom has made it clear that surgery should be done to finalize Alex's journey and achieve, as she and the surgeon that agrees with her call it, "normalization". It is a starting point for this vivid, thought provoking film, one which ponders the want of adults to decide a child's path sexually.

Alex, having stopped taking the medication, meets the surgeon's son, a boy as laidback as Alex is intense. The film takes hold when Alex and the boy have sex, an undeniably powerful sequence that upends expectations and only causes more questions for both.

The surgeon's son can't comprehend how Alex can both have fallen for him and seemingly be turned off by him. Alex's blossoming sexuality shifts other relationships with teens including Alex's two best friends.

Alex's ex-boyfriend must transform into just a friend, someone to hang out with. Meanwhile the unease of developing sexual attraction to Alex's flirtatious female friend brings Alex only further anxiety.

It is Alex's father that begins to comprehend that his little girl may not be his daughter much longer. However it turns out Alex's thinking may be more evolved than everyone else's. Alex has to be played perfectly and actress Ines Efron is just right, combining classically female and male characteristics.

There is a gangliness of a young person growing into their body combined with an insecure display of bravado. Ricardo Duran is also strong as Alex's loving Father, a man that sees the determination of those to categorize his child as the bullying it is.

This riveting movie signals Lucia Puenzo as an important new force in filmmaking.