Showtimes & Tickets Enter Zip Code:

XXY
Directed by Lucía Puenzo
Produced by Luis Puenzo & Jose María Morales
Written by Puenzo, based on a short story by Sergio Bizzio
Director of Photography, Natasha Braier
Edited by Alex Zito & Hugo Primero
Music by Andrés Goldstein & Daniel Tarrab
Released by Film Movement
Spanish with English subtitles
Argentina/Spain/France. 91 min. Not Rated
With Ricardo Darín, Valeria Bertuccelli, Germán Palacios, Carolina Peleritti, Martín Piroyansky & Inés Efron

Even without seeing the producing credits, one can immediately sense that this is a French co-production, direct and unflinching in depicting the experimental nature of teenage sexuality (like Water Lilies, Cold Showers, or almost any coming-of-age drama). But the two rites of passage in this Argentinean film are heightened by an intersex protagonist with both male and female reproductive organs.

Without a hint of titillation or exploitation, writer/director Lucía Puenzo holds back nothing, her style just as blunt as 15-year-old Alex (as ambiguous as her name). Raised as a girl, she lives isolated in a wildlife refuge along the Uruguayan coast with her (perhaps over-) protective parents. She has been expelled from school for hitting a boy, her best friend, and her mother has observed that she has stopped taking her hormonal medicine, which will cause her to appear more masculine.

Alex skittishly keeps to herself when a hotshot plastic surgeon, his wife, and their gawky teenage son Alvaro (the wonderfully transparent Martín Piroyansky) come to visit. The doctor has been invited by Alex’s mother to explore the possibility of Alex going under the knife, a consideration complicated by Alex’s reluctance to identify as either male or female.

Her first meeting with Alvaro is more like a confrontation – she teases him that she knows he has just wanked off minutes earlier. The director’s direct and abrupt treatment of Alex and Alvaro’s awkward courtship will produce nervous twitters. In one scene, in particular, it’s impossible not to feel uncomfortable or voyeuristic.

The terse dialogue befits the inarticulate teenagers – “What do you want?/What do you want?” – but the relationships among the two pairs of parents remain undeveloped. Alvaro’s father serves as a verbal punching bag for Alex’s defensive father. The four adults come across as clueless; did they really think that by leaving two teenagers on their own, nothing would happen? And there’s not a strong sense that the six characters coexist under the same roof, let alone that the two mothers are longtime friends.

But Puenzo takes advantage of her young actors’ star quality, filming their scenes mostly in intense close-ups; the camera loves Inés Efron’s piercing blue eyes. In contrast to her costar Piroyansky, Efron fiercely guards her feelings, given that Alex’s an object of ridicule and curiosity by the provincials. Incredibly, the then 24-year-old actors don’t act or seem a day older than 16. But apart from Alvaro’s nervous, lopsided grin, no one cracks a smile. Even without a rainstorm, the mood is dour. For a film about sexual growing pains, the hormonal rush is noticeably missing. Kent Turner
May 2, 2008