XXY (2007)
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XXY Movie Review
XXY is a 2007 Argentine drama film directed by Lucia Puenzo and starring Ines Efron. It has its problems, but it’s mostly a very good, important movie about this subject matter.
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“What do you regret the most?
Not seeing me again, or not having seen it?“
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It follows an intersex girl who was born with two sets of genitalia. She struggles with friends and in school, and her family invites a doctor with his family to the house to talk about her possible operation. She becomes involved with the doctor’s son sexually and everything goes downhill from there. It’s a strong plot that was well crafted and most of the beats I really appreciated.
The film is wonderfully ambiguous in its ending and somewhat sad, yet hopeful as it shows us that it ultimately doesn’t matter what happens with Alex and what gender she eventually ends up in. Society is obsessed with gender and putting people in the boxes way too much and I really liked the film’s wonderfully open-minded attitude in that regard.
However, not everything here is roses as is evidenced by a couple of very unpleasant sequences. The rape scene was not good at all and it was too graphic whereas the sex scene, though important, still felt overly graphic for me and overly aggressive. The movie doesn’t show full nudity, but still it was a bit tacky to portray teenagers in such a sexual manner. But, I still really appreciated in a way that scene which was so ambiguous whether it was rape or consensual and how different and unique of a situation it posed.
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The film is obsessed with sex and genitalia a bit too much and it seemed to me that it was made by a male director. Lucia Puenzo’s focus certainly is troublesome at times, though her direction is overall competent. I am just saying that a less sensational approach would have made the movie more timeless for sure.
Alex is a problematic character for me as well. Realistic, sure. But she is simply too unlikable at times and for a rare intersex protagonist in a movie, that bothered me. Her overly dominant and rapey behavior was also not good. I still appreciated her development, though I failed to empathize with her personally.
The movie very skillfully showcases two very different parents. Her mother wants a “real” daughter and wants to force her into operations whereas her father is very open-minded, supportive and overall a wonderful father figure for her. That’s also wonderfully explored with Alvaro whose father is so homophobic, cold and unapproachable. I liked that the movie was also about Alvaro and not just Alex and I really liked his ambiguous sexuality and sexual examination. That was all done in such a sophisticated manner.
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XXY is very well directed by Lucia Puenzo, though I failed to notice all that silent movie influences from her. The movie is silent at times, but it mostly featured quite a bit of dialogue which was strong and with a couple of wonderful, eye-opening conversations. The acting is definitely terrific across the board with Ines Efron delivering a stupendous performance in such a difficult role emotionally. She also fitted it like a glove with her interesting androgynous look. The pacing is terrific too as the movie is engaging throughout whereas the photography is also very nice.
XXY is unfortunately overly sensationalist in a couple of graphic, unsubtle sequences, but overall it’s an important movie about the rarely portrayed subject of intersex people which features a powerful, wonderful ending, terrific dialogue and a very strong performance from Ines Efron who was also so well cast with her interesting androgynous look. It features a highly important message about excessive obsession about gender in our society and the extreme importance of strong, appropriate parenting.
