XXY.

I grew up in the era of the term "hermaphrodite," which I now learn - via Lucía Puenzo's mostly fascinating and deeply-felt movie XXY - is politically incorrect. The term used should be "intersex." Until I was well into adulthood, I thought that hermaphrodites were more legendary than real. My movie experience of them came mostly from crass, sleazy and enormously entertaining films like Larry Cohen's God Told Me To. (Aren't most of Larry Cohen films crass, sleazy and enormously entertaining?)

Puenzo's XXY is something else. It begins in media res, and, in fact, ends there, too. But, oh, in the middle of the middle, what people, events and feelings do we meet, witness and experience! Puenzo is simply terrific at guiding us into her characters' emotional states - even though we don't always know what is causing these states. But because this writer/director puts us so quickly and deeply into the feelings of her people, it is difficult not to respond with empathy, as we slowly learn what is going on, and why.

Updated through 5/4.

XXY is a co-production of Argentina, Spain and France. Set in a quiet Uruguayan coastal town where some locals fish while others try to halt illegal fishing, the movie involves two "outsider" families, as well as some of these locals. The late-adolescent children of the "townies" and outsiders are the main characters, and the central dilemma of the film involves one of the kids. The reaction of the others to her dilemma provokes what minimal action occurs over the very few days that the movie encompasses. Even so, XXY rivets.

In the central role of the young girl, Alex, Inés Efron is splendid - angry, impatient, alternately pleading then pushing away - and she is ably abetted by two fine young actors, Luciano Nobile and especially Martin Piroyansky as Alvaro. The adults are peripheral, but being adults, they do control things to a large extent, and their own needs and wavering feelings make for some rich, if frustrating, moments. Of the fine quartet of adult actors, Ricardo Darín (Nine Queens, Son of the Bride, The Aura) is the best-known on these shores, and he does a fine job portraying Alex's confident, sad and infinitely caring dad. Her less confident but equally caring mom is given all the right mood swings by Valeria Bertucelli, while Carolina Pelleritti and Germán Palacios play the other set of parents whose son has his own problems - which are suddenly front and center due to his proximity to Alex.

God knows, adolescence is difficult enough when the players are relatively "normal." The real beauty of Puenzo's film is that she and her cast make this hugely fraught situation seem so real and immediate that we get inside the mind and heart (and sometimes other organs) of all the characters. And so, in its way, this strange situation becomes, if not normal, something that I suspect you will still want to experience as fully as possible. Thanks to Ms Puenzo and XXY, you've got the chance. Thanks, too, to a distributor with remarkably consistent and catholic tastes, Film Movement, for distributing this tricky but important movie.

For a much lighter, brighter - and phantasmagorical - look at intersex (wouldn't "intergender" be a more appropriate name?), I would also recommend Martin Curland's delightful Zerophilia.

- James Van Maanen

"An intimate, atmospheric character study with a lingering erotic charge, Lucía Puenzo's XXY is one of the year's most impressive directing debuts," writes Andrew O'Hehir in Salon. "I was afraid that XXY might be one of those dogmatic, confrontational lecture-demonstrations in the mode of late-80s 'queer cinema.' Instead, it's a nifty little Gothic fable of loneliness that would be plenty compelling even if young Alex (Inés Efron) knew what sex s/he was."

"Adolescence - and the budding of sexual desire - is the true subject of XXY, as much as what it's like to be intersex," writes Steve Erickson in Gay City News. "In fact, the two themes are tightly woven together. It suggests that there's something positive about teenagers' unformed identities and openness to experimentation. In fact, it goes on to imply that intersex people may be freer than the rest of us, with a range of choice denied by our bodies."

"If XXY is imagistically too programmatic (a scene of carrots being sliced is typical of its Freudian heavy-handedness) and devoid of humor, it never seems pruriently exploitative," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "It sustains an unsettling mood of ambiguity that lingers long after the final credits."

Puenzo's "intention in making XXY, to humanely depict a character who might in other films or literature be relegated to oddball supporting status, is undoubtedly noble," writes Michael Koresky at indieWIRE. "Yet by focusing almost exclusively on Alex's differences (she was born with both female and male genitalia), rather than offering other facets of her life for consideration, the film slightly shortchanges what could have been a beautifully full portrait of a teenager going through radical inner and outer turmoil."

"It takes a controlling hand to chisel something more contoured than monotony out of this dense angst, and director Lucía Puenzo doesn't have it, though Inés Efron, as Alex, gives a committed centerpiece performance with a nice, slightly lupine grin," writes Nick Pinkerton in the Voice.

"XXY could have been longer (XXL?) or more explicit (XXX-Y?), but no surgery is required to render it any more touching, defiant or true," writes Ryan Gilbey in the New Statesman.

For Andrew Sarris, writing in the New York Observer, XXY is "primarily an emotional confrontation between parents and children. The interaction of the two generations is occasionally rambunctious and tumultuous, but singularly without malice."

"The subject matter may be unusual, but it sets in motion a series of all-too-familiar coming-of-age themes such as teenage angst, conflicted parents, and peer pressure," writes Martin Tsai in the New York Sun.

Earlier: Reviews from Cannes and Toronto.

Update, 5/4: Alexandra Godfrey talks with Puenzo for Screengrab.

Posted by dwhudson at May 2, 2008 2:06 PM