XXY

Lucia Puenzo's XXY examines the life of Alex (Inés Efron), a teenage inter-sex individual living as a girl. Her father (Néstor Kraken played by Ricardo Darin) is a marine biologist who makes a living examining and saving sea turtles caught accidentally by local fishermen. Their family has moved to a small coastal village in Uruguay, leaving behind the bigotry they were faced with in Buenos Aires. Alex is presented with the choice of having an operation to become either male or female and her parents leave her to make the decision on her own. Complicating things further, Kraken invites a plastic surgeon to come stay with them, hoping that he can perform the operation if Alex should want it, and Alex becomes sexually involved with their homosexual son, Álvaro (Martin Piroyansky). Álvaro's father (Ramiro played by German Palacios) is none to happy when he discovers that his son is gay; Kraken is none to happy when a village boy whom Alex befriends tells everyone her secret; Álvaro is none to happy when his father belittles him and he is rejected by Alex; and Alex is none to happy as the community turns her into a freak, once again.

At first, the villagers provide Kraken with injured turtles even though some see no point to his work and think he should accept their extinction. After Alex's secret is discovered, they kill his turtles, leaving only a shell behind. Here, Puenzo shows the cultural, professional, and personal challenges facing an ideological and understanding individual, i.e., a nice person. By trying to save an endangered species and protect a child who is different, he is labelled as different and tolerated. As he fights back against those who torture his daughter, the community fights back by suffocating his profession (the minority who attempts to recognize their rights is no longer tolerated). And since he is nice, the act of fighting back causes him personal turmoil. Alex's turmoil is more or less constant, occasionally letting up for brief, beautiful moments, before descending once again into the tumultuous psychological consequences of being an outcast. She tortures Álvaro like the community tortures her, Puenzo effectively highlighting why some of the most passionate racists are often from minority groups, for they understand the impoverished and brutally schizophrenic structure of disenfranchised Lacanian Reality, locked in glass booths, their ethical integrity shaking in an abandoned, empty shell (they had no other choice).

XXY deals with difficult subject matter and while some of its scenes drag on and seem unnecessary in relation to the development of the plot, by including them, Puenzo formally interrogates what it means to be necessary, that is, if we are expecting a plot to unfold in a specific way and abide by specific guidelines, we are placing plot development within a box, the same kind of box that is used to segregate people, and, therefore, hesitation should be employed when critiquing a specific scene for not 'going with the flow,' and the critic should find a way to position that scene within the plot's development, in the same way that a psychiatrist uses past events to analyze your present personality, if they are vilifying bigots for engaging in their bigotry.

XXY also reminded me how nice it is to see a film where many of the scenes lack emotion determining musical accompaniment.