The coast of Uruguay is, as has been noted elsewhere by this writer, a beautiful place. And to come there on holiday as a teenager, to swim in the sea, get lost amongst the pines, have bonfires on the beach, discover alcohol, fall in love... there can be few better places to do all these things, so I've been told. XXY is the story of two teenagers, exploring the world, falling for one another, as teenagers do. There's only one catch. One of them, Alex, is a hermaphrodite. Which confuses things somewhat for Alvaro, the other.
Lucia Puenzo's story is a tightly told tale, a variation on a Rohmer theme, with a significant twist. Like Rohmer's adolescent holiday movies, its success depends on the performance of the two leads, Ines Efron and Martin Piroyansky. Efron has an emaciated, baffled teenage anger. Not sure if she's a boy or a girl, the reality of her condition is heightened by Alvaro's appearance in her life. In XXY there's both the love story and the hermaphrodite story working concurrently, and Efron's performance has all the angst of an adolescent discovering both love and sex for the first time, coupled with her attempts to come to terms with the cards nature has dealt her. Piroyansky's nerdish performance matches his partner's. He's closed in, uncertain, thinks he looks like a fool but doesn't want to be one. A firelit scene with his vain father is both funny and touching, with the director resisting any temptation towards sentimentality.
This is one of the strongest features of Puenzo's unfussy direction. The sex scene which lies at the epicentre of the piece is discreetly shocking. It starts with the music of a radio playing, creating what seems like an appropriate atmosphere. But as it gets going, Alex switches the music off. There's no soundtrack for what happens next. First love is rarely like they show it in the movies, and XXY ensures that it won't add to the misguided mystique.
The subject matter of the film, as the title indicates, is freakish, in so far as (as the old fisherman notes, and the young lads also know) a hermaphrodite is a rare exception to the natural order of things. Puenzo's direction assiduously works against the freakishness of her material, grounding Alex's exceptionality in the everyday. Furthermore, it highlights the fact that, at the age when we are on the cusp of sex and love and all that jazz... we all feel like freaks; we all feel exceptional in the face of so much complexity.
Lucia Puenzo's story is a tightly told tale, a variation on a Rohmer theme, with a significant twist. Like Rohmer's adolescent holiday movies, its success depends on the performance of the two leads, Ines Efron and Martin Piroyansky. Efron has an emaciated, baffled teenage anger. Not sure if she's a boy or a girl, the reality of her condition is heightened by Alvaro's appearance in her life. In XXY there's both the love story and the hermaphrodite story working concurrently, and Efron's performance has all the angst of an adolescent discovering both love and sex for the first time, coupled with her attempts to come to terms with the cards nature has dealt her. Piroyansky's nerdish performance matches his partner's. He's closed in, uncertain, thinks he looks like a fool but doesn't want to be one. A firelit scene with his vain father is both funny and touching, with the director resisting any temptation towards sentimentality.
This is one of the strongest features of Puenzo's unfussy direction. The sex scene which lies at the epicentre of the piece is discreetly shocking. It starts with the music of a radio playing, creating what seems like an appropriate atmosphere. But as it gets going, Alex switches the music off. There's no soundtrack for what happens next. First love is rarely like they show it in the movies, and XXY ensures that it won't add to the misguided mystique.
The subject matter of the film, as the title indicates, is freakish, in so far as (as the old fisherman notes, and the young lads also know) a hermaphrodite is a rare exception to the natural order of things. Puenzo's direction assiduously works against the freakishness of her material, grounding Alex's exceptionality in the everyday. Furthermore, it highlights the fact that, at the age when we are on the cusp of sex and love and all that jazz... we all feel like freaks; we all feel exceptional in the face of so much complexity.
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