Ines Efron, Martin Piroyansky, Ricardo Darin
Director: Lucia Puenzo
Films about adolescents coming to terms with their sexuality are commonplace these days, but Lucia Puenzo's directorial debut has a twist: her 15-year-old protagonist, Alex (Ines Efron, below left), is born with both male and female genitalia due to the existence of two X and one Y chromosomes.
Rather than letting the story play out as a high-octane melodrama - and the option certainly exists, with her father Kraken (Ricardo Darin) insisting that Alex choose her life, and her mother Suli (Valeria Bertuccelli) bringing in surgeon friend Ramiro (German Palacios) to prepare her child for castration - Puenzo opts for a natural, muted approach to the story, with the focus more on how each of the characters grapple internally with the crisis at hand.
The story unfolds in the coastal hinterlands of Uruguay, where Kraken, a marine biologist, moves his family to protect Alex from prying eyes and the pressure to conform. Things begin to go wrong, however, as Alex - who secretly favours life as a boy - resists attempts to 'normalise' her by refusing medication which suppresses male hormones. Ramiro's arrival at the house only aggravates the situation, as does Alex's feelings towards Ramiro's son, Alvaro (Martin Piroyansky) - who's not very sure about his own sexuality, either.
Puenzo proves to be a masterful storyteller as she allows the plot to steadily evolve using only the sporadic highly strung episodes (such as the tense dinner between the two couples, or the rough sexual encounter between Alex and Alvaro) amid melancholic sequences which mirror the helplessness of everyone concerned. Brilliant performances by Efron, Darin and Piroyansky help in the film's success.