Movie Review: XXY (2007)

Rating: A-/ Raw and heartfelt, XXY is a film about sex and gender identity that might be a little too weird for some people, but filmmaker Lucia Puenzo somehow makes a story with the utmost potential for awkwardness work and tells it in a very natural, unforced way. Fifteen-year-old Alex (Ines Efron) has a secret; she is intersexed, born with both male and female genitals (the more common term, but less tactful one, is ‘hermaphrodite’) and her parents (Ricardo Darin and Valeria Bertuccelli) have revolved their lives around keeping her gender identity a secret from the people in the small seaside Argentinean town in which they live.