XXY
Grade: B+

Even by queer cinema standards, transgendered themes still represent a new frontier for filmmakers. Fortunately the inevitability of controversy hasn’t stopped directors from making a handful of intelligent and memorable films like Ma Vie En Rose, Boys Don’t Cry and Transamerica.
Argentinean writer and director Lucía Puenzo is the latest to try her hand at gender-bending material. Her film XXY – winner of the Critics Week Grand Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival – shows three times at the 31st Portland International Film Festival.
Though it’s not a flat-out triumph, XXY is extremely gutsy, well-acted and frequently touching. Puenzo unflinchingly addresses gay and transgendered themes, and it’s hard to imagine that any member of the queer community will leave the theater unmoved.
That said, the film has a few pronounced drawbacks. Apart from a few charming and lighthearted moments, the tone feels excessively dour and, at times, a bit suffocating. In addition, some of the symbolism is heavy-handed to the point of being unintentionally hilarious. In a film that raises the topic of castration, it’s just too much to watch someone chop up a carrot.
The plot centers on a teenage hermaphrodite named Alex, brilliantly played by young actress Inés Efron. Alex grew up as a boy, but as a teenager he becomes a social outcast when he develops female sexual characteristics. Alex’s perplexed but sympathetic parents move to an isolated island off the coast of Uruguay. The film opens as family friends from Buenos Aires arrive to visit.
After a slow, the story kicks into high gear as Alex develops a relationship with Alvaro, the introverted teenage son of the visiting family. Sparks fly, leading to a truly eyebrow-raising roll in the hay in which Alvaro – who is clearly questioning his sexuality – ends up on the receiving end of an anal interchange that makes the tent scene from Brokeback Mountain look like child’s play.
Filmed in a palette of grays and steely blues, XXY exudes so much melancholy that we know there’s not happy ending in store. The developments in the second half of the film are realistic but they’re downers nonetheless, as Alex faces ostracism and violence from her peers and Alvaro discovers that his father has little room in his heart for a gay son.
But don’t pop a Prozac just yet. Despite all the bleakness XXY emerges as a hopeful and life-affirming portrait of a family that loves Alex regardless of which gender he decides to embrace.

Screens on February 13 and 15 at 6:15 p.m. & Feb. 17 at 7:45 p.m. All screenings at Regal Broadway Cinemas.