Film

At 15, Alex (Efron) faces the all-too-real day-to-day difficulties of someone whose gender identity doesn’t fit the easy labels. Though she has been raised as a girl, Alex was born with male and female genitalia. She’s been taking hormones to suppress male gender characteristics, but her parents (Darín, Bertuccelli) have chosen to put off the surgery that would remove her penis. Alex is, reasonably enough, angry at the world and confused about what to do now that she is going through puberty.

Alex’s identity crisis goes into overdrive with the arrival of her mother’s old friend (Peleritti), her plastic surgeon husband (Palacios) and their teenage son Alvaro (Piroyanski). Mom wants the doctor to settle Alex’s gender once and for all, but Alex isn’t so sure. Things are complicated by her attraction to Alvaro, an attraction he hesitantly returns. Does this make Alex a boy with a vagina rather than a girl with a penis? Or are both those labels simply inadequate? The questions spread like ripples, affecting everyone in this delicate drama. To her credit, Puenzo allows us to imagine, if only from outside, what life must be like for someone who doesn’t fit society’s tidy categories.