Film

With the notable exception of Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex (which nods to Tiresias, the ancient Greek seer who was both male and female), very little fiction exists about intersex individuals—those born with the chromosomes and/or genitalia of both genders. Lucía Puenzo’s first film, a coming-of-age tale about Alex (Efron), an intersex 15-year-old referred to usually by female pronouns, is a noble addition to the genre, but becomes too hermetically sealed by its own social-outreach mission.

Puenzo, adapting the short story “Cinismo” by Sergio Bizzio, sets up overdetermined scenes: Alex’s father (Darín), a biologist, declares the sex of a sea creature at the film’s beginning, unnecessarily reminding us of science’s preference for simple binaries. Underscoring the either/or of medical discourse even further, a plastic-surgeon friend of Alex’s mother who’s been summoned to their home for a consultation is a bullying jerk. The plot itself, which spans just a few days, moves from one crisis to the next: Alex has exhilarating yet traumatic sex with Alvaro (Piroyansky), the doctor’s son, and is assaulted by three boys. Of course, nearly everyone’s adolescence, especially one as complicated as Alex’s, feels calamitous. And though Alex impresses with her determination to blur the male-female distinction, perhaps the most memorable image of her is peering up through the floorboards as the visitors arrive, both menacing and cowering.