The film XXY premieres today in Brazil. The film became an article in the tenth edition of A Capa magazine. Read below.
Question of choices…
Love, passion, hermaphroditism and sexuality are the themes of the Argentinian film XXY, which premieres in Brazil in February
At the beginning of December, writer Santiago Nazarian published a post on his blog and, in a kind of parody of himself, adapted the short story “Terça-feira Gorda” by Caio Fernando Abreu. In the original version, two sweaty men merge their bodies and merge into one during a kiss at a carnival dance.
For the young writer from São Paulo, the result of mixing literature with his desire is more or less like this: “His look of censorship, of sarcasm – perhaps tenderness? – it dried the homeothermic sweat that I myself couldn’t… He was lizard, cold and smooth. Beautiful. I wondered if it was really a boy, if it was really a girl. When he said it, I still wasn't sure. Less sure of everything. You are welcome. Thanks. It didn't matter what he was, what I was, as long as I could be him in his arms. Him, in my arms. Nothing more."
Now forget Caio Fernando Abreu, Santiago Nazarian, sweaty men and all the rest. XXY only has to do with the line “I was wondering if it was really a boy, if it was really a girl”. I lie. The irrelevance of sex in the concept of desire described by Nazarian is also part of the film. It's like this: Alex or Alex. She's not exactly a girl. But she worries about taking medication to prevent her beard from growing. This does not mean, however, that he is a boy too.
Alex is what you might call a hermaphrodite. The letters XXY, which give the film its name, are also used to define Klinefelter syndrome. It's that thing about biology classes and chromosomes. Women are XX, men are XY. When a boy happens to be born with this syndrome, it means that they inherited an extra gene from their mother. In other words, they are XXY.
The well-directed story by Argentine director Lucia Puenzo takes place on a beach in Uruguay. Place where Alex’s parents moved to escape “a certain type of people from Buenos Aires”. These people tried to convince them to perform gender reassignment surgery on the child. Sensibly, they left this matter in their son's hands.
The film's plot revolves around Alex's dilemma in having to decide which of the two sexes he intends to adopt. If the difficulty in making such a choice were not enough, this is not the most opportune moment. Alex's mother, played by actress Valeria Bertuccelli, decides to take a doctor to their house accompanied by his wife and son. Specialist in plastic reconstructions, the doctor is interested in operating on the teenager.
Alex begins to take an interest in Alvaro, the doctor's son, and the interest in the case is more than reciprocal. Young people get involved, creating a strong bond of affection and love that is much more externalized through looks and lack of words. There are situations in which silence says everything. In XXY it's like this.
Much more than a film about a genetic anomaly, XXY is an engaging and emotional love story about the choices and discoveries of adolescence. Alex could be any of us. Or rather, he's like all of us, full of doubts and discoveries, especially in sexuality. As time passes, we discover that they are all irrelevant. Teenage things.
The film that already showed up in Brazil during the Rio de Janeiro Film Festival, at the 31st São Paulo International Film Festival and had its premiere during the MixBrasil festival, finally enters the alternative cinema circuit in February .
