I confess that what most caught my attention about the film was to know that it won the prize of critics week at Cannes Film Festival and this was my great motivation. Less or nothing I knew about the plot, I only knew what was necessary, a hermaphrodite girl trough her puberty and physical problems.
But even with the controversy that a topic like this could generate or the different ways in which we can tackle this problem, I found myself in front of a movie that only uses this fact like a pretext for telling a story much more deep and universal: the parent-child relationship. So even that the film is moving in dangerous and turbulent waters it maintains by two main characters played by Darin and Palacios.
So while the movie shows the tribulations of a young woman seen as a freak and the sexual doubts of a "normal" teenager, the real tension focuses on the relationship of the parents which are the two faces of a same coin. So while a parent tries to understand and help her daughter to choose an operation, the other one despises his "healthy" son for believing him something useless (the campfire scene is really excellent).
Unfortunately, even when the movie gets anthology moments the lack of a decisive action to deepen squarely on the discrimination issue and hatred to everything that we think different from normal (like sometime Boys don't cry made it), so the director Lucia Puenzo never takes risks to go beyond of a politically correct film (even with their "violations") where the fable's end is just a closer look to the differences in a general way. For this reasons, the film is only good intentions even when everything else is almost perfect.
But even with the controversy that a topic like this could generate or the different ways in which we can tackle this problem, I found myself in front of a movie that only uses this fact like a pretext for telling a story much more deep and universal: the parent-child relationship. So even that the film is moving in dangerous and turbulent waters it maintains by two main characters played by Darin and Palacios.
So while the movie shows the tribulations of a young woman seen as a freak and the sexual doubts of a "normal" teenager, the real tension focuses on the relationship of the parents which are the two faces of a same coin. So while a parent tries to understand and help her daughter to choose an operation, the other one despises his "healthy" son for believing him something useless (the campfire scene is really excellent).
Unfortunately, even when the movie gets anthology moments the lack of a decisive action to deepen squarely on the discrimination issue and hatred to everything that we think different from normal (like sometime Boys don't cry made it), so the director Lucia Puenzo never takes risks to go beyond of a politically correct film (even with their "violations") where the fable's end is just a closer look to the differences in a general way. For this reasons, the film is only good intentions even when everything else is almost perfect.