XXY

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Available Summary:

The difficulties of adolescence are particularly strong for the 15-year-old Alex, who was born an intersex child. As Alex begins to explore her sexuality, her mother invites friends from Buenos Aires to come for a visit at their house, with their 16-year-old son in tow…

-MUBI.

Jack's Review:

This film includes confronting themes, such as animal abuse, slurs, objectification, anti-intersex bigotry, non-consensual surgeries, genital mutilation, and the sexual harassment and assault of underage characters.

XXY is primarily about an intersex teenager named Alex. While Alex is generally referred to with she/her/hers pronouns and as a girl, Alex's gender is less clear to me. Alex's mother certainly wants her child to be a girl and to be female, to the point that she organises a surgical consultation without Alex's knowledge or consent. Alex's father, on the other hand, increasingly views Alex as his son. Alex's only direct statement about gender or sex is rejecting a binary choice, indicating that Alex is in a period of self-discovery and is escaping everyone else's gendered expectations.

An intersex trans man named Juan Scherer has a brief role in this film, which is why I am reviewing it.

About The Title...

From what I understand, this film is a glaringly flawed representation of the XXY genetic variation, commonly called Klinefelter Syndrome. Alex has both a penis and a vulva, which is not at all typical of people with the XXY variation, most of whom only get diagnosed after experiencing tiredness, infertility, reduced testosterone, sexual struggles, reduced body and facial hair, etc. People with the XXY variation, predominantly cis men, are typically prescribed testosterone to reduce symptoms and increase bone density. Alex, by contrast, is prescribed corticosteroids to suppress testosterone levels. Viewers are led to understand that, without any medical intervention, Alex would grow a beard and become very masculine, as though an excess of testosterone is the main manifestation of Alex's sex variation.

If you are a person with the XXY variation, proceed with caution. You may feel misrepresented by this movie and consider it irresponsibly titled. You might feel more represented by this interview.

Back To The Film...

Néstor and Suli, Alex's father and mother respectively, begin the film by inviting family friends to stay with them. These family friends consist of Ramiro (a surgeon), his wife Erika, and his son Álvaro. In truth, Suli contacted the family because she wants Ramiro to operate on Alex's genitals to make Alex stereotypically female.

Erika is surprised to learn that Suli has not told Néstor about the true purpose of the visit. The idea that Alex should have initiated this consultation, or even be informed of it, is given far less weight. From the very beginning of this film, what is prioritised is the perspective that Alex's functioning body, which poses no threat to life or physical health, is a problem which needs to be fixed.

When Alex joins family and visitors for a meal, it is hard to miss the power dynamics at play. Ramiro is thinking about Alex's genitals and body. Alex just thinks this is a normal environment, and is unaware of being so intimately considered while kissing Ramiro's cheek in greeting.

That night, lying in bed next to his wife, Ramiro looks at an obstetric ultrasound while he sketches diagrams of genitals. His most urgent question, directed at his wife, is when Néstor will be told about the surgery consultation... not when, or even if, Alex will be told. The consent of the intersex teenager who would be operated on isn't even an afterthought. It's irrelevant.

When Ramiro sees Alex next, it is when Alex walks into the kitchen as he is chopping up food. The camera pans up Alex's body, lingering in a way which serves to emphasise how closely Ramiro is needlessly considering Alex's body. This shot, and the bizarre, messy way that Alex drinks milk, has disturbingly erotic overtones. Nobody in this film is objectified quite like Alex is.

Alex, who has been prescribed corticosteroids to lower testosterone levels, chooses to stop taking the pills. This, too, is something that Suli takes issue with. When Alex exists in an intersex body and allows bodily diversity to exist, that is a problem. When Alex tells a close friend about being intersex, and is harshly judged, that is Alex's fault. Suli is actively hostile toward her child's very existence.

When Suli struggles to reveal her true intentions to Néstor, Ramiro offers to help, suggesting that he "explain what we'd do to her". He later asks Suli about the medical decisions Alex is making (stopping corticosteroids), ominously informing Suli and Erika that (gasp) Alex might become... masculine...! Erika, standing with her hand pressed against her sternum as if in shock, chides her husband for saying these oh-so-terrible things. We have to mind Suli's delicate constitution, after all. That's what really matters here.

Speaking to Álvaro, Alex asks about the surgeries Ramiro performs, curious whether Álvaro has ever been in the operating room "to see the butchering". Álvaro insists that his father does not butcher people, but rather, he "fixes" what Álvaro describes as "deformities". The example he gives is people born with an extra finger, saying, "my dad takes off the extra one". The metaphor is not particularly subtle.

When it comes to Álvaro, one of the first things Alex does is ask him whether he wants to have sex, which he does not. Later in the film, Alex asks a second time, and Álvaro again says that he does not want to have sex. Not knowing that Alex is intersex, but having noticed that people treat Alex oddly, Álvaro asks what is "wrong" with Alex. This, understandably, is very upsetting for the younger teenager. Alex runs home. Regretting his words, Álvaro follows. When Alex starts to kiss him, he is initially reluctant, but soon reciprocates.

Álvaro is surprised and confused when Alex rolls him over onto his front, and he is suddenly anally penetrated without any emotional or physical preparation, let alone permission. When he reaches back to stop Alex, his hand is held down. Alex seems to be completely apathetic toward Álvaro's needs or feelings, let alone any physical pain he is experiencing. Alex only stops after noticing that Néstor has happened across the teenagers, and is watching them.

Álvaro runs into the wilderness alone, staggering to a halt and beginning to cry. Continuing to sob, he masturbates, evidently overwhelmed by frightening and conflicting feelings.

I take no issue with exploration of different sexual roles and dynamics. What I do take issue with, regardless of the body parts or positions involved, is a lack of consent or indifference to consent. Without a doubt, Alex is indifferent to Álvaro's consent, and this attitude reframes Alex's earlier insistence that Álvaro agree to intimacy, making persistence look like predatory determination. I struggle to feel sorry for Alex when the teenager is shown crying after being caught by Néstor, when my main question is this... Was Álvaro relieved that Néstor appeared, because otherwise Alex would not stop? Did Néstor inadvertently save Álvaro from an assault?

Alex is later shown standing in front of a mirror, nude. The lingering scene would surely invoke sympathy and compassion in me, because the plight of an unsupported intersex teenager is heartbreaking, but the implications of Alex's actions cannot disappear from my mind so easily. And, by now, this film is starting to feel like little more than a parade of scenes where Alex's nude body is exposed for the viewer's... enjoyment? Judgement? Scrutiny? Take your pick.

Álvaro, who stumbles inside shirtless and saturated from the pouring rain, joins the adults for dinner and appears anxious. He feels like he is keeping a secret, afraid of what Néstor might say or do, all because of what was done to him without his consent. This is a dynamic that I find particularly awful.

Thankfully, Néstor (unlike Suli) is an adult who respects the boundaries of young people, and his values are strong enough that he pushes past any awkwardness he feels toward the boy. When Álvaro is pressured to drink alcohol by Ramiro, Néstor speaks up, saying, "Don't drink if you don't want to," adding, "It is a big deal. I can't stand bullying," as Suli tries to diffuse the situation. Álvaro, who had been afraid that Néstor would confront or punish him, seems confused that Néstor is the one to defend him over dinner.

Returning to Alex, who is sleeping over at a friend's house, the film continues to approach consent in a repugnant way. Roberta, Alex's friend, reveals that she has had sex with her cousin five times. "I didn't want to, at first," she says while smiling, "I didn't like it." She then reveals that her cousin coerced her into sex and went further than she had expected. She and Alex laugh about this before Roberta's father enters the room.

I dislike how this film handles consent, especially because there is a violent rape which occurs later in the movie. What Roberta describes is also rape, and what Álvaro went through was rape as well... but you wouldn't know it from how differently the final violation is portrayed, compared to Álvaro and Roberta's experiences. The implication of this framing, intended or not, is that sex must be violent in order to be rape. Reading reviews of this film, I'm shocked by how many commentators disregard the fact that Alex did not care whether Álvaro was consenting or not. It was filmed romantically, so it must have been romantic... right?

Néstor tells Suli that he saw Alex and Álvaro having sex, and reveals to her that Alex was penetrating Álvaro. "It was bound to happen," he says, "We knew this would happen. She can't stay a woman." He, unlike Suli, is coming to accept that his child has a unique body and wishes to use it, and he does not want to force Alex into irreversible surgery.

He, a parent who has far more insight into Alex than Suli does, also senses that Alex's gender identity is perhaps more complex than the female role Alex was raised in. The way that he explains this to Suli is, "She'll never be a woman, even if a surgeon cuts off what she doesn't need." The phrasing here is not great, unless we assume Néstor to be derisively using the language that his wife uses, to criticise Suli's narrow expectations of what Alex should need and want. After all, what genitals does Alex need, beyond the genitals that Alex has? The functioning genitals that Alex was born with and enjoys using?

Néstor takes a drive. He stops at a petrol station, where the attendant cleans his windscreen. The man becomes uncomfortable after a while, because Néstor is staring intensely at him. Then, he notices the newspaper on Néstor's dashboard, with the headline reading, "At 18, Scherer Starts the Journey From Woman to Man". Alarmed, Juan Scherer asks, "What do you want? Are you a doctor? A journalist?" Néstor denies this, and helplessly says, "I have a daughter..." He pauses, and then says, "A son..." He cannot bring himself to clarify further, but Juan understands.

Juan, an intersex trans man who is married and has an adopted son, was born with atypical genitalia. When he was born, doctors mutilated his functioning anatomy to make him stereotypically female. Juan was raised as a girl, but as he grew up, realised he had been forced into a life which did not fit him, and eventually transitioned to male. Knowing Juan's story, Néstor sought him out for advice.

Juan, hearing that Alex is fifteen, offers to show Néstor photographs of himself as a teenager. As Néstor looks between the photo of a feminine child and the masculine man sitting before him, Juan says, "Keep it. Give it to Alex." He is giving a piece of himself, his history, to Néstor, in case Alex might want to know about the journeys of other intersex people. Despite fearing for his privacy, worrying about journalists and doctors tracking him down, he is generous with Néstor.

"I still wonder how my life would've been without the operation," Juan says, referring to the multi-stage surgery performed on him without consent. As soon as he could make decisions for himself, he took steps to regain control over his sex and gender; "When I was sixteen, I started taking testosterone. At seventeen, I had surgery. That same year, I changed my name. I met my wife six months later." Nodding toward the bedroom where his wife and son are sleeping, he says with a smile, "The rest of my life is sleeping in that bed."

Néstor asks, "What if I got it all wrong?" Stunned, Juan asks, "By letting her choose?" When Néstor nods, Juan says, "Do you know what my earliest memories are? Medical examinations. I thought I was so horrible that, when I was born, I had to have five operations before my first birthday. That's what they call "normalisation". It's not surgery. It's castration. Making her afraid of her own body is the worst thing you can do to your child."

Juan's role in this film, while brief, is incredibly consequential, and I am very glad that the filmmakers included an older intersex person who has found happiness despite the abuse he endured.

Returning to Alex, viewers are treated to yet another lingering, gratuitous shot of the teenager's bare chest as Alex showers. When Roberta enters the shower too, it is hard to ignore the fact that Roberta's breasts are not shown to the viewer. The camera treats Alex entirely differently, not affording an intersex body the same politeness extended to a body which fits the medical and social norms of the female sex.

In a quiet, tender scene, Alex sits beside Néstor. For a long while, the pair do not speak. Eventually, Alex asks why Néstor did not reveal the true purpose of Ramiro's visit, and believes Néstor when he replies, "I didn't know."

For the first time since the pair had sex, Álvaro meets with Alex, who initially runs away when he approaches. He asks clumsy questions about Alex's sex and sexuality, conflating the two, his words ignorant but not malicious.

In a moment which, by my reckoning, is incredibly damning, Alex says, "Sorry about what I did to you." Alex is aware, and has been all along, that Álvaro's consent was not considered when the pair had sex. This apology betrays an awareness that what happened was wrong. The fact that Álvaro responds by saying he enjoyed the sex and wants to do it again does not make Alex's actions any better, because his enjoyment and consent was considered irrelevant when it mattered.

Is this teenage boy aware that physical pleasure can occur during rape, and that doesn't stop it being an act of non-consensual sex? Are reviewers of this film aware of that? Not enough of them, evidently.

At this point, a metaphor which has been building throughout the film comes to a terrible conclusion.

Néstor is a marine biologist who works to save turtles and other animals which have been injured by fishermen. He was previously shown tending to the wounds of a turtle whose flipper had been amputated, with dialogue reinforcing the not-so-subtle allegory for the violation and mutilation of intersex bodies. Among the fishermen are Vando and his father. Vando, who used to be Alex's best friend, panicked when Alex told him about being intersex, which ended their friendship. Unfortunately, Vando's father found out as well. While Vando is portrayed as a regretful young man who wishes he had reacted better, his father is vicious and openly disgusted by Alex.

Suli, Alex's mother, notices the body parts of dead turtles on the beach and sees a boat off in the distance, ominously foreshadowing what is about to happen. Vando, panicked, rides his bike up to the family's house, demanding to know where Alex is. Néstor, angry about the turtles, tells Vando to go away, not realising that Vando knows something terrible is about to happen.

Alex, walking down the beach, is attacked by four fishermen, who express disgust and fetishistic enjoyment when they see Alex's genitalia. This time, the act of rape is not romanticised. It is violent and it is horrible. Vando finally finds the group and interrupts, protecting Alex even though he was too late to prevent what happened.

Alex, back at home, conceals the extent of the attack from Néstor and Suli, refusing to discuss the sexual violence and not wanting to go to hospital. Néstor threatens the fishermen in retaliation, furious and desperate to protect Alex from further attacks. Ramiro intervenes, trying to hold Néstor back, at which point Néstor strikes him and says, "You're just like them. Worse. Stay away from my son."

In a scene with symbology which is a little too direct to be elegant, Suli is shown chopping a carrot in the kitchen. She accidentally cuts her finger. Erika presses a paper towel to Suli's bleeding finger and says, "Just agree to the surgery. It's not too late. You can't hide her for the rest of her life." Suli, finally, shows a little bit of backbone and prioritises respect for her child over her own personal insecurities, criticising Erika for viewing Alex as a freak.

Alex, lying in bed with Suli, upends a bottle of pills and sends them spilling onto the floor. "I've had enough," Alex says, "Enough pills, enough operations, enough changing schools. I want things to stay the same." Suli, the primary source of long-term shame and pressure in Alex's life, manages to keep quiet and refrain from pressuring Alex further.

Disappointing that it took a violent assault to make her more open-minded and respectful of Alex's autonomy, but there you go.

Néstor, after driving off without Ramiro, picks him up again. They drive in silence for a while, and then Néstor speaks about Alex's birth, discussing how dehumanised his child was from the very beginning, and how doctors immediately wanted to amputate Alex's genitalia. "Suli was scared. I convinced her not to do anything. She was perfect. From the moment I set eyes on her. Perfect."

Ramiro, witnessing Néstor's powerful love for Alex, does not react by reflecting on his own relationships and realising how much love he lacks. In fact, that night, he calmly tells Álvaro that he does not respect, like, or appreciate him, and that he believes Álvaro will never amount to anything. He asks whether Álvaro likes Alex and, when Álvaro shakes his head in false denial, coldly says, "Finally, some good news. I was afraid you were a fag."

In the next scene, with the contrast in parenting very apparent, Néstor is sitting by Alex's bedside. Alex wakes up and asks, "What are you doing?" Néstor replies, "Looking after you." Alex rightly points out, "You can't look after me forever." Néstor, agreeing, says, "Until you can choose... Whatever you want." By this, he means that he will make sure nobody, Suli included, pressures Alex into surgeries or hormone treatments before Alex is ready to choose whether to live as a male or a female. Alex thinks about this and wonders aloud, "What if there isn't a decision to make?" This is, apparently, the first time that a conversation has ever been had about just allowing Alex to exist with an intersex body.

Néstor, displaying further respect for Alex's autonomy, says that he has not yet gone to the police. He will support Alex in reporting the assault, but opening an investigation has to be Alex's decision. His only concern is that Alex risks being hurt even more if the assault is reported, because everybody will find out. "Let them," Alex decides.

In the final scene, Álvaro and Alex both confess to each other. When Álvaro tries to kiss Alex, however, he is unsurprisingly pushed away. Alex, still reeling from the assault, asks, "What do you regret the most? That you won't see me again, or that you haven't seen it?" Álvaro does not answer. Alex asks, "Do you want to see it?" Again, Álvaro does not answer, but he does look down when Alex's waistband is lowered. He cannot restrain his curiosity. Alex takes this as confirmation that Álvaro was ultimately motivated by the same dehumanising interest as the fishermen.

In the end, Álvaro is hauled away by his cruel father. By contrast, Néstor pulls Alex close to him, and the three family members walk away together.

In Summary...

I dislike the way sexual abuse is depicted and discussed in this film. I dislike the implication that rape is only rape when it is accompanied by physical violence, as if coercion and disregard of consent is not also rape. I dislike the fact that Alex undeniably did assault Álvaro, but there is no room for that to be acknowledged by the end, because we have watched Alex be violated so horribly and can only view Alex as a victim. In truth, Alex is a victim of sexual violence, and also a perpetrator of it.

Does this film offer worthwhile insights about intersex autonomy and human rights? Yes, absolutely. Did I enjoy Juan Scherer? Sure. Does this film depict the XXY variation accurately? From what I understand, absolutely not. Does it handle sexual assault poorly? You bet.

For me personally, the negatives far outweigh the positives. You are free, as always, to make up your own mind.