I Just saw this new movie from the Argentinian cinema and found it deeply moving.
To me the idea of showing the inner struggle of an hermaphrodite with such a profound respect was a First. I never saw a movie treating this issue before --not at all in a Hollywood product!!-- and never so seriously and delicately.
Not only his/her struggle, but both his/hers parents. His/hers parents lived 15 years (the child's present age as shown in the movie) of sheer torment. What could they do about the problem? Where could they go to talk about it without raising eyebrows? - the world can be terribly cruel with anyone "different".
I remember only one scene with an albino hermaphrodite in a frontal nude scene in a Fellini movie -"Satyricon"- But there, it was used only as shock value. A freak case. Not here! This is a very humane movie, very tender in it's treatment of a very delicate problem (Could it be because the director is a woman?).
*SPOILERS AHEAD*
And the beautiful, truly beautiful ending! in the past a character like this one was always killed at the end: It drowned, it fell in an abyss. It perished, no matter how. It did not have the right to live.
It seems that now we have grown to be more mature somehow; in this movie, not only the hermaphrodite refuses to be operated on, to become either a man or a woman, NO! she decides to remain what she is: A naturally born human being with BOTH SEXES. And really...Why not?? Great film! great, GREAT film!
*END OF SPOILERS*
Technically though, I found a couple of faults: Although my mother tongue is Spanish, after a while I had to put the subtitles on, since almost all the actors (Mainly Ricardo Darin -the father of the hermaphrodite) go through the movie mumbling their words, sort of like Marlon Brando used to do thanks to the Actor's Studio's Method, and I was missing part of the dialogue (My hearing is excellent, but the straining wasn't worth it, and I was using headphones!); also they talked in extremely low voices, so, since the sea rumble or the rain noise are on most of the time as background sound (They are on location in an Uruguayan beach town), they drowned the actors voices most of the time.
I imagine the director wanted to give the feeling of casual, nonchalant conversation, fine, but you can come up with a more efficient sound quality employing other ways, not as it was done in this movie (Maybe they didn't have enough budget, or the sound wasn't top drawer, I don't know).
The other fault was the length of some scenes..., it looked like one of those old 60s movies from Sweden, where the actors were shown on profile, looking to the right into the horizon for two full minutes without speaking a word or moving at all.
But these two faults are minor really. This film makes you think about the very wrong and terribly unjust ways of contemporary society when looking at minorities. Excellent all actors and a superb director.
