Film Synopsis

For just about everybody, slipping past adolescence means having to confront a number of choices and life decisions, but rarely any as monumental as the one facing Alex (Ines Efron). Born a hermaphrodite, Alex has been raised as a girl, but the moment has come when a decision must be on the surgery that will define her future. Some family friends come to visit Alex’s family, bringing along their teenage son, Alvaro (Martin Piroyanski). Alex immediately feels some kind of attraction to the young man—adding yet another level of complexity to Alex’s personal search for identity. Debut director Lucía Puenzo handles such potentially explosive material with extraordinary grace and tact, probing past the sensational outward appearances to uncover the rich, emotional core of this story. Efron and Piroyanski both give brave, deeply touching performances, and Ricardo Darin is superb as Alex’s father, a man of logic and science trying to make sense of a situation for which reason offers few answers.