XXY (2008)

INES EFRON

Alex (Inés Efron), the outcast heroine of this somber tale from Argentina, is a 15-year-old hermaphrodite who identifies as a girl, and she is treated — by her stressed-out parents, and by the film — as such a fragile china doll of erotic confusion that it's a little hard to connect with her; the movie is a liberal plea without liberation. It's set at a beach house, but we see only gray skies, and though Efron has a wary and cutting intelligence (it matches that of the fine actor Ricardo Darin, who plays her father), the effect is tepid and damp. C