The problem with many advocacy documentaries is that not enough filmmakers ask themselves, “Does this need to be a movie?” The result is a number of well-meaning but inconsequential films whose messages would be just as well served by a TV special or an article.
Intersexion is the umpteenth example this year alone of a documentary that’s as noble as it is dull. Grant Lahood’s film follows Mani Bruce Mitchell, New Zealand’s first out intersex person. Mitchell goes around the western world meeting other people of “the third sex,” born with genitals that don’t fit neatly into the male/female gender divide.
The subjects talk about their difficulties, as many go through childhoods filled with invasive surgeries that try to make them conform to one gender or another. Some members speak of how their insecurity made them easy targets for sexual predators, or how having hormones pumped into them gave them a lifetime’s worth of health problems. Others speak of how they learned that they were initially raised as one gender, only to be switched at a young age. A happy few were lucky enough to have parents who accepted them for who they were.
Is it an interesting topic? Sure. Are the plights of intersex people moving? Absolutely. That the subjects found a support system in each other or in accepting partners is heartening, and that some of the luckier ones have a sense of humor about their situation makes some of the painful moments more palatable.
The only problem is that Intersexion isn’t actually much of a film. The film states its message of acceptance very quickly, only to repeat it over and over again. Lahood and Mitchell haven’t conceived any sort of grand architecture other than “get a bunch of people to talk about their experiences.” It makes for a lumpy, often repetitive viewing, which isn’t helped by the overreliance on visually inert talking-head interviews.
The interviews in Intersexion might make for an effective multimedia project or website. Right now, they’re just part of another documentary that doesn’t play to the advantages of its medium.
Photo courtesy of Tula Goenka.
