ABSTRACT
Grounded on his clinical practice with gender nonconforming patients, Gozlan advances a reading of Puenzo’s XXY that underscores the film’s staging of ambiguity, liminality, and uncertainty as inherent tensions in the always unpredictable unfolding of gender identification. Gozlan’s essay draws a parallel between the audience’s and the analyst’s struggle with “the need to know,” and suggests that the film offers a compelling illustration of what it means to hold a space of waiting not saturated by fantasies of origin or anxiety over the future.
