Léalo en español
A child’s view of her own gender comes increasingly in conflict with the way her family sees her, until things boil over one summer in the glorious Basque countryside in Spain. Making her feature film debut after several shorts and a long documentary, Estibollz Urresolo Sologuren chooses a measured, naturalistic style to explore the pressing need of eight-year-old Cocó (the remarkable Sofia Otero) to make the people in her world recognize her as the girl she feels herself to be.
Steering away from exaggerated drama and concentrating most of the scenes on the little girl and her mother Ane (emerging Spanish actress Patricia Lopez Arnalz), 20,000 Species of Bees (20.000 especies de abejas) opens audiences up to a new understanding of trans kids, especially the idea that it is not the child who needs to transition, it’s the family and society who need to change their perceptions. By showing this as a process of growth, albeit one fraught with emotional obstacles, Urresolo Sologuren adds something new to the discourse, while young Otero’s entrancing debut holds the attention even without major dramatic quakes. It raises the bar for trans stories and its bow in Berlin’s main competition should be followed by a full festival and art house life.
Unlike Lukas Dhont’s widely hailed Belgian film Close, which exhibits similar sensitivity in dealing with young people’s sexual identity in the face of social prejudice, 20,000 Species of Bees chooses to focus on a single individual whose precocious gender sensibility creates unease in her extended family. The film’s title ties in with the social roles which appear rigid and fixed in nature, but which are much more fluid in human society. When Cocó regales her beekeeping aunt with her imaginative interpretation of life in a beehive, she equates herself with the queen bee. It is one of many moments when her gender identity emerges naturally, without censorship. And it startles her aunt.
Cocó’s birth name is the masculine Aitor, though she dreams of being called Lucia, like the saintly martyr who was tortured rather than renounce her faith. The saint’s story, briefly recounted by her religious grandmother, obviously makes a big impression on her. Cocó has an iron will and no intention of conforming to social expectations, though she remains conflicted about showing her male body in public, particularly in a swimming pool scene in the girls’ changing room. Later, the same conflict reappears when she wants to wear a dress to a formal family event. The liberal attitude of her mother and her unmarried aunt and beekeeper Lourdes (Ane Gabarain), who gradually learn to understand her and respect her wishes, opens up a tense dialogue with those family members who resist revamping their opinion about her gender.
This is the basic conflict in the film, and if it seems like too little, the screenplay and the acting make us care about the outcome deeply. Though the swimming pool proved traumatic, two other swimming scenes are key in liberating the girl. In one she goes to a shallow natural pool with a female cousin her own age, and the two exchange swimsuits: Cocó puts on frilly pink bottoms and the cousin dons her boy’s swimshorts in a moment of acceptance marked by humor. In a scene that pushes the gender theme even farther, Cocó and her aunt go swimming naked in another remote pool, where the aunt makes an extraordinary statement acknowledging that her niece is a girl with a penis. The thick forest setting, filmed with the sensuality of a hot summer day by D.P. Gina Ferrer Garcia, resets our response to a “natural” one as opposed to a predetermined societal one.
Running parallel to Cocó’s story is her mother’s. At the beginning of the story, Ane says goodbye to her husband (they seem on the verge of splitting up) and packs her three kids on a train to Basque country on the Spanish side of the border, where her widowed mother and other relatives live. Though Ane is a talented sculptor who emulates her famous sculptor father, she is insecure and struggles to carve out a space – literally, a workshop – where she can create. The opposition posed by her family is both direct and humiliating, self-serving and veiled. And the kids are a handful. The frenetic chaos of the opening travel scene shows how hard it is to keep the three of them in line; later, the rebellious Cocó becomes a full-time worry.
Sporting shoulder-length hair and an androgynous kid’s face, young Otero shows a fierceness of will and a magnetic screen presence that should land her roles in many future films. Lopez Arnalz has a strong force of personality that translates onscreen into an unshakeable empathy for her daughter, depicting a truly beautiful relationship that one admires deeply.
Director, screenplay: Estibollz Urresolo Sologuren
Cast: Sofia Otero, Patricia Lopez Arnalz, Ane Gabarain, Itziar Lazkano, Martxelo Rubio, Sara Cozar, Unax Hayden, Andere Garabieta, Miguel Garcés
Producers: Lara Izagirre Garizurieta, Valérie Delpierre
Cinematography: Gina Ferrer Garcia
Editing: Raul Barreras
Production design: Izaskun Urkijo
Costume design: Nerea Torrijos
Sound: Eva Valino
World sales: Luxbox
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (International competition)
In Spanish, Basque, French
129 minutes
