20,000 SPECIES OF BEES - Mark Reviews Movies

20,000 Species of Bees, Film Movement

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | June 13, 2024

The kid at the center of 20,000 Species of Bees isn't confused. This child was born biologically male but, recently, has started leaning toward a more societally feminine appearance. The only thing preventing the child from living that way is almost everyone else.

Writer/director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren's movie is torn between the child's perspective and that of those other characters, mainly the kid's mother. The result is a story that feels at odds with presenting an empathetic view of being a transgender kid and offering a debate if such a way of living is a correct one. It's strange that the movie can be so observant and inherently compassionate in one way, while also being so melodramatic in the other.

The child, whom we'll refer to—since everyone in the movie can't decide which name to use—by the gender non-specific nickname "Coco" (Sofía Otero), is leaving home in France for a temporary or permanent stay in the family's native Spain. Coco's mother Ane (Patricia López Arnaiz) and father Gorka (Martxelo Rubio) have hit a rough patch in their relationship, and Ane is returning to her childhood farm with her three children to decide what to do about her marriage and her life.

Ane only knows that Coco now has long hair, refuses to be called by the name on a birth certificate, and talks about being like a girl. Ane still sees a son, though, and her mother Lita (Itziar Lazkano) doesn't understand why her youngest grandchild doesn't have a boy's haircut. Coco's siblings seem to understand, as do a young girl from town who befriends the visitor and a great-aunt named Lourdes (Ane Gabarain), who tries to explain to her sister and niece what the child is making plain and obvious.

The movie is split, though, between Coco trying to live life as a girl and Ane just considering what she sees as her child's uncertainty as yet another complication for her already-complicated life. Coco doesn't say much, and in a way, the unspoken nature of the kid's certainty, which only becomes confounded when other people talk to or about Coco, speaks volumes. Coco simply attempts to exist as herself, as she'll eventually announce to much consternation around her, and Urresola treats that as ordinary, peaceful, and full of promise in little details.

Words speak a lot, too, of course, so when the bulk of the drama and conflict here comes from everyone else arguing about Coco, it keeps the child's experience at a distance. Obviously, 20,000 Species of Bees is as much about how the adults grow to accept or refuse to acknowledge Coco's identity as it is Coco. The point is to see how firmly held beliefs, societal expectations, and basic prejudice complicate something as simple as a child being a child, but in this case, the juggled focus also convolutes what's an innocent, sometimes lovely account of Coco figuring out and, ultimately, being who that child is.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products