‘20,000 Species of Bees’ Review: Gentle, Humane Spanish Drama Chronicles a Young Trans Girl’s Summer of Self-Realization
Guy Lodge Film Critic In time, stories like “20,000 Species of Bees” will come to feel as commonplace within the coming-of-age genre as tales of first love or heartbreak: a young girl, unhappy in her skin and at odds with her family, finally recognizes her gender over the course of one pivotal summer, and persuades others to recognize it too.
For now, Spanish writer-director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s mellow, softly piercing debut feature joins the likes of Céline Sciamma’s “Tomboy” and Emanuele Crialese’s “L’Immensità” in a select but growing canon of trans or nonbinary childhood studies.
Unassuming and meanderingly character-oriented, the film doesn’t assert itself as an issue drama — in large part because, as Solaguren presents her eight-year-old protagonist’s gradual steps toward self-realization, her film doesn’t see much of an issue to begin with. “How come you know who you are and I don’t?” Simply phrased but far more complex to answer, this is the question our young heroine (Sofía Otero) throws at her sympathetic but flummoxed mother Ane (Patricia López Arnaiz), at the height of her personal identity crisis — a point at which she claims to have no name at all.
She no longer identifies with Aitor, the male name she was assigned at birth; Coco, the familial nickname she later assumed, is no longer fit for purpose either, too closely associated with her two older siblings’ teasing.
