This is your typical indie coming-of-age tale about a teenager, though it’s clearly working with a very tiny budget. Set within a migrant family living in Southern California’s Coachella Valley, the movie digs into how fragile old-school traditions and expectations can be. We follow a teenage son as he goes through the process of coming out and struggles to find acceptance while dealing with homophobia, domestic abuse, and a messy love triangle that involves his own sister. Goyo is seventeen and just about to graduate from high school. Since he’s been a bit more feminine since he was a little kid, he’s always had to deal with emotional and physical transition from his dad, Ramon, who is obsessed with him being "a man." The only real love he gets is from a lady next door who actually respects him for who he is. The family lives in a Mexican community where everyone works on a grape farm, but things get shaken up when a new guy named Lucio arrives. Lucio basically seduces Goyo ...
This one was a completely messed up film and it didn't take me more than half an hour to completely breeze through the film and denounce it outrightly. It became so hard to bear the film and the ridiculousness that was going on in the film.
Shiner describes sado-masochistic love relationships. Three couples who are deeply in love explore consensual abuse as a means by which to express the depths of their passion. The heterosexual couple are never really developed and they ultimately disappear. Despite they're fleeting attempts at some pain/pleasure play, nothing much happens and they are utterly forgettable. Then there are the gay bashing buddies whose leader gets sexual satisfaction before he bashes. Eventually, the lead basher discovers a rare sexual thrill in getting beat up, and the two "straight" pals become almost gay partners in their bizarre quest for sexual fulfillment through beating each other up (more often than not in the nude). Then finally there is a washed-up 3rd rate boxer with a timid male admirer. God knows what happens with them because by this time, there is no way I could have handled any more of this film.
Don't even try. (0.5/10)
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