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 ...
Series starts with the G & T, two best friends going to a club to have fun. One thing leads to another and they end up kissing and later we see Tommasso storming out of the club. Circa, 5 years later, people have moved on. Giulio is in a steady relationship with Matteo but lives with his best friend Sara whereas Tommasso lives with his girlfriend Serena working for his brother. The 2 friends haven’t seen each other for 5 years since then. When Giulio catches Matteo cheating on him, he is heartbroken. A chance encounter with Tommasso and Sarah at a new club is going to change things soon. There is awkwardness when the 2 friends meet and Tommasso even picks up a fight with Giulio. We realise there is something more to it. Tomato is stressed because for both his brother and his girlfriend, he is never good and he is tired of living in this frustration. Also when he sees Giulio back, all memories start coming back and he is back to being confused. Matteo wants Giulio back and apologises and wants to get back his love. As luck would have it, Giulio is picked up as the architect for Serena’s and Tommasso’s new house and they are forced to work together. A lot of events unfold, where Tommasso goes back and forth between being cordial to Giulio but also being a bitch at other times. As expected things end well, when Tommasso attitude soften progressively, leading him to discover why he is really hostile toward Giulio that he was always trying to run away from the true love. He was just trying to suppress his feelings. He feels pretty good when he finally comes out to his finance and brother and stops caring about everyone else. His love for Giulio is deep and pure, exactly how Giulio feels for him. The 2 of them finally get together at the end of 13 good episodes. Its a very happy warm feeling for everyone, including friends and Giulio’s family.
Apart from the main story, there is also a side love story of Sara with a bar owner, but that doesn’t add any relevance except some additional characters to the basic plotline. Each episodes takes us to some scenes back to the first night at the club, and more secrets are revealed to us slowly on what exactly happened that night in the club. As much as it would annoy me that randomly they would go the first night in every episode, it started to make sense, when they would show something peculiar about every single individual from that night and how it shaped their present. Tomato is really cute and did well in his act of a guy burdened with not knowing what he really wants and also of living in shadow of his brother and girlfriend. Serena played the part of a bitch with perfection. Giulio also acted quite well. I think strictly in terms of acting, he was the best of the lot. But my favourite was Sara. She was naughty, she was quirky. Still , overall the acting needs to be hugely improved. Production values were quite decent.
Yes we have seen many stories on the love of a gay and supposedly straight guy but still this one was not a bad viewing at all. (6.5/10)
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