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 ...
Ton and his boyfriend of 5 years have been living together since they were teenagers. Ton is now a high school teacher and his partner is in some sort of security work. In the beginning we see that Ton gets very sexually aroused seeing his partners sweaty back and shirt and that eventually becomes his fetish. Going through a 5 year itch in their relationship, Ton, invariable gets attracted to one of his students Joe after one day he sees his shirt wet with sweat. This is when he tries to get close to the student and even steals his sweaty clothes, so that he can carry on with his fetish in the privacy of the home. His partner clearly sees that Ton is not invested in the relationship as much as he is. When the boyfriend finds out about his fetish, they try to fix but he eventually leaves him. The truth eventually comes out in school as well when Joe finds his teacher Ton sniffing his clothes while he is practicing in sports class.
It is an interesting story line in the sense that it is very different, but I think this could have been a very interesting and crisp short film. This full length feature film has long long moments of silence and nothing else. To make matters worse, there is zero chemistry between Ton and his partner. Forget lovers, they don’t even look like friends. We see history of how Ton was traumatized as a child, when his friend was accidentally killed but that doesn’t really explain his fetish for sweat or his paedophile behaviour. Besides some good natural beauty i suburbs of Thailand, this film doesn’t really offer anything exciting for the viewers.
An artsy film which could as well be an experimental cinema. (3.5/10)
Comments
Landscape and pics should be the backstage .
You should see some of the movies that I have rated 0,1 or 2. And then you will know why I have been generous to this film. But I have to agree, this film was just meh!!