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 ...
We meet Loic, a twenty year old very beautiful guy, who works in a chocolate factory by the day and spends pretty much all his nights having anonymous sex either online or through cruising the streets. All he cares about his physical satisfaction, until he meets Lionel (whom we never see), who is more interested in Loic’s personality , history, likes and dislikes rather than going to bed with him. And this is a new feeling for Loic. He shacks up with his best friend Marie, who works at a museum. The two friends are very close. Loic takes a lot of photographs with his phone and when Lionel praises him, he thinks he can be a photographer. Typical young adult confusion. When Marie starts dating a guy, that makes Loic very mad and upset and they both have a fallout. This changes everything, since now he has no friend he can count on, or any friendly place to sleep. Next thing we know is that Marie is dead and Loic is wandering around and it is during this phase, he gets obsessed with a soccer player. He is very attracted by the man's family life and celebrity status and wants to emulate him. Is he straight now or just confused? Is this longing for emotional connect that is missing because Marie is gone or something else? Only time and Loic will tell us.
As I mentioned earlier, Loic is enigmatic and incredibly attractive, and the film could have developed well based on that, but instead it wanders hopelessly after its first 20 minutes. Loic sees the world has part real and part fantasy, which is never very clear or evident to the viewers. Second half felt completely disconnected with what I started watching the film and this is where I feel that the movie went into an experimental zone. With a blend of emotional innocence and sexual hyperactivity, Loic is a loner who is looking for more. He constantly blurs the line between sex and love and leaves us wanting to know more about his turbulent life, if only to help him discover his true identity. There is a lot of talk without taking the plot somewhere and after second half even that goes missing where there is hardly any talk. Quite a few scenes seem to be there to just provide a shock.
For most people, IMO, this film will work only because of the lead actor. Barely any credit to the makers of the film. (5/10)
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But the only Swiss movie that I've seen twice has been " The Circle" ( Der Kreis ) .
The circle was actually a pretty good film.