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 ...
The film is set in the time of Cardinal Law, who during his time in Boston apparently turned a blind eye to all the cases of child abuse and sexual abuse of young boys and continued to support the priests. We see a few very uncomfortable scenes where priests are seen molesting young boys. Primarily amongst these were Father John Geoghan, whose arrest in many years later starts to uncover all these hidden truth. The victims start to come forward, and a lawyer Mitchell Garabedian sues Cardinal Law & the diocese for hiding the crimes from the authorities. Cardinal Law arrogantly defends his behavior, and refuses to resign. The film follows through how the lawyer gets all victims together to make a string case in the court and how law and media come together to expose one of the biggest scandals and cover up by the church.
This film is not an easy watch at all. There is a scene where one of the victims is taunted by a couple of insensitive men at a local deli. When he graphically describes to them how he was abused, I was almost in tears. Any amount of graphic details cant match that short scene that make you truly feel what those young boys must have gone through. Its hard to not become angry at the double standards of the church and see this film objectively. It took many brave souls to take on the Catholic Church on such a horrifying subject as the pedophilia that occurred by the very same Priests to which we entrusted our children. The cast of the film is just perfect. Everyone does a standout job and the film brilliantly shows the impact on the lives of those abused and focuses on the church, in not the best of terms.
Its hard to rate movies like these. Something with a very strong message, very gripping and you are curious to know how the church is going to react to the whole scandal. Besides the bad title of the film, I would generally rate this movie quite well but still a very difficult to watch film dealing with a very controversial and sensitive subject. (7.5/10)
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