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 ...
Charlie is no longer with his boyfriend Chris. He prowls on the streets (either hallucinating or with dreams) of manhattan looking for a man he saw several months earlier. harlie has other encounters with men who care but he finally meets Dean, who is unabashedly racist, sexist and homophobic. Nevertheless, Charlie, pretending to be straight, buys Dean drinks and smokes a joint with him. Dean takes Charlie to a gay cruising area looking for victims, but Charlie is able to warn away the intended target. We soon find out that Dean and his buddies had murdered Chris several months ago in a hate crime and Charlie is here to take revenge. But is this real or still a hallucination? In dreams Charlie tells Chris that he has taken the revenge. Charlie is only finally able to sleep when he realizes that finally Chris' soul will find peace.
Because of the topsy-turvy narrative, the film is volatile and unexpected, which according to me was a huge detriment. The film is supposed to be an ode and study of love and loss but it somehow takes a long time to get there and in the process people like me lose complete interest to even care of what really is going on. There are some good performances delivered by an attractive cast scattered throughout but that doesn't help salvage the film in its completeness. Daniel is sexy and handsome and charming as crazy and one can just watch the film for only his sake, if at all.
It might be just me who hasn't liked this film. I am amazed having read all the glorious reviews all over internet but something failed to connect with me as an audience. I wonder if I was not in the right frame of mind. (4/10)
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