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 Stephanie, a transsexual who has been reduced to turning tricks as a prostitute. The flashbacks show her as a young boy, Pierre. We also meet her Bisexual Russian boyfriend Mikhail and another male lover Jamel, who also is dealing with some family issues while working as a gay prostitute in Paris. As the story develops, we see Stephanie leaving Paris to care for her terminally ill mother, together with Mikhail and eventually joined by Jamel. The film shows us through multiple scenes how the trio come to meet, the events of their past, how Stephanie's relationship with her mother is finally being amended. There is no end or beginning, just a beautiful relationship of three people, with no jealousy, just love and its evolution over a period of time.
The narrative is conveyed largely through the experience of Stephanie, whose triangular relationship with the two men is one built on sincere and simple respect and equality. There is no question in the film of her having to choose between the two. All three are equally compatible with each other and do not have the usual conventional jealousies and arguments. They all need love and they find some with each other. While taking care of her mother, Stephanie tries to come to terms by confronting her past and making amends with her first love and slowly piece her life together. The transsexual depiction is done with the sincerity it deserves. Stéphanie (the actress is a transsexual in real life and has never acted before) is presented not as an oddity but as just a human being for whom life has dealt some challenges. I wasn't very clear with Mikhail's story but he did portray the lonely Russian immigrant very well. Jamel's issues are probably more to do with his line of work. The film may feel simple, but with beautiful photography is quite complicated at the same time. But having said that, the film is not for everyone.
It's an unconventional love story, with some very beautiful photography about love , sexuality, compassion about three marginally social outcast individuals. Many people will be frustrated with non linear narrative and not in your face start-middle and end. But I thought, for an independent film, it was actually not bad at all. (6/10)
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