En El Camino (Spanish) [On The Road]

This is a whole new lane for me as a viewer. A soft, human queer story built inside trucking culture just isn't something that comes around often, straight or gay, that world barely gets touched on screen at all. What the director's doing here is mixing gritty realism with these surreal flourishes, and the pacing is slow on purpose, letting us sit inside a piece of queer life that almost never gets shown. Strip it down and it's really a road movie, following a kid who hitchhikes and an older, rougher trucker as they move together through roadside stops and motels scattered across North Mexico. Watching these two slowly build something while their histories close in on them is what drives the film, and it ends up landing somewhere between raw and deeply sexual, a story about everything that can go sideways when your whole life happens on the highway.

We meet Veneno first, twenty years old, working as a sex worker who also moves drugs for the truckers who pay him. He gets ripped off financially early on, and that's when he crosses paths with Muneco, who's willing to let him ride along but warns him he won't hesitate to leave him behind if things get messy, a warning that nearly comes true once Veneno's stash gets discovered. Muneco's got a wife and kids waiting somewhere, though months on the road mean he barely sees them anymore. He figures out fast that Veneno's gay and immediately makes sure to clarify that he isn't. Even so, something about the kid grows on him, and he doesn't mind having him around, so long as Veneno's dealing stays under the cartel's radar. The longer they're together, the more the tension between them builds, Veneno starts pushing further, and Muneco, half wrecked from drinking and using, stops resisting it. There's someone hunting for Veneno in the background this whole time, and eventually the film reveals why, he used to be kept by a powerful cartel boss alongside other young men, and when he once failed to show up, the man nearly beat him to death for it. Muneco understands that pain in his own way, but everything shifts once Veneno kills a trucker, bringing the police into the picture too. From there it's obvious neither of them is walking away from this untouched.

The film digs into some genuinely compelling ideas, like how people can still find real connection even while just trying to survive, even when they're being treated like something to be used. It gets pretty explicit, there's nudity, several sex scenes, and violence throughout, but somehow you still end up caring about both of these guys. As the world around them keeps getting more dangerous and harder to navigate, you find yourself hoping things somehow work out better for them. There's something distinct about how each of them is wrestling with their own demons here. It's also very much about exploitation, both of the older men driving these trucks and the younger ones selling themselves at rest stops along the way. You feel especially for Veneno given he's barely twenty. Even with how gritty everything around them is, the film never loses its tenderness, which probably explains why it and its actors have been picking up awards on the festival circuit. It builds toward this genuinely moving scene where the two of them slow dance to a ballad inside a run down warehouse. Visually the whole thing is stunning, the dusty haze of the open road along with these temporary little cantinas and markets makes for some really beautiful shots. As actors both the leads have done a tremendous job.

Even with how dark the setting is and how dark the ending gets, On the Road somehow still leaves you with a strange sense of hope, even if the final stretch is brutal enough to make you want to look away. Buried under all the lust, blood, and violence, what the filmmakers actually built is a real, felt love story between two men who find each other in one of the darkest corners imaginable. (7.5/10)