With a title like this you'd be half-expecting live-action Disney or a Jean-Jacques Annaud follow-up on little Youk's life. Instead, we have a film that goes against everything I stand for, proving once again that it ain't what you say but the way that you say it.
First, it's that loathsomely predictable (and manipulative) approach to storytelling, the set-'em-up-to-watch-'em-die. Bernardo (David Castillo) is left with his uncle Pedro (Jose Luis Garcia Perez) while his mother Violeta (Elvira Lindo) goes to India on "business." For reels I sat waiting for something to befall her. No plane crash. No CG-enhanced terrorist bombing. Not even a fiery car wreck. What keeps Bernardo and his uncle together is not death, but that other dependable cinematic punisher drugs! Violeta is imprisoned for smuggling and director Albaladejo wisely spares us the "Midnight Express" torture route and heavy-handed moralizing.
Not since Edith Massey's pleas for a queer son in John Water's "Female Trouble" has a cinematic mother so desired a gay offspring. Violeta's constant reassurance of her young son's homosexuality even wobbles Pedro's lascivious leanings.
Any one of the films numerous subplot could be expanded into 90 minute, made-for-TV, crisis-of-the-week melodrama. Grandparents ought to have visitation rights, gays make loving parents, dentists with HIV deserve to make a living, HIV is not a death sentence, etc. The true villain (and victim) in the piece is Bernardo's paternal grandmother Teresa (Empar Ferrer). Infectiously despised by Violeta, Bernardo refuses to visit with her and Pedro respects his wishes until she blackmails him with photographic evidence of a nasty "tunnel bunny" tryst.
Instead of transcribing yet another culture clash between gays and straights, each character is presented with depth, dimensionality and a revitalizing lack of sentiment.
Teresa would want time with her grandson no matter what Pedro's sexuality. Were his condom-strewn, drug-soaked, sexually free-for-all ways centered on heterosexuality, grandma would have still found ways to blackmail.
As in any good thirties programmer, crime and/or promiscuous behavior do not pay and the guilty must be punished. We learn that Pedro is HIV positive and thankfully he is allowed to live. It is particularly gratifying to leave a film that manages to transcend all that in lesser hands would be a ten-hankie male weepy. The director's honestly continually keeps the film from caving in under the weight of its own implications.
Throw all the topical messages aside, for this is as much a film about lost love as "Citizen Kane." We exit the proceedings locked inside Teresa's gated burial grounds watching as an older Pedro and Bernardo leave her funeral. Death and imprisonment separate Bernardo from the two women in his life. Violeta and Pedro have come to terms with the impact she made on Bernardo's life, and it is only fitting that the last gaze before the final fade belongs to Teresa.
First, it's that loathsomely predictable (and manipulative) approach to storytelling, the set-'em-up-to-watch-'em-die. Bernardo (David Castillo) is left with his uncle Pedro (Jose Luis Garcia Perez) while his mother Violeta (Elvira Lindo) goes to India on "business." For reels I sat waiting for something to befall her. No plane crash. No CG-enhanced terrorist bombing. Not even a fiery car wreck. What keeps Bernardo and his uncle together is not death, but that other dependable cinematic punisher drugs! Violeta is imprisoned for smuggling and director Albaladejo wisely spares us the "Midnight Express" torture route and heavy-handed moralizing.
Not since Edith Massey's pleas for a queer son in John Water's "Female Trouble" has a cinematic mother so desired a gay offspring. Violeta's constant reassurance of her young son's homosexuality even wobbles Pedro's lascivious leanings.
Any one of the films numerous subplot could be expanded into 90 minute, made-for-TV, crisis-of-the-week melodrama. Grandparents ought to have visitation rights, gays make loving parents, dentists with HIV deserve to make a living, HIV is not a death sentence, etc. The true villain (and victim) in the piece is Bernardo's paternal grandmother Teresa (Empar Ferrer). Infectiously despised by Violeta, Bernardo refuses to visit with her and Pedro respects his wishes until she blackmails him with photographic evidence of a nasty "tunnel bunny" tryst.
Instead of transcribing yet another culture clash between gays and straights, each character is presented with depth, dimensionality and a revitalizing lack of sentiment.
Teresa would want time with her grandson no matter what Pedro's sexuality. Were his condom-strewn, drug-soaked, sexually free-for-all ways centered on heterosexuality, grandma would have still found ways to blackmail.
As in any good thirties programmer, crime and/or promiscuous behavior do not pay and the guilty must be punished. We learn that Pedro is HIV positive and thankfully he is allowed to live. It is particularly gratifying to leave a film that manages to transcend all that in lesser hands would be a ten-hankie male weepy. The director's honestly continually keeps the film from caving in under the weight of its own implications.
Throw all the topical messages aside, for this is as much a film about lost love as "Citizen Kane." We exit the proceedings locked inside Teresa's gated burial grounds watching as an older Pedro and Bernardo leave her funeral. Death and imprisonment separate Bernardo from the two women in his life. Violeta and Pedro have come to terms with the impact she made on Bernardo's life, and it is only fitting that the last gaze before the final fade belongs to Teresa.