User Reviews

Watched this via net on wide screen. The critics have not been terribly kind but I enjoyed it. Its a Mexican morality tale, very stylised, very ironic and very pointed. Unlike the Greek film I reviewed, parents and offspring talk to one another and both generations have their issues. The youth have aspirations, the older generation have seen it, done it and sent their postcards. The lead character, a mature looking boy of 17, eventually allows events to dictate his life for the short period the film covers with revealing consequences. Most of his exploits are commented upon by his classmates. There is an undercurrent of violence of both physical and mental sides and a lot of vacuous posing (quite deliberate). And Mexico City is definitely remotely like Berlin.

I was not impressed. The story (a sensitive and impressionable teen is lured into the wild, drugs-infused and sexually uninhibited party-circuit of Mexico City somwhere in the 80's) obviously intends to be something of a coming-of-age thing, but in fact there was nothing much of an emotional Werdegang or evolution to be seen. Carlos is (mis)guided by a sleazy guy who is smitten with him, he experiments with gay sex (as well as with drugs and political protests), and then suddenly finds out that he prefers straight sex and steps out. The end.

The retro-setting is convincingly done, there's an evident Patti Smith and Andy Warhol feel to all the club-scenes, so thumbs up for that. But visually the movie is very tiresome, with flashy and often grainy images, while the music consists of sudden and extremely loud bursts of underground-sounds, which is probably in style, but it doesn't help to make the movie more enjoyable. Neither does the acting, which is really below par. Especially Xabiani Ponce de León as main character Carlo is, in spite of his angelic looks, totally uncharismatic, he behaves like a pretty but unsympathetic wooden doll, and as a result you couldn't care less what happens to him.