My Straight Son

By: jdchopin

This is one of THE greatest movies I have seen on TLA - too many gay movies are so poorly acted, the line delivery totally like high school beginners, not at all natural. This movie is sensitive, honest, and makes you cry as well as feel deep joy in the condition of living, and taking life on life's own terms. There is a hate crime in it, hard to believe this still happens, but we know it does - Russia recently really bad, many places. Love lives on, a lovely wonderful movie. It should be on the hot list of movies to watch. It has soul, character, dignity, and grace. 5 stars! Best movie Ive seen here. There are others, maybe I will be able to write again for the reader. jdchopin

By: Amos Lassen

Diego is a young and successful photographer that lives in the glamorous world of fashion, shallowness and excess. Everything changed for him when there was a terrible accident and his partner is left in a coma. Now Diego must care for his son, Armando. They both must adapt-Diego to the straight world of Armando and his son's attitude toward it and Armando to the gay world of his father which he resents.

Venezuela has not had a great deal of success outside of the country in the world of film and this is probably because most of the films have dealt with the poverty in parts of the country. Director Miguel Ferrari changes that with a look at another aspect of Venezuelan life. This is his first film and one of the first films to deal with homosexuality in Venezuela. There is no discussion of gay rights in the country and among the people there are hate crimes against gay or transsexual people and other kinds of discriminations are always present in every level of life. Miguel Ferrari uses that as his subject here knowing well that his film will have a limited audience and he does it in such a way that manages to get people to look at the situation. From the very first scene we realize that we are about to see a quality film in which the sound, music and photography are well done. The characters are well drawn and everything works.. While the film moves slowly, it never bores and aside from the overall gay theme, it also deals with transgender and weight issues as well as domestic violence. Overall, we can that this is a film about diversity and the different kinds of love that we can feel-family, friends, romantic, for the work we do so and the love of ourselves.

The film captures a true picture of the current Venezuelan society and its discrimination to minorities (not exclusively sexual). We also see something about attitude and also excess, lack of responsibility, the need for a better future and the absence of opportunities in the country, violence and impotence against injustice, love and prejudice, and familial ties. It is something of a protest that gets heavy as the plot moves forward. We identify with the characters and suffer and love with them.

Ferrari breaks the stereotypes that have been used in so much film. In his debut film, "he presents a thesis which is certainly quite complex: intolerance for sexual diversity is a topic which is naturally difficult to address and that the director handled the film with a very positive simplicity, however the story tries to cover multiple frames as domestic violence, lack of communication between parents and children, gender change and low self-esteem, which, although they are strongly linked to the central idea, causes a slight imbalance in the argument". Sexual diversity has been a relatively unexplored subject as a central theme in Venezuelan film until now and what a great way to bring it out.