Pelo Malo [DVD]

Contains slight spoilers by way of trigger warning.Set in Venezuela during the period when the president, Hugo Chavez, was ill and dying with cancer, this fine film explores issues of identity - national, racial, sexual, familial. "Bad hair" is what you have if you have some African roots; the desire to wipe those roots out by hair straightening is virtually a national obsession, especially for Venezuelan women. And there's the rub - it is a 9 year old boy, Junior, who finds himself determined to defeat the curls that evidence the long-gone liaison that his mother, Marta, had with a man of black origins. Marta worries that the apparently feminine interest in his appearance is a sign of incipient homosexuality - and it may well be. The film tracks the battle of wills between mother and son, and in the process sheds light on the racism and grinding, no-way-out poverty of the masses who live in Caracas' high rise housing estates.The photography is well done, and there is not so much of the heavy symbolism beloved of Latin-American cinema, but it is a hard watch. The second of two sex scenes is particularly uncomfortable, as Marta tries to "redirect" her son's burgeoning sexuality by effectively forcing him to see her with her boss - an encounter which is in itself unemotional, economic, abusive/manipulative and crude. The love she showers on her baby, while in a state of war with her older child, and her own fragile, hunted temper and mood swings are brutally and depressingly portrayed. The awful thing is that it is probably realistic; you feel you are watching real people. Samuel Lange as Junior in particular is absolutely stunning.But for all of this, there are many lighter moments. The film is not all misery. And, even where Marta seems to have won some battles, you are left wondering how, not if, Junior is going to win the war.

This is a review of the 2015 Region 2 DVD from Axiom Films. It provides good picture and sound quality, and there are a small number of extras.My husband and I have been followers of non-English language Cinema for years, and have built a considerable collection. We enjoy all kinds of films from all kinds of places, and invariably find something interesting or laudable in them. We were very excited to sit down to our first-ever Venezuelan film last night. We have thoroughly enjoyed offerings from a number of other Latin American countries over the years. One of our absolute favourites, ‘Central Station’(1998) from Brazil, also focuses on a young boy from a poverty-stricken background. It is heart-warming and uplifting, though tough.I think we were expecting something in a similar vein ~ not the same story clearly, but something with soul and humanity, possibly some humour. I have to say, very sadly, that we were disappointed.Mariana Rondón’s film was originally screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013, and won plaudits for tackling some tricky topics, including a range of parent-child issues, and questions about sexual identity. It is true that it does indeed address difficult themes, head on, though it is certainly not alone in doing so. Latin American cinema generally does not fight shy of addressing the big and difficult questions, particularly poverty, crime and painful appraisals of less democratic and moderate times, in the continent’s recent past.We found the important, even brave, questioning undertaken in ‘Pelo Malo’, and the interesting subject matter, were lost in the notable lack of clarity in the screenplay. When we join the young lead, ‘Junior’, and his mother, ‘Marta’, it soon becomes apparent that Marta has lost her job as a Security Guard at some sort of industrial site. She spends much of the film pursuing her boss for reinstatement, but we never really discover whether she genuinely messed up, or whether she was being pressured. She was married, but her husband is no longer on the scene. He apparently died, but we don’t know how or when. There are hints, but there is a frustrating lack of any real clue.Our biggest complaint however, is that the film is singularly chilly and charmless. A host of foreign films dealing with dirt-poor communities, nevertheless engage their audience: Wadjda(2012~Saudi Arabia); ‘Children of Heaven’(1997~Iran); ‘Nobody Knows’(2004) or ‘Shoplifters’(2018) from Japan’s Kore-eda, spring to mind.‘Bad Hair’ is a mocking allusion to African ancestry in South America. Interestingly, there is as much racial ambivalence as sexual, in the film. Junior clearly takes after his black grandmother, and presumably his father, but Marta has destructive racially-motivated issues with Junior ~ perhaps he embodies her own embarrassment at having been married to a black man. And his interest in his appearance, drives her to seek medical advice as to whether he is homosexual. Marta’s hostility and lack of any willingness to engage with Junior is odd, inexplicable and off-putting ~ a fair description of the entire film.