It's hard to believe it's been a half-dozen years since the tough little trans drama Gun Hill Road debuted at San Francisco's Frameline 35. It ignites with an eruption of convict-on-convict violence and stays the course. It's a queer youth gender drama that stays with you all through the tale of a female-identified transgender teen whose life is thrown into turmoil upon the release from prison of her macho daddy.
We see an inmate stabbing another prisoner before Daddy is hauled away by the guards and tossed into solitary. The next time we see Enrique Michael Rodriguez (a ferocious turn from Esai Morales), he's headed for his family's apartment in the heart of a sprawling Puerto Rican ghetto, three stops from the end of the #5 line in the Bronx. Enrique expects to step right back into his patriarchal role as husband and Papi to a brood that includes a beautiful teenage boy, Michael (Harmony Santana), and a hardworking wife. But his family has other ideas, rejecting his casual cursing and presumption that he's still the boss of them. Gun Hill Road offers a combustible mix of drama that's part Raging Bull, part Harvey Fierstein's pioneering Torch Song Trilogy.
"I told you not to curse in front of the fucking kids, you fucking fuck," screams Papi's long-suffering wife. But the biggest rebuke to Papi comes from his beloved, one-time-baseball-loving son, Michael. "You can't just come in here and try to be Papi now."
Michael has turned 16 and, unbeknownst to Enrique, is calling himself Vanessa, using the girl's bathroom at school, starting female hormones and performing a daring series of poetry raps. It's a tribute to director Rashaad Ernesto Green that the tension never lets up. We realize Enrique is a human volcano who will not brook his namesake turning into Daddy's little girl. Michael/Vanessa only nominally acknowledges Enrique's return, spurning his offer of Yankee tickets and keeping his Pop from seeing how he dresses at school and on his frisky dates with an aspiring artist.
Standout moments: when Enrique cuts Vanessa's beautiful hair, and sequences where Vanessa tries in vain to negotiate a sexual relationship of respect and equality with a lover who treats her as trade. Gun Hill Road will have you tense right to the end, worrying about the fate of a beautiful teen forever awaiting a tsunami of macho violence.
Today, nearly a life-cycle after its original LGBT film-festival run, GHR remains a powerful reminder of how far the gender revolution has come, and how far there is to go. Director Green gives us parallel views of lives on a collision course. The film is enhanced by its authentic South Bronx setting and a large supporting cast who feel ripped right from life. Warning for scenes of emotional and physical violence. The DVD comes with two extra features: the trailer and a 16-minute interview with writer-director Green, who discusses the story's background, the shooting location, and other technical aspects of the film.