This 11th International Latino Film Festival (Nov. 2-18 at the Castro and venues in seven other Northern Californian cities) is a harvest of pleasures with a particular emphasis on comedy and nonfiction features. With subjects ranging from a tribute to legendary Mexican muralist Diego Rivera to an homage by sexy matinee idol Diego Luna to boxing great Julio Cesar Chavez, there is something for every taste, including some distribution-worthy fare.
Glue
In his debut feature, Argentine writer/director Alexis Dos Santos creates a memorable adolescent protagonist. Lucas (Nahuel Perez Biscayart) proclaims himself to be an orphan, even though both his parents are living, in a messy separation fueled by his dad's womanizing. Lucas is caught up with creating poetic lyrics for the rock band he fronts, and with juggling his burgeoning interest in drummer Nacho and their shared girlfriend, Andrea. Trapped in a sleepy small town, the trio bonds around furtive flings with booze and drugs. Lucas and Nacho get high on Lucas' architect father's construction glue, and their foreplay freaks out Nacho, but sets the stage for a late-night threeway with Andrea.
Upsetting all clich?s about horny teens, particularly Latin teens, Glue is rhapsodic about the sloppy highs of adolescence, filmed in a dreamlike haze. Slow-motion and saturated colors give the film the texture of a wet dream from which you never want to awake. Rocking soundtrack includes Violent Femmes. (Castro, 11/4)
Luchando
Standing on Havana's famous sea wall, a young gay man with bottle-blonde hair confides his crush on a macho street hustler. Bringing the strapping Manuel home to a small apartment has upset his bond with the apartment's owner, an older gay man. Soon Manuel will be back on the streets of the city's notorious Colon district, the gathering place for the small army of rural kids who nightly swap sex for a few American dollars, sneakers or jeans.
Harvard-trained Noelle Stout brings a lightweight camera and an anthropologist's non-judgmental eye to her shockingly intimate portrait of four young Cubans whose lives are up-ended in Havana's illegal but booming gay sex trade. La Diosa's ears are assailed by the daily taunts, "Transvestite," "Homosexual!" She's ordered by her father to dress like a "normal" gay man. Yuris, 19, plays with a toy car as he describes his life's work: to father at least 10 children by possibly as many mothers. La Gorda, 34, is a bisexual who wants the fruits of hustling to underwrite an artistic life for her female lover and herself. In a lovely, lewd moment, she recalls sex with a submissive young man.
Luchando, a film that subversively redefines a Cuban word for revolutionary struggle, earned its maker a Harvard degree and expulsion from Cuba, while sending one of its subjects to a political reeducation camp. (Mission Cultural Center, 11/17)
Y Tu Mama Tambien
This Mexican teen sex comedy, with the twin debuts of Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal, smashes all conventions of the genre, ignoring such American staples as pie and superglue to give us a world of teens whose horny exploits are brash but not totally mindless. A 30ish woman's private sorrow has a boomerang effect that pushes the teen heroes apart before yoking them together in a moment of wrenching passion. (San Jose, 11/9)
Chuecatown
This naughty black comedy pokes fun at gay ghetto values in a manner that will please some and annoy others, which is as it should be. Rey (Carlos Fuentes) and Leo (Pepon Nieto) are bears lovingly denned in Madrid's gay district when their relationship is beset by other men, boredom, an insanely possessive mother, and the siren call of their hood's escalating housing prices. Director Juan Flahn squeezes as much ghoulish fun as he can out of image-conscious gay real-estate stud Victor (Pablo Puvol) ridding Chuecatown of as many old biddies as he can personally throttle, in order to make way for an uber-class of posh gays. (Castro, 11/2)
Chavez - A Conversation with Diego Luna
Mexican acting sensation Diego Luna makes his directing debut with an emotionally charged portrait of Mexican boxing legend Julio Cesar Chavez. Born to a large family in Ciudad Obregon in the state of Sonora, Chavez broke into boxing against over the objections of his older fighter brothers, sneaking into the local gym as they were leaving. In a storied 25-year career - six championship belts in three weight divisions, a winning streak second only to the man most experts consider pound-for-pound the greatest fighter of all time, Sugar Ray Robinson - Chavez was, in effect, running for the title of most manly man, in a society still ruled by rural values, where a "macho image" is not yet considered camp.
Luna's film covers the highlights in a 115-bout career: Chavez's incendiary knockout of Meldrick Taylor in the last seconds of their first title-fight; his humiliation of American Greg Haugen, zeroing in on the cracks in the public image; his association with politicians and fight-promoters of ill-repute; his multiple marriages, tax woes, crippling ring injuries; and a complicated relationship with his son and putative successor, the boyishly beautiful and ring-savvy Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. Luna, born to show-biz royalty, knows the joys and pitfalls of growing up in the shadow of parental expectations and needing to fulfill the dream, while making sure it's still your dream. An awesome debut, and an essential guide to the soul of a culture. Diego Luna appears for a public conversation and Q&A. (Castro, 11/3)
Get more information on the festival at www.latinofilmfestival.org