It has been a year and a half since director Li Cheng’s “José” won the Venice Film Festival’s Queer Lion. It would be a shame to let the lag time diminish expectations. After a LGBTQ fest run, the …
’s Queer Lion. It would be a shame to let the lag time diminish expectations. After a LGBTQ fest run, the Spanish-language drama — about a young gay man in Guatemala — has opened theatrically and continues to expand. That it does so steadily, quietly, seems perfectly apt for a drama rife with quotidian grace.
His cell provides a lifeline. It’s Grindr but also tender, a device for low-commitment coupling that dangles the possibility of more-at-stake connection. A hookup with a construction worker named Luis becomes something more. Both the possibility and constraint of their relationship weigh on José.Ana Cecilia Mota convinces as the mother who leans heavily on her youngest. She is loving and pious, suspicious of his sexuality and gently manipulative.
Throughout the film, Cheng touches on the omnipresence of the church: a haunting Catholic procession snakes through dark streets; congregants of an evangelical Sunday service lift their hands in praise. Whispered as she labors over household chores, José’s mother’s prayers are desperate — and sincere. Hers is a recognizable love, complicated by an unquestioning religiosity.
The filmmaking reminds us that the life of a place is often carried on its sounds. Guatemala City is noisy with the honks and exhaust-clearing coughs of traffic, of voices selling food and wares, of street corner preachers hawking gospel certitudes. You can almost smell the food cooking at the restaurant, born on a hiss of heat and smoke.
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