Juan Gil García | Un Buen Hijo (A Good Son) / 2011

an attenuated life

by Douglas Messerli

 

Juan Gil García and David Hauslein (screenplay), Juan Gil García (director) Un Buen Hijo (A Good Son) / 2011 / [21 minutes]

 

In many respects the 1998 short film by Robert Little, despite its shared English title, A Good Son, bears little resemblance with the short film of Mexican director Juan Gil García from 2011.

    In retrospect, Little’s film seems retrograde in a year in which such notable coming out movies as Simon Shore’s Get Real, David Moreton’s The Edge of Seventeen, and P. J. Castellaneta’s sexually problematic Relax…It’s Just Sex appeared. In Little’s film the central character discovers in one afternoon that he is gay but chooses to remain closeted.

      But then, so too does the central figure in Gil García’s movie 13 years later make the same decision, although it’s also clear his circumstances are very different from the Southern California University student of Little’s work, and his desires are perhaps much more radical.

     The young farm boy, Ausencio, nicknamed Chencho (Hoze Meléndez), bound to his traditional macho father Clemente (Jesús “Chuy” Padilla) and his slightly more understanding mother Cándida (Laura Kaplun) is enchanted by the nearby small-town performances of the drag queen Katherine (Carla Aráncida), a kind of spider-woman whom he observes through a barroom window.

      Observing him at the window, Katherine invites him into her life and even promises to teach him, demanding he show her whatever talents he proclaims. His talent is so slight to be almost laughable, a few quick turns, an attempt to dance that looks more like a teenage turkey than a skilled drag performer which is his desire. But still she insists she will use him in her act, awarding him a red scarf and the promises of a mentorship.

       The father finding not only the red scarf in his bed but the pictures under his mattress of his idol Ausencio has collected, bans him from returning to the nearby village. He mother reassures him, quite strangely, that if he simply waits his time will son come, as if she were hinting that her own hard-working husband was soon to die.

        Although the boy packs his bags and appears ready to bolt from the farm immediately, he is late to the performance and bicycles home almost obediently, head bowed, as if giving himself up to his indenturement to a future that may not be as immediate as his mother has predicted.  

        Even if the situation is somewhat radically different, however, we sense the same sort of temporary abandonment of self-expression that we perceived in the earlier film. Being a “good son” is clearly not a route to escape for anyone who identifies as LGBTQ, or perceives oneself as being different. We can only imagine Ascencio working in the maize fields for years, perhaps his entire life with deep pangs of regret.

 

Los Angeles, November 21, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2021).