Movie info via Sundance:
Unfolding over the course of Valentine’s Day in New Jersey, a young intersex sex worker must run from the mob after a drug deal goes sideways, forcing him to confront his past.
Ponyboi bursts off the screen in this bombastic, edgy, and campy roller-coaster ride of a film. Flipping the script on the LGBTQIA+ return home tale and the classic Jersey mobster saga, this neon-soaked story is not only full of action but also pure moments of tenderness. Complicated and hilarious, Ponyboi’s journey exposes a kaleidoscope of ways humanity is sugary sweet under hard surfaces. Backdrops of laundromats, diners, and the Jersey Shore create a heightened sense of place and time that is at once precisely transportative and fantastically imaginary.
Director Esteban Arango returns to the Sundance Film Festival after his feature film debut in 2020 with Blast Beat. His signature liveliness, energy, and Latinx lens are present and blossoming in this sophomore effort. Writer, producer, and lead actor River Gallo delivers a thrilling performance and a ripe emotional foundation that absolutely sings. Arango and Gallo’s creative collaboration is as entertaining as it is emotionally graceful.—AH
Review:
Ponyboi is entirely grounded in River Gallo’s intersex persona and his hyperbolic cinema identity. This is the wild neon garish NC-17 cross between hard boiled drama and crime thriller, with a high dose of almost to the line hardcore porn, and an odd sprinkling of romcom. It’s as mixed up and undefined as Gallo is divided between X and Y chromosomes. Ponyboi is not for the easily offended.
As an exploration of intersex identity and culture it’s a raw and fascinating introduction. Expanded from a 2019 River Gallo and Sade Clacken Joseph short of the same name (the new feature version is directed by Esteban Arango from Gallo’s screenplay) Ponyboi exists as its own genre and must be approached as such.
Ponyboi is a sex worker who is employed as a clerk for the storefront laundromat that functions as both brothel and drug palace. He’s been on his own since late childhood, ever since he left home when he defied his Salvadoran father demand that he be a proper boy in the cowboy mode. Ponyboi is both hardened and optimistic, always hoping for a happy with a person who accepts him for who he is. Right now, he’s stuck servicing John’s who fetishize his androgynous looks and body.
Sleazy pimp, drug dealer, and wannabe rapper Vinny (Dylan O’Brien) runs the criminal operation while two-timing (or even three-timing) his pregnant girlfriend Angel (Victoria Pedretti), Ponyboi’s best friend. On this particular night, Valentine’s Day, Vinny instructs Ponyboi to sell a new kind of crack (dubiously manufactured even for crack) to one of their mobster clients.
A mysterious rugged handsome cowboy type (Murray Bartlett), who may or may not be real, engages Ponyboi in a flirtation that dangles the possibility of a better life The spell of what could be between them is broken when a sudden crack-related death forces Ponyboi to run away before Vinny finds him. Violent shenanigans involving a local mob family ensue.
Ponyboi revises the crime drama by putting forward an unconventional protagonist with a lot of heart and a little humor. Gallo’s intersex identity is threaded through every scene, every challenge, becoming the broken mirror that reflects a warped world that marginalizes him to living in its upside down shards and living always on the run.
Gallo and Arango have created a fever dream of a film with a character constantly rebelling and trying to redefine the stereotypes of what society sees him as being with what he wants to be and who he truly is. His dad wants him to be a real cowboy. His pimp wants him to be the Johns intersex forbidden dream, their fetish fantasy. The world sees him as just another contrivance in a world full of them. Only his mother accepts him fully.
Ponyboi reflects the struggles of the intersex – living in a binary world that sees no other authenticity beyond yes or no, that has no patience for those born genetically, anatomically different— one gender physically another internally.
Until the end, Poniboi is a controlled oxymoron, a whirligig full of self-revelations and transcendent encounters, on the verge of becoming one of the most unique films of 2024. It’s reliance on contrivance and genre cliches in the last act breaks the spell somewhat, leaving both identity plot holes and too tidily upped loose ends. It’s a bit of a cop out and a slight disappointment. A wannabe great film leaves the audience with just the memory of a very good River Gallo performance.
Ponyboi gets a 3,5/ or a B+.
It’s streaming as part of Sundance 2024 . The virtual part of the festival runs from January 25-28.
Credits:
- DIRECTOR(S)ESTEBAN ARANGO
- SCREENWRITERRIVER GALLO
- PRODUCERSMARK ANKNERRIVER GALLOADEL “FUTURE” NURTREVOR WALL
- DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHYED WU
- PRODUCTION DESIGNERTOMMY LOVE
- EDITORHANNAH PARK
- COMPOSERCRISTOBAL TAPIA DE VEER
- COSTUME DESIGNERLUCY HAWKINS
- CASTING DIRECTORJESSICA KELLY
- PRINCIPAL CASTRIVER GALLODYLAN O’BRIENVICTORIA PEDRETTIMURRAY BARTLETTINDYA MOORE
- YEAR2023
- CATEGORYFEATURE
- COUNTRYUNITED STATES
- LANGUAGEENGLISH
- RUN TIME103 MIN
- COMPANY30K FT
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