The English title for this film, ‘A Man’ doesn’t quite capture the same nuance that varón has in Spanish. There is in the latter more of a hint of the manly, the masculine, the macho, the having the balls that the English term doesn’t always include. And this is the crux of the movie. Carlos is a 16-year-old living partly in a sort of youth boarding establishment and partly in his sister’s flat in the seediest part of Bogotá. His sister works on the streets, his mother is in prison and Carlos has had problems with authority. To survive amongst the bigger boys, he deals drugs and does favours and errands. The problem is that he is a small young man with a soft face that he has tried to toughen up with tattoos and haircuts. His voice is not deep.
If he is gay, this is not explicitly stated in the movie and his rejection of a prostitute may be more to do with fear and shyness. The film was nominated for a Queer Palm at Cannes but to me the story is elsewhere. It is about surviving in the toxic bullying male culture of the poor neighbourhoods of 3rd world cities.
In a way, Carlos’s uncertain sexuality helps us focus more on the poisonous environment. While the boarding school may be bad enough, leaving kids like Carlos on the streets is worse exposing them to constant danger. At times we in the audience can sense the enormous vulnerability he must feel constantly. When he cries, chastising himself at the same time because men don’t cry, we get it instantly. How we have allowed societies to become so inhospitable is a big issue here. As one character says seeing a young boy trailing around after his father, “He’ll follow in the footsteps of his old man”.
The film plays much like a documentary and does not have a complex storyline. Many events fizzle out into nothing and the perpetual waiting and checking that is the life of survivors. Director Fabian Hernandez has done a good job creating that atmosphere and Sofia Oggioni captures the decadence of these city barrios and Carlos’s life with real genuineness. Dilan Felipe Ramirez Espitia as Carlos acquits himself well in the lead.
At 80 minutes, it could still have had another 10 minutes lopped off and lost nothing and yet it is also no walk in the park for viewers. Nonetheless, it conveys the story of a life with little hope and empty words perfectly. All rather sad.
2 stars plus
passionfilm 