Temblores

I truly enjoyed several aspects of this film including the scenography and the environments used here. Great acting as well. I read other criticisms as accusations to the gay life on this movie but I believe the intention was to show us that could also be the hell dressed up in religion.

Jayro Bustamante's 'Temblores' bit into the burning themes of Guatemalan society, such as faith, homophobia, and the effort to maintain a good, clean reputation even at the cost of personal freedom and happiness. The movie captivates with interesting approaches and strong acting performances. Unfortunately, it squanders the immense potential for something vital and thrilling by never going deep enough on either topic and only loosely touches on the conflicting emotional life of its protagonist.

Temblores is the second full length feature film by Jayro Bustamante, following the much acclaimed Ixcanul from 2015.

The film follows Pablo, a married man with two children who comes out as gay and whose life begins to unravel as society rejects him and his evangelical family goes to great lengths to cure his homosexuality.

The story starts out strong, perhaps too strong. The issue with the first scene is that we are thrusted into the conflict without much context to make us care for the protagonist or any of the characters in the movie. The stakes are so high, but without much needed backstory or exposition to engage the audience before this event takes place the whole mood feels very premature.

The relationship between Pablo and his boyfriend, Francisco, lacks chemistry, they also come from very different social backgrounds and have very different beliefs. I would've liked for the movie to provide some backstory as to how they met and what made them fall in love, or at least provide this information through dialogue because I didn't buy it. There's also very little physical contact between them, which is not realistic for a gay couple living alone in an apartment.

Juan Pablo Olyslager and Sabrina de la Hoz deliver the strongest performances out of the cast. I also enjoyed the performances of the two kids. They are very well written, the way they rebel at not being able to see their father is heartbreaking and the dialogue they share is very well written. There isn't really a bad performance in the movie. The issue lies in the writing. All the characters in the movie function around the protagonist, they have no story arcs or motivations of their own. The lack of character development reduces all the supporting characters in the film, except for Francisco and the kids, to vile religious fanatics with zero redeeming qualities who will ruin Pablo's life as long as he's gay.

In conclusion, the film didn't know the right place to begin or the right place to end and the middle is a myriad of sequences that eventually lead nowhere. For a film to tackle such sensitive issues, I feel like it still walked on eggshells around them. I expected it to be more crude, more real, to go all in on these issues, but for a film called Temblores, I expected to be shaken to my core and it barely made me shiver.

I watched this expecting a movie about a man coming out late in life, disrupting his marriage, then watching the struggle and growth.

Instead what I got was a very dark movie that felt both anti-gay and anti-religious, and woefully depressing as it goes on to just show how everything and everyone (including his own parents) aims to destroy this man's life.

Set in Guatemala, an area I am unfamiliar with socially, it shows us how he is harshly, and uncomfortably, punished at work, with family, at church, socially, legally, and most disturbing, even medically. I do not know if this is a statement movie about Guatemalan culture, or just the harsh religious factors in the movie, but it makes for a very downbeat result.

The actors do well in their parts, though the chemistry between the two lovers could have been stronger. That was just bad writing and directing. The rest of the film itself is directed well.

The ending was severely depressing, and it just emphasizes that movies work better if there is a glimmer of hope, or even just growth by the end. This was just morbid.

If this is a statement film on Guatamalan culture, this needs to stop now. However, if this is just the writer's idea of good drama, he needs to lighten up. While the subject matter is real, it seems dated because most countries ban the activities shown in the film. However, I repeat, I know nothing about Guatamala.

I wanted to like this more because I loved the star of the movie, but the bad taste it left me with, and didn't expect, made this a downer. I would only recommend this for viewers who want a movie to reflect deeply on, and see the darker side of gay life some people experience.

Some brief nudity, but not highly sexual. Also, scenes of mild torture, deception, and cruelty.

"Temblores" is another in the "gay conversion" film genre, so, though it's a solid enough movie in its own right, it suffers from having a "been there done that" quality.

This time around the setting is Guatemala, and the protagonist is a married man with children whose affair with another man sends his strict religious family into a tailspin. The movie marches through its predictable paces with decent if not especially memorable performances and a suitably downbeat ending.

"Temblores" isn't a film that I'm going to spend much time mulling over or have a strong feeling about one way or the other, but it does shed light on some really backwards cultural beliefs and laws in Guatemala, so if it brings some awareness to the harm yet one more country's rigid convictions are doing to a subset of its population, I can forgive it for being a bit late to the party.

Grade: B