Chuecatown

I remember on a trip to Madrid in 2001 before the World Trade Center Towers were attacked I did visit Madrid and spent a few hours in this Chueca neighborhood. I have to say it was a bit seedy, but charming in its own way.

This film will have nothing to do with the classic Father Flanagan film Boystown. The boys here can very bad, but somewhat tempting.

This was a strange film in its dividing the LGBT community into haves and have nots. There's a real estate salesmen in Chueca who is obsessed with not only making money, but toning up the Chueca neighborhood. I'm not sure if there's a Spanish equivalent for rent control, but I've seen many an American film with that as a basis. True in real life, many landlords will do whatever to get out old tenants of rent controlled units so they can rent them to upper middle class Yuppie types. Only in the gay world they're called Guppies.

We learn right away it's this handsome charming real estate guy doing the evil deeds. When will the authorities and the community know is the crux of the plot.

I'm not mentioning any of the players because I doubt most Americans will have a clue as to who they are. The real estate guy reminded me a bit of Christopher Meloni.

Who does him in? Just the hardworking working class gay men and lesbians and the mother of one of them. Kind of like Columbo.

We Americans might enjoy Boystown.

Just went to see this at the London lesbian & gay film festival with 6 friends. We went because the preview clip we had seen at a screening a few weeks ago made us laugh. We all enjoyed the movie and found it funny, as did the rest of the sell-out crowd in the cinema, with laugh out loud moments and applause from the audience at some of the scenes throughout the film.

Yes, there are some so-easy-to-spot-they-might-as-well-carry-a-red-flag set ups and some tired old clichés, but it didn't seem to be a film trying to make too much of a statement. It's just a light hearted picture poking fun at some gay nonsense - or at least that's the way it played tonight with the crowd. The lead women are fantastic, if a bit OTT, but the whole movie is so OTT any other characters would seem stupid. For my money Carlos Fuentes as Rey, was worth the price of the admission alone! If you like a fast moving story that has a few twists, plenty of bearish camp nonsense and a lot of laughs then you'll probably enjoy it. If you are looking for a film with a deep message, then avoid it. Any movie that has a pensioner mother slagging off her son's boyfriend by saying he has an arse 'like a Japanese flag' is never going to deliver much in the way of earnest discussion of the themes afterwards....

"Chuecatown" is a rare bird in the contemporary movie making. A dark, violent, almost Hitchcockian comedy. It would be unjust to label this charming, but not very memorable movie, a gay feature. Truth to be told, it has plenty of gay characters,and it is set in a gay part of Madrid, but the main characters are not just the gay clichés,they are actually people who happen to be gay. Of course, it helps the plot- after all it is a story about gentrification of a gay neighborhood. The jokes are sometimes funny, sometimes tired and repetitive. The actors have a good sense of comic timing. All and all, a light, non pretentious romp.

Typical Spanish comedy of the 2000s with crazy situations , entertainment , amusement and it results to be acceptable. In BOYSTOWN (Chuecatown), Victor (Pablo Puyol) is a real estate agent in the quickly gentrifying neighborhood of Chueca in Madrid. But he hides a grisly secret; he is a nasty murderer who murders people , when apartments become available for sale, then he kills the elderly women owners and disguises them as suicides , in order to attempt to transform the neighborhood into a hip gayborhood like the Castro in San Francisco and Chelsea in New York. The latest victim is the elderly woman next door apartment to gay couple Leo (Pepón Nieto) and Rey (Carlos Fuentes) who eventually inherit the apartment and hands it over as a gift to Antonia, his mother Antonia (Concha Velasco) . But Victor only wants high income gays to move in and he starts a scheme to remove Antonia from the premises . Later on , the cunning Inspector Mila (Rosa Maria Sardà) and her charmingly clueless son Luis (Eduardo Soto) are assigned by their chief to investigate the murders . Meanwhile , Victor will seduce Leo in order to gain access to his apartment so he can kill Concha Velasco .

Funny and amusing situations to give us a decent movie plenty of fun happenings , absurd incidents and many other things ; and that , at least , kept me entertained for the almost half an hour of duration . The main premise results to be a criminal spree carried out by a cocky killer who murders elderly women to take their apartments ; after that he refurbishes and decorates the apartments to sell them to gay couples with high purchasing power and to transform Chueca into a kind of London Soho area. The film moves in fits and starts most of which would be desirable , with more traps the viewer resists any kind , and some moments of enjoyment and others quite a few disconcerting . As the silly vicissitudes of the starring are so repetitive and the most part results to be rich in absurdities and implausibilities . It is one of the first Spanish comedies in which gays are main protagonists and they really take the surprising decisions and twisted initiatives . Hilarious and entertaining film , brimming with comic mishaps, laughs , sexy seductions, twists , and more killings . Rightly enjoyable but middling and fun-filled , milestone comedy which neatly combines humor , mirth , entertaining events and amusement . It achieved a big office success , though was panned by reviewers , receiving mediocre critiques . The protagonist duo , Pepon Nieto, Carlos Fuentes , are passable and sympathetic , though they give exaggerated interpretations . Attractive cast plenty of good actors such as : Pablo Puyol plays a killer who hides a terrible secret: he makes apartments available for sale by murdering the old ladies owners that live in them. Likeable Rosa Maria Sarda plays the eccentric Police Inspector Mila, a peculiar woman with many phobias , giving a decent acting , as always , and her son is amusingly played by Eduardo Soto . The hit of the show is undoubtedly for the veteran Concha Velasco who delivers one of the most enticing screen acting . Concha Velasco plays Antonia who is always meddling in his relationship with Leo, whom she despises. At the same time , support cast delivers an agreeable acting such as Mariola Fuentes , Eduardo Casanova , and cameo by Josele Roman .

Catching musical score by David San José and adequate cinematography with juicy atmosphere by Juan Carlos Lausín , though a perfect remastering being necessary . Being well produced by notorious producers Julio Fernández/Carlos Fernández from Filmax, that have produced successes as Transsiberian, Quarantine, Sultanes, Diario de una ninfomana, Bullying and saga Rec . The motion picture was professionally directed by Juan Flahn . He is a good craftsman , a fine writer and director as cinema as TV , known for this Chuecatown (2007), Hábitos (1995) , Fantasmagórica (2014) , Las Flores de Bach , Insomnio , Canguros , La casa de los Lios , among others . rating : 6/10 . Acceptable and passable .

When I first saw this promoted on Spanish television, I thought it looked too stupid to bother with. But then I saw that the cast included Rosa María Sardà, Concha Velasco, Joan Crosas and Edu Soto, all of whom are tremendously talented. So I decided to give it a shot.

It's a broadly played comedy/suspense piece involving the hunt for a serial killer: a snobby gay real estate developer who's bumping off old ladies and working-class people so he can gentrify Chueca, Madrid's somewhat run-down gay neighborhood. The central characters are a young, working-class gay couple who don't fit his image of the new Chueca. The film is loosely adapted from a Spanish comic book of the same title.

There's strong acting all around, including a charming performance by Carlos Fuentes, who had previously appeared in "Km0." Sardà and Velasco are their usual wonderful selves (the former playing a neurotic police inspector, and the latter playing the mother-in-law from hell).

I was particularly curious to see Soto in a film role, since I mostly know him as his television alter-ego (the manic club kid known as "el Neng," whom he played for years on late-night television). Here he gives a wonderfully goofy performance as a police detective.

Don't look for subtlety or profound meaning in this film, but it's a fun way to pass an hour or two.

At the festival screening I saw in Philadelphia, the English subtitles were basically good but problematic at spots. The translator missed all the references to American pop culture, misunderstood one or two bits of the dialog, and there were typos and spelling errors. Hopefully this will be fixed before it's released on DVD here.