Tremblements

Guatemala City is much like other prominent cities in South America: rich in diversity and burgeoning business. In the matter of gay men, writer/director Jayro Bustamante's Tremors depicts an Antigua state of mind: a family man who professes love for another man is in a world of hurt for his family and himself. Nothing is in the least progressive.

Such a narrow but not uncommon reaction by a local culture as offers a candid representation of the troubles gays can experience in a heavily Catholic and conservative small world. So authentic are the reactions, the film could have just as well have been about the effects of divorce on a community.

Pablo (Juan Pablo Olyslauer) comes home to a phalanx of family ready to condemn his choice of male love over his current heterosexual family life. Olyslauer's underplayed performance makes Pablo an audience-identifier of a person coming to terms with prejudice couched in family values.

Being unjustly called a pedophile, in order to separate him permanently from his children, may be the final indignity for a man who deserves not an iota of scorn for a choice not easily made and deeply felt for the grief he has caused his family and friends. It is rare to find such an honest portrayal of the difficulties a decision like his causes for everyone in his life. Without rancor or weeping and screaming from his family, Tremors quietly exposes the blindness of those surrounding him and his own uncertainty that he may have made the wrong decision.

The later scenes of his society's helping him becoming normal through therapy are the real pain of Tremors because his heart is not in the transformation, but he is willing to sacrifice his own happiness to be with his family.

Nowhere in contemporary cinema will you get as uncompromising a view of the unjust heartache attendant on choosing a societal imperative over one's happiness.

Watch if you like Latin American soap operas otherwise avoid it.

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.

A wife of unspeakable beauty, two adorable children, a flourishing professional activity, ... It's a wonderful life for Pablo, until the discovery of an extramarital and homosexual affair. In this Guatemalan microcosm, an extramarital affair is already inadmissible in itself. And homosexual?!? This is definitely the trigger of a profoundly repressive modus operandi. Pablo is then high and dry, in the depths of the abyss, as a pawn at the mercy of a coercive environment, wedged between two concomitant loves: with his family and with Francisco. Even if the first twenty minutes are a bit messy, the cast is excellent and the photography is neat.

"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