I wasn't too sure what was in store for me with this Mexican gay indie flick. After watching it, I'm still struggling for a final opinion.
THE GOOD: Limbo is certainly original and you've probably not seen much like it. The underlying premise of hanging around somewhere between life and death as a basis for a coming-of-age character study actually works rather well. The main character, Isao, is sweet and charming enough to like and his wide-eyed curiosity about himself and the world around him is fun and gives the movie a spirit. The script is respectable and brings together many varied elements of the story in a compact and flowing manner. Watching Limbo, I was intrigued at what was going on and wanted to know what happens next - rare for gay indie cinema which is typically very formulaic.
THE BAD: Unfortunately, quite a bit of the technical stuff. The sound production is absolutely horrid in terms of effects, music, audio-ambiance, and dubbing (just watch the scene with the gym teacher approaching the showers... the audio makes the script's attempt at drama laughable). I often wondered when some of the "dramatic build-up" music was playing just who could have possibly thought that such cheap and awkward sounds were okay. The cinematography is pretty bad - brace yourself for a lot of short clips super-fast-flashed across the screen as a much-overused device. It appears as though it's shot on video tape and is not brilliant footage. The acting leaves much to be desired in just about every case (with the exceptions of the nurse and the lawyer who are not bad and Isao who varies from barely passable to okay) and in a couple of spots is positively horrible (the aforementioned gym teacher and the blind man). The result is that it just feels like a very juvenile production. I know that that is the case for most low-budget indies, but in Limbo it really seems to draw away from the surprisingly interesting story. One of my big problems is actually a casting one: the actor playing the 10-year-old, sexually confused boy is actually a girl named Fatima Diaz. For a film that preaches about it being okay to be a queer-acting boy, this casting choice undermines the message by saying that it's not even okay to cast a boy to play a queer-acting boy.
THE VERDICT: While it was pieced together and soundtracked a bit like a Junior High School project, Limbo steps out of the box and offers up something fresh. Fatima Diaz is very watchable and charming. The story actually grabs your attention and makes you pay attention which is a wonderful thing in this genre. The production qualities are very cheap, the acting isn't great, and the casting is... puzzling. So you end up with an idea vs. execution kind of film. If you can manage the problems, then the underlying story is very intriguing. If you're like me, then at the end of it all, you'll be going back and forth over which side wins out. It's probably an okay purchase for the gay cinema buff.
