El Príncipe

"The Prince" (El Príncipe) is a Chilean prison drama by Sebastián Muñoz. 2019.

Leone Queer, Venice Film Festival, 2019.

Chile, 1970.

While outside this Chilean prison in the 1970s, when Salvador Allende's government was about to take office, heterosexuality was mandatory, in the prison described here, the exact opposite is true: between Jaime and El Potro, a "black" love relationship develops, as they called it in prisons at the time. Once he becomes El Príncipe, Jaime discovers that prison is a world based on power relations but also on tenderness and loyalty.

Paradoxically, the confinement and the surrounding homoeroticism allow him to reveal himself despite the stifling violence. He will experience the love he was unable to experience in freedom.

It's therefore a love melodrama set in a prison setting, but a story of strong men that shows the rise of a man in love with himself, empty and wild, capable of dragging others into his self-idolatry.

In this place cut off from the rest of the world, love and death resonate like tangos and guitars.

Passion, where homosexuality isn't even an option, is a way of life, full of skin, fears, and pain. The law of the strongest prevails between grunts and strong embraces and whispers that pass from mouth to mouth.

Some critics mention the director's excessive depiction of homosexual relationships, masturbation, and male genitalia. This choice is influenced by the tone and the narrative. They are not gratuitous: the three sex scenes illustrate important aspects of the story.

A prison story for very macho males who purr like cats. It's reminiscent of Querelle.

The director, whose debut film this is, has a long career as an art director, and it's evident from the very first shot: a pool of blood flowing from a severed neck, which we follow all the way to the killer's shoes.

The narrative perspective is interesting: prison drama is already abundantly represented in cinema, so why not give someone the freedom to focus on other human facets of what can happen there?

The pace is brisk, and the performances could make many Oscar winners jealous.

The ending, which some consider predictable, is simply coherent.

A violent and brutal coming-of-age story.

Good cinema.

#henrimesquida #gaycinemaandliterature.

A young man, apparently having committed a shocking murder in a nightclub, is sent to prison in 1970's Chile. The prison is small and filthy, with men sharing beds, and homosexuality so rife it may as well be a gay bar.

The young man, known as "the Prince", is chosen to replace another youth in the bed of "the Stallion", apparently the master of this domain. He is immediately sexually assaulted by "the Stallion" - at least it appeared as such to me. This brutal beginning to their relationship doesn't stop romance from blossoming, strangely enough.

Interspersed are flashbacks to the friendship the Prince shared with a young man known as the Gypsy, which eventually led to the pivotal violence. There is also a bizarre sequence where Prince apparently has sex with his own mother (?).

This could have been an effective story, but the constant focus on sex makes it feel more like pornography, even down to the nonchalant attitude toward sexual assault. You don't see enough of the characters to get a feel for who they're supposed to be, and you certainly don't care about the protagonist.

As a shocking view of depravity and brutality in a Chilean prison before Allende's election, the film is convincing. The events of the film leading up to Jaime's transformation are somewhat less so.

Nonetheless, the film held the attention and even though it was based on a trash novel one got the feeling of wanting to know what would happen next.

The lovemaking scenes were not even vaguely erotic including the ones where there was some tenderness.

I was slightly disappointed, but knowing the source material, I guess I wasn't looking for or expecting more. I don't regret watching, by any means.

I didn't expect too much, I thought (with some wishful thinking, I admit!) that this would be some flimsy soft-erotic gay prison thing. But to my surprise it turned out to be more serious than that, providing an actually involving story of a young guy who lands in a Chilean prison somewhere in the 70's during the Allende regime (I didn't feel by the way that this setting added anything substantial to the premise) and as a newbie is confronted with the existing prison rules and culture, especially with the sexual aspects of it. He gets sexually and emotionally involved with an older inmate, with all kinds of positive and negative consequences.

The biggest part of the movie is set in the prison, and this convinces the most. The smaller part (by way of flash-backs) in which we see how young Jaime came to commit the crime for which he was incarcerated, is rather fragmentary and felt a bit rushed. It leaves Jaime's background almost totally blank, so his sudden outburst into a jealous rage comes totally out of the blue.

Although there isn't happening that much (there's a lot more action in every single episode of Oz!), you keep being interested in how things will evolve. Apart from one pivotal incident towards the end of the movie, there's hardly any violence between all the inmates, but instead of that a surprising amount of intimacy and emotionally caring for each other. Touchingly illustrated when all inmates respectfully come to offer their condolences to Jaime when his protector and lover is killed.

There is a fair amount of very graphic gay sex, but I guess you could call it functional in this specific story. Still praise to the actors who had the courage to participate, it cannot have been easy.

Apart from the earlier mentioned flaws, I do have some other to mention. The leader inmate is called The Stud, but it is hard to relate that nickname to the middle-aged and rather frail looking actor Alfredo Castro. And biggest let-down to me was the way main character Jaime (The Prince) was played by Juan Carlos Maldonado. He mostly acted like an autistic nerd, walking and talking like a robot, being reasonably good-looking but for the rest totally uncharismatic and never (at least in my opinion) deserving that illuster nickname The Prince.

When Jaime kills his best friend (who he lusted after) in a fit of rage, he is sent to a prison which was terrible in its own right. Placed in a cell with four others, he is forced to sleep with the Stallion (who is the boss in this cell and who tied to the most powerful prisoner in the place) Forced sex happens in this prison so is accepted. Now called the Prince he slowly changes over time to become very strong. The deleted scenes are very explicit. Life goes on even if in prison.