Pelo malo, cheveux rebelles

This film is excellent. The acting, the story telling, and the productions values are all very high. I think a previous reviewer had the impression that the film should address more head on the subject of growing up black. But I can tell you as someone who is from Venezuela and now lives in the US, that's not a subject that it's discussed much in Venezuela. So I believe you're coming at it from your experience of growing up in the US. I bet if you were to ask the little boy in the film if he considers himself black, he would say no. The way this film tackles ethnicity and socioeconomic disparities is very subtle and that's why I believe it's so effective. Venezuela is a country obsessed with beauty pageants, and as many we have accepted that "straight hair" is the definition of beauty. I myself grew up believing I had "Pelo Malo." I now of course love my hair just the way it is. That was a wonderful tool the filmmaker chose to illustrate a symbol of not belonging. For me this film is mostly an exploration of motherhood. Mothers are supposed to be perfect, but how can you be when you're so focused on just surviving? I never once doubted that in the film the mother deeply loves her children, she's just making the choices she believes she has to make in her situation, even though sometimes those choices were plainly wrong.

"Pelo Malo" may turn out to be one of the great films about childhood. It is also one of the few movies that could loosely fit into the criteria of New Queer Cinema since it deals with the subject of a nine year old boy who almost certainly will grow up gay. He lives in the slums of Caracas with his mother and baby brother and it's his obsession with his hair, among other things, that leads his mother to conclude that he might, indeed, be gay and she's not the type of mother who wants a gay son. Fundamentally the issues on display here are notions of machismo and homophobia and they are treated with a good deal of sensitivity and some humour by the director Mariana Rondon.

As the boy, little Samuel Lange Zambrano is really quite extraordinary and Samantha Castillo is equally good as the mother struggling to keep her family together. Indeed, the naturalistic acting of the whole cast is to be commended. This is largely down to the intuitive direction of Rondon whose documentary-style approach is not far removed from Italian neo-realism and, although this is only her third feature in 16 years, marks her out as someone to watch.

Captivating and tells a lot about the lives of the people living there. How politics remains on the background, how dominant ideas shape the reaction of the mother and the immense poverty they live under is grasped perfectly.

'Pelo Malo' means 'Bad Hair' and Junior is a nine year old growing up in a slum project with his single parent mother. He finds it hard to fit in and is constantly mistreated by his mother; this same mother dotes on his baby brother – who happens to have straight hair. Junior has curly hair – but apparently the absent father is the same for both of them.

His mother works for poverty wages and is not averse to doing anything to get her old job back as a security guard. Meanwhile poverty sticks to everything around Junior like a bad smell in towering estates that are all concrete and hopelessness – he still manages to dream and see some beauty with the help of his little girl friend. He also wants to be a singer with straight hair and will try any old wives tale to make his curls go straight.

This is an unusual film that was said to be a Venezuelan 'Precious' and I can see some parallels but little more than that. It is not a film that will have you 'skyping home' but it will make you think. The cinematography is actually quite good too, but the story did feel a bit padded at times – still it is good to see South America tackling issues of mixed race families, poverty and crime.

Nothing uplifting about this movie. Long, depressing (and cruel) ...with a disappointing ending. Should have been called "Bad Movie."