José (II) (2018) is a Guatemalan film co-written and directed by Li Cheng.
The movie follows José (Enrique Salanic) as he goes about his marginal life in urban Guatemala. Manolo Herrera plays Luis, José's lover, and Ana Cecilia Mota portrays his mother.
The movie doesn't move forward with a traditional plot. It's more of a series of vignettes strung together because José is in them. José is gay, but his life would be hard if he weren't gay. Being gay in Guatemala is dangerous, so that adds a definite level of tension to his life and to the film.
His mother also leads a marginal life, because she's selling food without the proper license, and she gets driven from spot to spot by the police. She only has two loves in her life--José and the Evangelical church to which she belongs. It wasn't clear to me whether or not she knew José was gay. She knew that something was happening, but she didn't appear to know what it was.
As the credits to the movie were rolling, we learned that each episode was based on a real event that happened to one of the many people to whom the filmmakers spoke. That's apparently why the film was episodic--it was based on something that really happened to someone in Latin America. (Not just Guatemala.)
We saw this movie in Rochester's wonderful Dryden Theatre at The Eastman House Museum. It was screened as part of Rochester's great ImageOut LGBT Film Festival. This was the film's New York State premiere. My compliments to the festival organizers for bringing the movie to Rochester.
I enjoyed watching the movie on the large screen, but it will work well enough on the small screen. José has a weak IMDb rating of 6.3. It's not a great film, but I think it's better than that.
The movie follows José (Enrique Salanic) as he goes about his marginal life in urban Guatemala. Manolo Herrera plays Luis, José's lover, and Ana Cecilia Mota portrays his mother.
The movie doesn't move forward with a traditional plot. It's more of a series of vignettes strung together because José is in them. José is gay, but his life would be hard if he weren't gay. Being gay in Guatemala is dangerous, so that adds a definite level of tension to his life and to the film.
His mother also leads a marginal life, because she's selling food without the proper license, and she gets driven from spot to spot by the police. She only has two loves in her life--José and the Evangelical church to which she belongs. It wasn't clear to me whether or not she knew José was gay. She knew that something was happening, but she didn't appear to know what it was.
As the credits to the movie were rolling, we learned that each episode was based on a real event that happened to one of the many people to whom the filmmakers spoke. That's apparently why the film was episodic--it was based on something that really happened to someone in Latin America. (Not just Guatemala.)
We saw this movie in Rochester's wonderful Dryden Theatre at The Eastman House Museum. It was screened as part of Rochester's great ImageOut LGBT Film Festival. This was the film's New York State premiere. My compliments to the festival organizers for bringing the movie to Rochester.
I enjoyed watching the movie on the large screen, but it will work well enough on the small screen. José has a weak IMDb rating of 6.3. It's not a great film, but I think it's better than that.