- Felipe and Claudio have a unique relationship. Somehow destiny pulls them apart and sets Felipe on a journey where he will risk everything in his pursuit of happiness.
- Felipe and Claudio form a very particular relationship, somehow destiny pulls them apart taking Claudio to the United Sates, now Felipe must embark on a journey where he will risk everything in his pursuit of happiness, so he can finally meet Claudio at the other side of the border.
- The relationship between two young gay Mexican men is profoundly colored by the circumstance of escaping to "the other side," that is, crossing the border into the United States. Claudio and Felipe coyly can't take their eyes off each other as they ride on a city bus. We next see them together in Claudio's garage workshop, where he is repairing a motorcycle. He confides to Felipe that his work fixing bikes is the only thing keeping him from going to the other side. When he finishes the repair, he takes off his T-shirt and tosses it to Felipe, whereupon Claudio's dad enters and announces that dinner is ready. The father is obviously suspicious and disapproving of Claudio's guest, who is introduced as a coworker at the shop where Claudio works. Felipe and Claudio's father shake hands, but if Felipe is a mechanic, why are his hands not stained or callused? When the father leaves, the boys share a tender moment. Suddenly, Claudio has left for the U.S., and Felipe is determined to go after him. The account of Felipe's travails in arranging for his journey and making the arduous and treacherous trek north (paying a coyote, hiking across the desert, consoling himself along the way by wearing the cherished T-shirt Claudio had given him) is told in snippets interspersed among scenes of the men being happily together in Los Angeles (making love, frequenting gay bars, living the freedom and exhilaration of motorcycle rides along the LA river basin), intertwining moments of agony and of ecstasy. At the end, as the men are in bed together, Felipe is asleep. Claudio wakes him, and Felipe's eyes open wide with a start, but it is unclear how much of what Felipe has experienced may be merely a dream, and in fact it appears he may have died fantasizing about being reunited with his lover during his crossing to the promised land.
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