The plot unfolds on Valentine's Day in New Jersey. A young intersex sex worker must flee the mafia after a drug bust forces him to confront his past.
Every once in a while, a film comes along with such an innovative perspective that it's not only refreshing but sometimes falters by trying to cover too much ground, as if no one will ever make a film like this again and every possible angle and plot point needs to be thoroughly analyzed. As a result, some specificity is traded for breadth, meaning that even what should seem bold and novel becomes familiar.
Director: Esteban Arango
Writer: River Gallo
Stars: River Gallo, Dylan O'Brien, Victoria Pedretti
That's one way of saying that Ponyboi, from director Esteban Arango (based on a script written by star River Gallo, who expands on the duo's 2019 short film with this feature-length version accepted at Sundance 2024), about an intersex sex worker who gets caught up in a mess involving lethal drugs and her psychotic pimp who sells them to various people (played with ruthless New York authority by Dylan O'Brien, who continues to trade dystopian teen fame for atypical roles), while also facing an identity crisis about her gender, which also briefly spirals into a dreamlike subplot, is a scattered film with results of varying quality.
More specifically, the filmmakers struggle to integrate all the characters and plots into a solid, compelling narrative. There's a certain confusion in the development, as if the film were dumping more story and characters on the viewer scene after scene, in what feels like an unengaging setup that fails to present these characters with multiple dimensions. It's a set piece after set piece that eventually creates a convoluted scenario from which the eponymous Ponyboi must escape alive.
Set on Valentine's Day, as mentioned above, Ponyboi is a prostitute sexualized for his intersex traits, and Vinny, played by Dylan O'Brien, manages the laundromat where his clients work. Ponyboi is also friends with Angel (Victoria Pedretti), Vinny's pregnant girlfriend, who also works at the laundromat and wears matching best friend bracelets.
After Vinny visits Angel and the laundromat, he makes sexual advances toward Ponyboi that are not only awkward but also manipulative, given how he fetishizes his intersex parts, uses any pronouns he wants with an already insecure and confused person, and seemingly won't take no for an answer. When the two have sex, there's technically consent, but the reality is that this is an out man taking advantage of an intersex person for pleasure. Not to mention adultery; unsurprisingly, Vinny sleeps with a lot of people.
Vinny is also involved in the designer drug industry, having made a potentially lucrative deal. When a mobster enters the laundromat looking to prostitute himself, he insists on using the drug and dies during sex. Ponyboi doesn't realize this right away, deciding to overcome the unpleasantness of fornication by fantasizing that this cruel, unattractive man is someone they met minutes earlier: a gentle Las Vegas man in a cowboy hat (Murray Bartlett) who offers to take him on an adventure.
And while he feels sexual desire for this man, he also brings up unfinished business with his father, who never accepted them as they are and forced them to undergo surgery to become smaller. As more scenes unfold between Ponyboi and this mysterious person, a juxtaposition emerges: this is a calmer, more accepting man they wish was their father, and that much of this could be a fantasy in their heads.
However, stories about LGBTQ+ acceptance are now common. Whether it's real or not, that whole dynamic, and the question of whether or not Ponyboi should return home to visit his dying father (the nickname comes from him, in what could be an innocent thing, stemming from his fascination with ponies, or a more malicious thing, mocking his identity), often interferes with the distinctive thrill of watching an intersex person in a criminal underworld, trying to rise above a bad situation, steal money, and escape this life. The resolution to the personal story feels basic and empty, as it contrasts with an entirely different, edgier kind of film. It's more exciting, though still routine, when Ponyboi functions as a cat-and-mouse game with a lunatic on the loose, whose secrets are revealed by the minute and his life falls apart. Yet even that element comes across as more soap opera-like than complex.
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