My Straight Son

Miguel Ferrari's award-winning film focuses on Diego (Guillermo García), a successful Venezuelan fashion photographer, who lives with his partner, Fabrizio (Sócrates Serrano), a prominent surgeon. Diego's happy, if somewhat shallow, lifestyle is abruptly altered when Fabrizio is brutally assaulted by homophobic thugs and hospitalized in a coma. Complicating matters is the arrival from Spain of Armando (Ignacio Montes), Diego's teenage son, who is less than happy to discover that his father is gay. The problem with My Straight Son is that it often feels like a pair of very different films unevenly grafted together, with results that seesaw wildly between genuinely emotional drama and connect-the-dots melodrama. The storyline involving Diego's struggles to cope with the attack on Fabrizio is truly moving, as Diego's friends create a circle of compassion during a period of great personal grief, but the estranged father-son relationship narrative is thoroughly predictable and badly written. Still, García shines, delivering a deeply poignant performance of a man traumatized by a horrendous crime. A strong optional purchase. (P. Hall)