With José, director Li Cheng offers a meditation on the mutual oppressions of religion and poverty on any sense of freedom. Set in present day Guatemala City, the film follows José (Enrique Salanic), a young gay man, through the daily tedium of making ends meet. He lives with his mother (Ana Cecilia Mota), a devout Catholic in constant conversation with God, and works at a restaurant where he is paid to flag down cars in an intersection to get the drivers to stop and eat. His phone offers his only relief. It is the portal to a bigger world of video games, social media and the hookup apps where José meets his lovers. The cheap motel that charges by the hour provides a haven where masks can fall and these men can be themselves.
Though the apps are supposed to indulge the pleasure of anonymity among multiple partners, things change when José meets Luis (Manolo Herrera), a construction worker new to the city and on a short-term contract. They fall in love, but José fears the thought of leaving his mother and the world he knows. Guatemala City is big enough for gay men to hide from authorities that hate them. He doubts that the smaller coastal towns Luis beckons from can offer the same protection. Eventually, Luis needs José to make a decision about their future. When he vacillates, Luis decides their fate and it shatters José. He’s left in Guatemala City with his mother and his apps, but that is not the end of his story.
Cheng and co-screenwriter George F. Roberson don’t invest their characters with great lines to speak, holding their dialogue to the level of melodrama, and the film is constructed as more of a character study than three-act tale. José learns small lessons throughout, but there is no monumental arc that changes him. In fact, he leaves the film much the way he enters it, reticent and weary. Cheng lived in Guatemala for two years while conceiving and creating the film, but the script is a collage of Catholic and Latino tropes. The writers do defy expectations when scenes feel headed toward violence, especially if it appears José is going to be punished for being gay. Like their character, the filmmakers use aloofness as a shield in the bright lights of the city, making the dark corners safe spaces where true identities can be revealed. Salanic’s excellence as a lead also augments the material.
As a director, Cheng has a painter’s eye for constructing a frame. The muted palette he uses in his interiors, particularly when bare male bodies are in view, evokes the religious work of great painters of the Renaissance like Raphael. But, Cheng never allows the beauty of his image to overshadow the poverty. All the materials are frayed, torn and stained, yet they provide context like the most precious still life. Cheng also makes great use of the urban canopy of telephone wires as prison bars in a perfectly executed visual metaphor. Sometimes the film veers toward Symbolism 101, but it’s one of Cheng’s real strengths and makes up for the minimalism of the script. Ultimately, José is an earnest effort, but a mostly forgettable one
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