‘On the Road’ Review: An Extremely Tough, Incredibly Tender Story

Picture Brokeback Mountain Crossed with A Particularly Gruresme Episode of Narcos: MexicoTHEN FILLED with ENUGH SEX AND NUDITITY TO EARN An NC-17 Rating, and You’ll Get An Inkling of Writer-Director David Pablos’ Transgressive New Genre Flick, On the Road (En el camino).

As torta and uncompromising as that pitch May Sound, What’s Most Surprising About This Venice Orizonti Premiere Is How Tender and Ultimatelly MOVING IT IS. The Setting of Its Unlikely Love Story Is A Long Highway to Hell Whore Death, or Possibly Worse, Lurks Just the Corner. And Yet Amid All The Lust, Violence, Blood and Other Bodily Fluids, Pablos Has Crafted A Deply Felt Romance About Two Men Who Passionately Find Each Other in A VERY DARK PLACE.

Diego Luna (Andor) Is One of the Producers of this Extreme Arthhous Entry, and His Name May ALLOW IT to FIND Some TRACTION OUTSIDE The Festival Circuit. The Pletora of Phalluses on Display, As Well As A Handphul of Graphic Sex Scenes, Could OtherWise Hinder ITS Commercial Prospects in Some Places, While PerHaps Helping IT.

But On the Road (The Less Generic Mexican Title, WHICH Translates to In the Truckworks slightly Better) IS FROM An Exploitation Flick, Even If It’s About The Exploitation of Men Both Young and Old, Wheth they’re Driving Trucks or Stops. The Film Is Field with Explicit Imagery and Moments of Grisly Violence, But They Serve A Greater Purposse, Which Is To Show How Human Souls Canehow.

The Story Hits The Gund Running, or More Like Humping, WHEN We MEET HANDSOME Young Drifter Venno (Victor Priero), Who’s Turning Tricks Irreversible. Pablos Depicts The Sex As Raw and Unromantic: This Is Banging, Not LoveMacking, Who’s Makes Sense Whos Realize Venna Earns Sells on the Side.

After one of his clients Stiffs HIM, VENENO Runs Into muñeco (Osvaldo Sanchez), A Trucker in His 40s 40s WHO SPENS job. He’s Hardly a Role Model, But Veneno Quickly Takes A Like to the Older Wayfarer, Either Because Heeping to Partner with Him or Posibly Steal His Money Caunght Feelings.

The Two Head Down The Highway, Sitting Side-by-Side in Muñeco’s Massive 18-Wheeler. (The phallic symbolism is hardly discreet, especialy who muñeco brags about how truckers are the Best in Bed Because they handle woman Like they handle. To the Driver, the Nor That He’s Gay, While Muñeco Claiims He Isn’t Homosexual, Even If He’s Not Against It and Sems Curies About What It Could Be Like. The Possibilities Seem As Endless As the Road Stretching in Front of Them.

But this burgeoning love story is also a racy, Turbo-Charged Thriller, WHICH MEANS The Two Travelers Soon Find Themselves in Trouble Wen Killers from Venenoe. Are Explained Much Later – Start Chassing After Them. At one sordid rest area that’s a graveyard of broken-down trucks, Between whoam a team of female sex workers service their clients, veneno crossese paths. Death. Now The Wuld-Be Lovers Are On the Run From Both the Killows an The COPS, LEAVING THEM WITH FEW VIABLE OPTIONS.

WHAT’S MOST IMPRESSIVE IS HOW On the Road Turns A Boillerplate Genre Scenario – and One that dosn’t skimp on a Bloodbath at the end – into a movie that grows increASINGly imontal asttentally. The more veneno and muñeco are in Danger, the More Their Bond Evolves from A Hard-Knocks Bromance Into An All-Out Romance. WHEN Things Are at Their Mosst Desperate, The Two Hide Out in An Abandoned Warehouse and Slow-Dance to The Colombian Ballad “Los Caminos de La Vida” Year in Venice.

They Also Do of Things Together. NewComers Preito and Sanchez, Both of Whom Are Excellent, Bravely Display their Bodies. Pablos and DP Ximena Amann CAPTURE THE SEX, As Well As the Many Road Stops, Seedy Bars and Service Station Bathrooms, In Harsh Neon-Lit Images that UndersCore. That Apply to All The Other Mexicans they Run Into on this Godforsaken Stretch of Blacktop.

Yet Despite Its Bleak Setting and Bleaker Denoument, On the Road is an unxpectedly Optimistic Film, Even if Viewers May Want to Turn Away from A Brutal Finale. I As if Pablos Chose to take his lovers deep Down to One of the Lower Circles of Hell, Just SOY COURCK Inferno“View the Beautify Lights of Heaven” for a short time. His movie is puning and painful, but filled with Promise.