Ponyboi (2024)

Ponyboi-(2024)
Ponyboi (2024)

Depending on how you see it, “Ponyboi” is either a worthy work of exploration that tackles non-binary gender identity or yet another clichéd crime film with an atypically depicted queer lead. Still, it is a whorish but one-of-a-kind demonstration for intersex activist and actor River Gallo, who identifies as they and sees it as a chance to destigmatize and bring understanding to two-gender traits in society that seems to compartmentalize everyone into male and female.

Given that context, it is ridiculously funny that while there is a range stretching from the Eeyore-like protagonist Gallo to their legions of blandly conventional knife-toting buddies, it is the setting that blinds one’s imagination. Gallo’s Ponyboi is an outlier within a montage of second-hand caricatures – animation of sinister mobsters, skinhead pushers, and low-grade skanks grabbing lobsters for thirty-hour strips a tawdry cast borrowed from a thousand low-budget salacious features.

In any case, cinema does not have any relevant figures like Gallo who possesses a million volts of charisma and seems to not impress within this context. It is a pity because the actress does have something of a Lady Gaga about her a personality that is soft yet at the same time, very captivating and fierce which makes her a striking presence altogether. Furthermore, Let’s add the queer-noir feel that lends to his beautiful wide-screen cinematography, which is what, low-key shadows come with a more bright pink color light and you can almost feel what was lost in the long run.

Expanding upon their 2019 short film of the same name, Gallo draws upon the underbelly elements that make Ponyboi, an androgynous (male-identified, female-presenting) sex worker from New Jersey, who fantasizes about a burly cowboy that would tear her butt up. The feature version that was directed by Esteban Arango (‘Blast Beat’) has the titular character introduced in a flashback montage experiencing hazy recollections of a Latino macho father behind a voice telling the doctor that they can ‘make you big, strong man like Papa’ to his visibly traumatized son. In the film, Ponyboi’s father is a character that inflicts trauma upon him as he is trying to fill an idea of a gendered child onto a child whose gender expressions and identity diversity need to be valued, not repressed.

Those who watched the 2023 documentary in which Gallo appeared, “Every Body”, do know their point of view towards the parents who choose surgery without consent. To put it briefly, they contend that there is nothing in intersex people that needs to be ‘fixed’, and when such interventions are undertaken on infants or children, it amounts to consensual genital mutilation. In ‘Ponyboi’ a similar view is voiced although we have to wait for fifty minutes into the movie for Ponyboi’s secret to be uncovered. Through this time, however, the film accommodates the notion, convincing viewers that the character has to be a trans woman. After all, there was a time when no one could have predicted the film’s storyline. Those who know what this film is about will not be surprised, however, they will be able to empathize with those who accidentally tune in to this movie.

From the beginning of the film, Gallo portrays himself as a victim of a system that excludes people of gender non-conformance and uses them. It is a quite valid criticism, but the images and the language of the film take this much too far. In one of his earlier films, “Ponyboi”, Gallo worked with a morbidly obese truck driver on New Jersey’s Turnpike. In a different scene, back at the Fluff N Fold laundromat, he rides the disgusting Stephen Moscatello who plays a schadenfreude hypocritical goombah who comes looking for his filthy girlfriend Vinny’s filthy meth. Unsurprisingly the Italian lard ass overdoses and Ponyboi is left with Coutts, a simpering slacker, and a suitcase full of dollars.

Well, one can say that since sex work is a real issue for trans and nonbinary individuals, then this somehow vindicates Gallo’s decision to ensure Ponyboi went through those types of ordeals. Politically this validates the rhetoric but many of the numerous clichés that are in the script undermine what was different about Gallo’s short film, this being the portrayal of the relationship between Ponyboi and a bearded cowboy character who was both idealistic and an influencer for the character.

We also have a character to associate that role with Bruce (Murray Bartlett) seems to come from a Marlboro advertising campaign, and utters the words Ponyboi wants to hear “I like that you’re different.” Explaining hurt can be accomplished with “familial” abuse, and Bruce gains more significance here as he comes to the rescue of our endangered hero when he needs it the most, and then vanishes completely. That’s a loose end Gallo didn’t know how to resolve, as the two-hour version does require some rendition of Ponyboi returning home to put an end to the differences that he has with his father.

Arango’s film goes from one act to another act in a rhythm many would have visualized while watching the promo, with two interesting detours: First, Ponyboi drops by a drug store in order to buy male hormones, where the film tries to illustrate the oppression faced by intersex people (even at the hands of the so-called doctors). Second, he goes to a trans bar, where his old friend (bursting with Indya Moore) reminds the audience what the ‘subplot’ of this movie is: “It was not hormones that told me who I was. It was me who took care of that.” These scenes illustrate something important, but they do not really explain why most of the film is so monotonous. Gallo does not possess any great propensity for screenwriting but hopefully, when the right person sees “Ponyboi,” they will be invited to a film that is definitely better than this.

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