Tensions of a transitioning teen
Film
Published 08/18/2011
by David Lamble
http://www.ebar.com/arts/art_article.php?sec=film&article=906Writer/director Rashaad Ernesto Green describes the torn-from-life origins of his passionate debut feature Gun Hill Road, where a Puerto Rican teen's pursuit of his identity as a young woman pushes his Bronx family to the brink. "I had a family member who went through something very similar. I watched this family deteriorate because of its inability to understand this child's transition. I saw a father who really needed his child's love, and a child who needed her father's love, and they just couldn't come together. I wanted to make a piece of art that didn't have all the answers, but showed that if you put love and family first, everything else would be figured out."
There's an eruption of convict-on-convict violence in the opening minutes of this queer youth melodrama that stays with you throughout. A female-identified transgendered teen's life is thrown into turmoil upon the release from prison of his macho daddy. Enrique Michael Rodriguez (a ferocious turn from Esai Morales) is headed for his family's apartment in the heart of a sprawling Puerto Rican ghetto in the Bronx. Enrique expects to step right back into his patriarchal role as husband to a hardworking wife (Scrubs' Judy Reyes) and "Papi" to a beautiful teenage boy, Michael (newcomer Harmony Santana).
