It’s February 14 and the early two thousand years are at play. Rudy Giuliani is still politically active and people are mending after the September terrorist attacks. People start talking about a lot of memorials and other celebrations. On the other side, school bus drivers have gone on strike and a young girl, who claims to be from New jersey is sleeping with a truck driver in his truck parked at the New Jersey Turnpike gas station. There is in fact a sex scene in Ponyboi where the protagonist, who is a newcomer called River Gallo, is hyping up his customer by saying various sexy lines, and as this is happening, a chubby male asks Ponyboi to calm down and shut up for a bit.
The amusing quite unusual graphic sex between a deep rooted sense of irony is how Ponyboi Esteban Arango makes his feature debut. Performer of Ponyboi, a character created and written by Gallo, who currently identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. Quite unlike others, Ponyboi is about a young intersex assassin on a violent killing spree in the streets, throughout making laughable absurd jokes. Gallo’s screenplay, which is usually too inundated with structural issues, unabashedly supports the core of integration: a detailed, multi layered construction that substantiates great struggles of the character through the: if they were a sex worker, running away from violence and pushing the timescale to the act of Kamikaze.
Ponyboi’s film features Ponyboi, an intersex escort trying to run away from his violent controlling figure (played by a changed and reinvented Dylan O’Brien). In the process, he attempts to form a self concept of who he wants to be rather than being the person everyone perceives him to be. Arango’s movie is less a slice of New Jersey life than a fever dream an overwhelming swirl that leaves the sheets damp and the hand anxious.
Ponyboi’s film is quite well modified and starts the drama at a greater pace and keeps the momentum running across the story. In the Turnpike’s bed with one of his customers, the protagonist records thoughts of the small Ponyboi laying on the bed in a clinic surrounded by parents and the surgical team. One of the persons confined there makes a rather alarming declaration regarding the doctors’ plans to transform Ponyboi into a real cowboy. Woven themes like this one, along with its subsequent male deed’s heavy responsibility tend to echo throughout the novel Ponyboi, like overdoing things. Out of the characters’ transitions, it seems the intersex Ponyboi is the one who struggles with a larger problem, as in he does not wish to conform to the nations’ binary ideology.
As he wears his long curls and looks dramatic with golden glitter eyeshadow, many people tend to think that he has dragged his womanhood into his personality. But the fact is that he takes testosterone hormones on a regular basis and feels aroused with a picture of a cowboy.
Having completed the job and pocketing the cash, Ponyboi makes his way up to his second gig, this time a laundromat on the road. There he runs into his formidable friend Angel played by Victoria Pedretti, who is actually the boss of Ponyboi’s girlfriend, Vinny O’Brien. The fraternal bond that follows between them is quite heartwarming, lady who more than likely is pregnant with Vinny’s spawn and is planning to spend Valentine’s Day with the silly gangster Angel buys cute couple bracelets for her and Ponyboi. She tells him that he doesn’t have to worry since he will meet a man eventually, even though Ponyboi is currently alone on a consumerist holiday.
More privately, initiated by Angel, Ponyboi has been intimate with Vinny. The two admittedly are more business than pleasure, yet their chemistry borders on intimate. As he comes off stage and waltzes inside the laundromat, Ponyboi locks eyes with Vinny and seamlessly goes back to work. Their laundry basement is then filled with bickering where the two struggle to find the ideal position. Ponyboi wants love, but settles for the best version of it that is Vinny.
Coming down from his own high, Ponyboi goes into panic mode as he feels Lucky’s body and notices that it is not breathing. The startled sex worker initially attempts to contact the police, then Vinny, but finally, recalling how charming a cowboy (Murray Bartlett) heading to Vegas was, decides to take charge of the situation. In an effort to preserve his dignity, Ponyboi takes a white towel and places it on Lucky’s dead body, takes the cash, takes a gun and drives away.
Our protagonist in the film is careless and shifts locations but Jersey’s mess shows him the mirror and Girlfriends productions and directs him to some politicians along the way. What a sit Ponyboi weaves with several plots and, for the most part, is able to cover all bases until the final third, which is unbelievably turbulent. There is so much going on the cowboy who has yet to be revealed, returns, a very real interlude with India Moore’s Pose the film begins to unravel in order to tie up any lingering threads. It allows some plot lines, such as that of one ‘Ponyboi’ and his parents, almost to go unrealized, while others find it difficult to invoke the desired impact of emotion so well in the story.
Ponyboi is notably an actor in the documentary Every Body and during the film, Ponyboi tries to add depth to the struggles of the character in a superb scene where the character is trying to get testosterone at a pharmacy prior to going on the run. Viewers are treated to some nice visuals thanks to the cool direction by Arango and the movie’s psychedelic color palette. Great set design by Tommy Love and costumes by Lucy Hawkins helped relive the gritty underbelly of new jersey and gave the film a neo noir atmosphere. Although the pacing was uneven, Ponyboi is one of those films that is driven by its creative message and does not shy away from it which is what makes it feel justified.
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