Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano) is nine-years-old and has stubbornly bad hair, or “pelo malo.” He so wants to have it straightened for his yearbook picture, although he still needs to get the money to pay for it. He wants long, ironed hair because that’s how celebrated pop singers have it, or so he says. But currently unemployed working-class Martha (Samantha Castillo), his widowed mother, won’t allow it. She feels there’s something queer about it. She even believes the boy is kind of effeminate. And the more Junior tries to “be beautiful” so his mother will love him, the more he’s rejected by her.
Winner of the Golden Shell at the San Sebastián Film Festival, Pelo malo, by Venezuelan filmmaker Mariana Rondón, is a most sensitive character study of a mother and a son at odds both with themselves and their surroundings. Junior is just beginning to explore his sexuality, even if he doesn’t know that’s what he’s doing. How could he? For the time being, he feels there’s something great about having long ironed hair as pop stars do. And he often indulges into staring at a good-looking teen working nearby. Not that the teen notices it, but Junior’s mum does.
And she doesn’t want to put up with it, even when Carmen (Nelly Ramos), her dead husband’s mother, tells her that’s just the way the boy is, that there’s no way to change him. Grandma doesn’t mind. In fact, she makes him a singer’s costume to wear for his photo shoot. And she’s willing to raise him, provided that in return he takes care of her. If Martha doesn’t get a job she can hold on to, how is she to care for Junior and his baby brother? Maybe she can keep the baby and give Junior to Grandma Carmen. After all, her mother-in-law is willing to pay her as much as she asks.
Yes, it does sound dehumanized. And yet it’s not. Mariana Rondón is smart enough to build characters that appear to be icy and distant, and yet deep inside they can be warm and caring in all their loneliness. Characters that have the right to be humanly contradictory. Just like Junior has the right to have long, ironed hair — that is good hair, or “pelo bueno.”
What stings the most is that Junior’s self-proclaimed freedom is violently inhibited by his mother, who could (but can’t) allow him to discover himself. While she loves him, in some ways she is as repressed as the society she lives in.
Against the backdrop of an overcrowded and hostile Caracas where the poor are many, the story of Junior and his mum and grandma develops in many layers, from the seemingly trivial to the most existential, and always without the slightest trace of solemnity. It could have given way to melodrama, but Rondón goes for hard-bitten realism. Which explains why everything rings true (some of the scenes are born out of actors’ improvisation), why the story is actually universal despite its Venezuelan setting, and why you never feel underestimated by enlightening messages. A rich story told with an equal amount of sensitivity and lucidness.
Production notes
Pelo Malo / Bad Hair (Venezuela, 2013) Written and directed by Mariana Rondón. With Samuel Lange, Samantha Castillo. Cinematography: Micaela Cajahuaringa. Editing: Marite Ugas. Running time: 93 minutes.
