Review of Bad Hair (2014) by Frederick M — 20 Sep 2016

Set in Venezuela during the period when the president, Hugo Chavez, was ill and dying with cancer, this fine film explores issues of identity - national, racial, sexual, familial. "Bad hair" is what you have if you have some African roots; the desire to wipe those roots out by hair straightening is virtually a national obsession, especially for Venezuelan women. And there's the rub - it is a 9 year old boy, Junior, who finds himself determined to defeat the curls that evidence the long-gone liaison that his mother, Marta, had with a man of black origins. Marta worries that the apparently feminine interest in his appearance is a sign of incipient homosexuality - and it may well be. The film tracks the battle of wills between mother and son, and in the process sheds light on the racism and grinding, no-way-out poverty of the masses who live in Caracas' high rise housing estates.

The photography is well done, and there is not so much of the heavy symbolism beloved of Latin-American cinema, but it is a hard watch. The second of two sex scenes particularly is particularly uncomfortable, as Marta tries to "redirect" her son's burgeoning sexuality by effectively forcing him to see her with her boss - an encounter which is in itself unemotional, economic, abusive/manipulative and crude. The love she showers on her baby, while in a state of war with her older child, and her own fragile, hunted temper and mood swings are brutally and depressingly portrayed. The awful thing is that it is probably realistic; you feel you are watching real people. Samuel Lange as Junior in particular is absolutely stunning.

But for all of this, there are many lighter moments. The film is not all misery. And, even where Marta seems to have won some battles, you are left wondering how, not if, Junior is going to win the war.