A mesmerizing coming-of-age drama to emerge from the festival circuit, Ponyboi breaks new ground with a complex lead and genre-juggling ambition. The film follows an inter-sex sex worker forced to go on the run from his employer while battling an inner identity crisis. As the night takes a dark turn, Ponyboi seeks refuge in the arms of a romantic connection.
From scene-stealing River Gallo to a menacing Dylan O’Brien, the film has no shortage of impressive talent on hand. When I spoke with Director Esteban Arango ahead of Ponyboi’s theatrical release, he echoed how “exciting” it was to collaborate with this dazzling ensemble.
“All of them bring so many cool ideas and a lot of freshness to the scenes. I’ll come up with ideas to try on the page, but it’s always exciting and nerve-wracking because it’s so unpredictable what each actor is going to bring in turn,” Arango explained.
“Working with Dylan, Murray, India, Victoria, and, of course, River — all of them are so talented and creative, that it was just so much fun to put the scenes on their feet. But it was also difficult at the same time because we were shooting at breakneck speed. So we did rehearsal, then shot it, and then we had to move on. It was a lot of adrenaline.”
For Arango, connecting with Ponyboi was the highlight of his experience reading the script, so he wanted to ensure the film visualized the dreamy inner monologue of the character.
“I just connected with Ponyboi. He’s a person who lives constantly in their head, remembering their troubled past. But also projecting this idea of the future, of who they want to be and the type of love that they want to find.”
“And that’s something that I love in movies, this subjectivity and these characters that show you their reality for an hour and a half, where you get to understand them at a deeper level — you get to see their thoughts. And that’s something really hard to do in movies, but the way that this script and the story were laid out called for that,” Arango said.
Even as the fast-moving film careens toward disaster, with vengeful mobsters and O’Brien’s wannabe gangster closing in on Ponyboi, Arango was drawn to highlighting the rose-tinted lens the character clings to for comfort.
“I wanted to create moments where we saw the past in this selective memory space where you just see flashes of the little ponies, the ice cream, Dad, and Mom. But very fleeting, just like it happens for us.”
Ultimately, at the heart of this New Jersey joyride is an endearing meet-cute: “I also wanted to create through the cinematography and the use of music and time, dilation and contraction, this feeling of falling in love,” Arango revealed.
“When someone comes along and sweeps you off your feet, it feels like the world sort of stops. It was a lot of fun playing with my cinematographer, shooting the scenes in 48 frames-per-second, so that in editing, we could enter slow motion and then sort of go back to real time to accentuate these feelings of ‘Oh my God, look at this handsome cowboy. Is he here? Is he looking at me?’ That was a lot of fun to do.”
As for what audiences can take from this film, Arango hopes they watch Ponyboi and feel “empowered.”
“For this search of freedom to be who they want to be, and to also find the energy, the wherewithal to search for that forgiveness for the wounds of the past,” Arango added. “I feel like forgiving and trying to heal those wounds is the only way to really be free. So that’s the energy that I want them to walk out of the theater with.”
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Ponyboi releases in theatres on June 27. Check out our review of the film here!
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