Ponyboi is a necessary film.
That doesn’t mean it’s inherently a good film. It doesn’t mean moviegoers will leave the theatre feeling necessarily content with its offerings. However, like our struggling intersex protagonist, this film is many things. To define it as one thing, good or bad, feels as redundant as asking someone to choose a gender label they aren’t entirely comfortable with.
Ponyboi has good and bad parts to offer. And River Gallo’s performance as Ponyboi can easily be the sum of its best parts.
The genre-bending coming-of-age film combines elements of a thrilling crime drama with romance and nostalgic giddiness. Written by Gallo and based on their 2019 short film of the same name, Ponyboi follows an intersex sex worker on the run from his employer after a drug deal gone wrong. While the film relies heavily on the tension of this cat-and-mouse game to drive the plot forward, romance and loss soften the edges of the hazy New Jersey tale. Ultimately, Ponyboi’s search for identity gives the project its purpose.
Ponyboi can be messy and untame. It moves at breakneck speed with a desperation that suggests this project had taken the time to work out the kinks, it wouldn’t have been made.
At the center of the breathless storytelling, Gallo’s Ponyboi is the one thing keeping this manic project from flying off the rails. The actor’s grounded performance and compelling onscreen presence make even the most peculiar choices feel like the price of admission to see their talent in action.
Gallo welcomes the challenging task of educating the audience about intersex individuals. They never hit audiences over the head with the dialogue, choosing instead to show us how Ponyboi is expected to move through the world by different groups. The character’s quiet, sombre grief for a gender they never got to choose bathes the performance in a bitter melancholy.
Ponyboi is painfully human, and no amount of brushes with danger hardens his hazy daydreaming qualities. His pursuit of finding love and acceptance in such a cruel world keeps this film from losing itself entirely in the loud brutality of sex and drugs.
As long as the camera keeps focused on Gallo, Ponyboi is a captivating character study with noteworthy escalades.
The film falters in its need to be so much more.
The crime drama elements of Ponyboi’s night on the town emerge organically, offering conflict that must be present to propel Ponyboi to a point of revelation. That said, the war waged between Ponyboi, the local mob, and Dylan O’Brien’s wannabe drug lord Vinny escalates to an absurdity that takes more than it gives.
O’Brien does his best to give this villainous role depth, but Vinny has none to give. At times, irony is enough to make the main antagonist enjoyable as O’Brien celebrates the dim, egotistical kingpin with free-style wrapping and a shot of his bare ass. These cringeworthy moments are brilliant folly for his descent into madness.
Sadly, the film stifles any attempts at further development, and the performance rings hollow, as most of these stereotypical gangster roles do when forced to rely on tired personas.
To justify such a dark turn, this film requires more compelling foes.
Hidden gems of the film also include Victoria Pedretti’s Angel. The actress has a knack for playing wild-eyed, over-the-top characters, and she thrives with her Jersey accent and clacking acrylic nails. When she is in the presence of O’Brien, the two actors are a chaotic, beautiful mess of toxicity.
And Murray Bartlett sells his part as the handsome cowboy comes to sweep Ponyboi off his feet a little too well. His presence is swoon worthy, and his soft gaze damning as he savours every morsal of Ponyboi’s backstory like it is the best meal he has ever tasted.
While the meaning behind his ghostly presence, whether as a visionn of Ponyboi’s romantic sid, ordeep-rooted daddyy issue,s is left up to the audience to decide. The romance that exists within these fleeting moments of quiet diner chats and stolen glances across the bar is some of the best genre work the film has to offer.
Above it all is a story that cannot be touched by much else in cinema.
No where else will you find such a compelling Queer tale about the realities of having to navigate a world of labels as someone born intersex. Nowhere else will you find a protagonist who offers an essential development within LGBTQ+ storytelling while holding their own as a lead actor that could make any movie better.
As audience members, we need to know more about intersex people and the cost of living authentically. We need to understand why choosing a gender for Ponyboi is not the same as it is for someone who is Transgender. We need to see firsthand just how incredible Gallo’s onscreen presence is.
Ponyboi is many things, but unnecessary is not one of them.
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Ponyboi premieres in theatres on June 27.
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