‘Ponyboi’ Review: River Gallo and Dylan O’Brien Star in a Sexy, Sweaty New Jersey Fever Dream

It’s Valentine’s Day in the early aughts. Rudy Giuliani performs a hand in New York politics, and residents are nonetheless recovering from the occasions of September 11. There are talks of a memorial, amongst different commemorations. Throughout the river, bus drivers are on strike and a younger, self-proclaimed “Jersey girl” rides a trucker in the parking zone of the New Jersey Turnpike gasoline station. As Ponyboi (performed by newcomer River Gallo) amps his consumer up with theatrical advert libs, the stout john provides a be aware: May Ponyboi flip it down a notch and contemplate talking much less? 

This droll opening scene, which begins with the sweaty rigidity of intercourse earlier than touchdown on smirking humor, is emblematic of Esteban Arango’s function Ponyboi. Premiering at Sundance in the U.S. Dramatic Competitors and written by Gallo, its intersex lead who makes use of they/them pronouns, Ponyboi revises the crime drama by placing ahead an unconventional protagonist with a lot of coronary heart and a little humor. Gallo’s screenplay achieves one thing nonetheless uncommon in an business unnecessarily confused about inclusion: Ponyboi seamlessly integrates its character’s challenges with id into a propulsive story about a intercourse employee on the run. It additionally introduces Gallo, whose sturdy efficiency provides audiences a new hero price rooting for. The result’s a glossy movie, solely often hampered by predictability and contrivance. 

Ponyboi chronicles the wild and sticky 24-hour journey of its protagonist Ponyboi, an intersex employee on the run from his pimp (a remodeled Dylan O’Brien) and his previous. Alongside the best way, he tries to form a self-image aligned with who he desires to be versus who everybody thinks he’s. Arango’s movie is a New Jersey fever dream, the sort of kaleidoscopic imaginative and prescient that leaves sheets damp and palms clammy. 

The movie begins at full pace and hardly ever lets up. Throughout intercourse along with his Turnpike consumer, Ponyboi remembers reminiscences of his youthful self on a hospital mattress, surrounded by the faces of his mother and father and a crew of surgeons. One of many individuals in this room makes a assertion extra ominous than reassuring about how the medical doctors are going to make Ponyboi a actual cowboy. This concept and its baggage — authenticity, the load of masculinity — reverberate all through Ponyboi. As an intersex character, Ponyboi struggles with dwelling in a world asking him to decide on throughout the binary. Cascading curls and glittering eyeshadow make individuals assume he’s making an attempt to be a lady, however he frequently takes testosterone hormones and is drawn to visions of cowboys. 

With the job full and the cash collected,  Ponyboi heads to his second gig at a roadside laundromat. There, he runs into his finest buddy Angel (Victoria Pedretti), the girlfriend of Ponyboi’s boss Vinny (O’Brien). The 2 share a heartfelt second: Angel, who’s 4 months away from giving beginning to Vinny’s child and plans to spend Valentine’s Day with the goofy gangster, buys matching friendship bracelets for Ponyboi. She assures him that though he’s spending the business vacation alone, he’ll finally discover a man. 

Unbeknownst to Angel, Ponyboi is having intercourse with Vinny. The connection is extra association than romance, however there’s an understated sweetness to the pair’s interactions. When Vinny barges into the laundromat, all efficiency and awkward swag, Ponyboi’s eyes observe him. When the 2 have intercourse in the cavernous backroom later, their post-coital second is crammed with a shocking grade-school gentleness and intimate ease. Ponyboi yearns for love and Vinny, nevertheless imperfect, provides a model of that. 

Ponyboi kicks into gear when a consumer (Stephen Moscatello) dies after smoking a new pressure of meth created by Vinny. Ponyboi panics after coming down from his personal excessive and noticing Fortunate isn’t respiration. At first, the alarmed intercourse employee tries to name the police, then Vinny, and then lastly, impressed by an earlier interplay with a charming cowboy (Murray Bartlett) heading to Vegas, decides to grab the second. Ponyboi respectfully throws a white sheet over Fortunate’s inflexible physique, steals the money, grabs a gun and hits the highway. 

Our nomadic protagonist doesn’t get very far in phrases of distance, however his Jersey journey yields self-revelations and transcendent encounters. Ponyboi is filled with a number of threads, and maintains full management till a bumpy third act. With a lot occurring — the mysterious cowboy comes again, and there’s a detour to a heartfelt second with Pose’s Indya Moore — the movie begins to depend on cliché and contrivance to wrap up free ends. This leaves some plotlines — like one between Ponyboi and his mother and father — underbaked whereas others battle to attain their supposed emotional poignancy. 

Nonetheless, Gallo is robust because the movie’s lead, proving adept in a position that requires shifting between deadly thrill and mild comedy. The actor, whom viewers may know from the intersex documentary Each Physique, teases out their character’s interior rigidity, bringing a heartbreaking texture to scenes just like the one in which Ponyboi tries to get extra testosterone at a pharmacy earlier than hitting the highway. Arango’s glossy course and the movie’s psychedelic palette make for a visually pleasing viewing expertise. Tommy Love’s manufacturing design and Lucy Hawkins’ costuming carry the gritty underworld of New Jersey to life, and add to the movie’s sense of neo-noir dread. Regardless of the hiccups, Ponyboi’s assurance in its imaginative and prescient and religion in its radical narrative makes it a journey price getting on.