El Principe aka “The Prince”, the directing debut of filmmaker Sebasti\u00e1n Mu\u00f1oz, is one of most homoerotic prison movies we have seen for some time, and it bears the influences of other queer movies of that genre. The main difference of this tale set in Allende’s Chile in the 1970s is that young Jaime (Juan Carlos Maldonado) – who is given the nickname The Prince – is actually happy to be in jail.<\/p>\n
He’s been imprisoned for murdering a man he befriended and flirted with in a bar who preferred to sleep with a girl rather than him.<\/p>\n
Jaime is a beautiful, curly-haired young man, and when he is put in a cell with just one bunk bed set and four other men, he is immediately “adopted” by Stud (Alfredo Castro), who discards his present lover so that Jamie can take his place.<\/p>\n
Stud tells Jaime that to survive in prison he must be macho. At this stage, Jaime is anything but and meekly follows him into the group showers, where he allows Stud to penetrate him without question.<\/p>\n
The jail is a grim sordid place, and the warders seem to turn a blind eye to all the homosexuality going on. Stud is far from the only one who has his own bunk buddy. But occasionally the guards need to show the prisoners that they are the ones in power, and the movie’s most brutal scene is a very graphic rape of Stud. It’s a warning to everyone that even alpha males like Stud can be brought to heel.<\/p>\n
The cell next door also has its own gang leader in Che Pibe (Gaston Pauls), who has his own very young “boyfriend,” Dany. Che Pibe struts around the jail as the procurer and supplier of anything and everything, and now the newly-confident Jaime has his eyes on two things that Che Pibe possesses: A new red leather jacket and Dany. In one very explicit shower scene, it looks like he is going to get at least one of them.<\/p>\n
In between all these scenes, there are flashbacks of Jaime’s youth, where we see that not only was he aware of his sexuality from a very early age, but he disliked his life so much that he actually prefers being behind bars, especially because this is where he matures and becomes the man he feels he was always destined to be.<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1oz wrote the script with Luis Barrales, adapting a novel by Mario Cruz, and it is an immensely powerful and engrossing coming-of-age film, the like of which we’ve never seen before. Whilst it hardly glorifies homosexuality, it certainly normalizes these relationships, which make prison life easier to bear.<\/p>\n
In only his second movie role, Maldonado is perfectly cast as Jaime, and gives a magnetic performance that is pitch-perfect. Kudos also to the production design, which Mu\u00f1oz usually does, and which makes the grim-looking jail seem authentic. This, and his direction, helped the film win the prestigious Queer Lion at the Venice Film Festival<\/strong>.<\/p>\n