Or the very LA queue of Mexican odd-job men, patiently waiting outside hardware stores for work. Or the endless conversations with mechanical voices, whether it's answer-phones or the voice of the internet, Siri. Maybe only an Irishman would notice details like the coyotes' lonesome howls up in the canyons at night. Papi Chulo is a film with a remarkable sense of place. He can't wait to pass this on to Carlos's answerphone. It's a tree out on the deck, that leaves a noticeable, round, paint-free area. Reluctantly Sean goes home to his mansion up in the Hollywood Hills, where he sells the last remaining item of furniture that he and Carlos bought together. But they don't want him around right now either. His hard-nosed bosses don't want to fire him exactly. And all those months of holding it in have led to this. Sean - played by TV star Matt Bomer - has just undergone a big breakup with his significant other, Carlos. So what's a nice Irish writer doing in Los Angeles telling the story of a TV weatherman - he is called Sean, mind you - who has a terrible and very public meltdown on primetime? "Papi Chulo" - yes I did look it up because the phrase never appears in the film - literally means "pimp daddy", which is actually a compliment, especially in gay Latino circles.īut the film is the work of an Irishman - writer-director John Butler, who made a sweet little movie a while back called Handsome Devil, set in an Irish school and boasting more than one sharply written line. Meanwhile, Ernesto's wife wonders aloud whether he is having an affair – cue a pretty good Pretty Woman joke – and Sean's friends speculate that Ernesto may be Sean's new lover, no matter how unlikely that might seem to them.Simon Morris: There seems a wide disconnect between the title - indeed the whole movie - Papi Chulo, and the person making it. Sean soon decides Ernesto provides a human connection he has been craving and his agreed rate of $20 an hour is a small price to pay to have someone around to talk to.Īpparently mistaking Ernesto's stoicism and impenetrable calm as the Indigenous wisdom of the ancients, or maybe just figuring twenty bucks is a lot less than an hour with a therapist would set him back, Sean carries on chatting. Knowing he is no handyman, Sean cruises – the verb seems the right one – a group of middle-aged Mexican men who gather daily outside his local hardware store, hoping to be offered work by the wealthier, near-exclusively white residents of the 'burb. * Peninsula: An inspired, but noisy and far flabbier follow-up to Train to Busan * Never Rarely Sometimes Always: Why it's a near perfect piece of film-making * Tenet: Christopher Nolan's latest fails to take audience along for the ride
* Lowdown Dirty Criminals: Why we all should get out and support this Kiwi caper
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