The Prince

I didn't expect too much, I thought (with some wishful thinking, I admit!) that this would be some flimsy soft-erotic gay prison thing. But to my surprise it turned out to be more serious than that, providing an actually involving story of a young guy who lands in a Chilean prison somewhere in the 70's during the Allende regime (I didn't feel by the way that this setting added anything substantial to the premise) and as a newbie is confronted with the existing prison rules and culture, especially with the sexual aspects of it. He gets sexually and emotionally involved with an older inmate, with all kinds of positive and negative consequences.

The biggest part of the movie is set in the prison, and this convinces the most. The smaller part (by way of flash-backs) in which we see how young Jaime came to commit the crime for which he was incarcerated, is rather fragmentary and felt a bit rushed. It leaves Jaime's background almost totally blank, so his sudden outburst into a jealous rage comes totally out of the blue.

Although there isn't happening that much (there's a lot more action in every single episode of Oz!), you keep being interested in how things will evolve. Apart from one pivotal incident towards the end of the movie, there's hardly any violence between all the inmates, but instead of that a surprising amount of intimacy and emotionally caring for each other. Touchingly illustrated when all inmates respectfully come to offer their condolences to Jaime when his protector and lover is killed.

There is a fair amount of very graphic gay sex, but I guess you could call it functional in this specific story. Still praise to the actors who had the courage to participate, it cannot have been easy.

Apart from the earlier mentioned flaws, I do have some other to mention. The leader inmate is called The Stud, but it is hard to relate that nickname to the middle-aged and rather frail looking actor Alfredo Castro. And biggest let-down to me was the way main character Jaime (The Prince) was played by Juan Carlos Maldonado. He mostly acted like an autistic nerd, walking and talking like a robot, being reasonably good-looking but for the rest totally uncharismatic and never (at least in my opinion) deserving that illuster nickname The Prince.