4 Moons is an extraordinarily ambitious and original movie that almost completely succeeds.
It is not a collection of short movies, but it tells four separate stories. Each story corresponds to one of the four phases of the moon: new, half waxing, full, and half waning; and each has a gay protagonist at a roughly corresponding time of life: late childhood, late teens or very early 20s, middle 30s, and old age. Each protagonist faces challenges typically faced by gay males at those times of life, but presented in entirely original ways.
As I said, this is a very ambitious movie - it attempts to give a comprehensive look at an entire lifetime of gay experiences. Not only that, but it does so with such originality that none of the four stories seemed like just a rehashing of the same old gay coming-out/mid-life-crisis/etc formulas. 4 Moons is fresh and new, not like any gay movie that came before it.
The stories are not arranged sequentially but are interwoven, switching between them periodically in a way that is never distracting. Although the stories are interwoven, they do not overlap at all, and only once does a character from one story even see a character from another. All four stories take place in an affluent, very American-looking part of Mexico City, among people who seem not to have to work but aren't so rich that they're surrounded by servants.
The writing and direction, and all technical aspects of the production, are uniformly excellent. I had no idea that the Mexican movie industry was as sophisticated as this movie is. The only thing that makes some stories better than others is the quality of the acting.
All the actors in the two younger stories are fantastic, as good as I've ever seen anywhere. The mid-30s "full moon" story has the weakest actors and suffers for it. It's the only one of the four that plays like an overwrought telenovela and therefore is unbelievable and tedious. Actors in the old-age story are good enough to keep it from sinking but not to make it shine as the first two stories do.
But those two "youth" stories (especially the one about the childhood friends who reconnect in college) - and the always excellent writing and direction - lift the whole movie far above 99% of its competition.
It is not a collection of short movies, but it tells four separate stories. Each story corresponds to one of the four phases of the moon: new, half waxing, full, and half waning; and each has a gay protagonist at a roughly corresponding time of life: late childhood, late teens or very early 20s, middle 30s, and old age. Each protagonist faces challenges typically faced by gay males at those times of life, but presented in entirely original ways.
As I said, this is a very ambitious movie - it attempts to give a comprehensive look at an entire lifetime of gay experiences. Not only that, but it does so with such originality that none of the four stories seemed like just a rehashing of the same old gay coming-out/mid-life-crisis/etc formulas. 4 Moons is fresh and new, not like any gay movie that came before it.
The stories are not arranged sequentially but are interwoven, switching between them periodically in a way that is never distracting. Although the stories are interwoven, they do not overlap at all, and only once does a character from one story even see a character from another. All four stories take place in an affluent, very American-looking part of Mexico City, among people who seem not to have to work but aren't so rich that they're surrounded by servants.
The writing and direction, and all technical aspects of the production, are uniformly excellent. I had no idea that the Mexican movie industry was as sophisticated as this movie is. The only thing that makes some stories better than others is the quality of the acting.
All the actors in the two younger stories are fantastic, as good as I've ever seen anywhere. The mid-30s "full moon" story has the weakest actors and suffers for it. It's the only one of the four that plays like an overwrought telenovela and therefore is unbelievable and tedious. Actors in the old-age story are good enough to keep it from sinking but not to make it shine as the first two stories do.
But those two "youth" stories (especially the one about the childhood friends who reconnect in college) - and the always excellent writing and direction - lift the whole movie far above 99% of its competition.