Ponyboi is the project of intersex actor, writer, and producer, River Gallo; it began life as a stage show, then a short film, and is now a 90-minute film. While I am impressed by the persistence and passion behind the filmmaking, after watching the film, I was left feeling empty. What was lost when it was adapted to feature-length?
Ponyboi features an intersex prostitute with a distinct name, Ponyboi (River Gallo). Gallo, who is intersex themself, plays the titular role with complete commitment, as the film opens with Ponyboi giving fellatio to an overweight trucker in the passenger seat. Afterwards, he returns to the laundromat that serves as his main base of operations. The store is operated by Ponyboi’s best friend Angel (Victoria Pedretti), who is pregnant with the child of Vinny (Dylan O’Brien), the white New Jersey pimp and drug dealer. O’Brien brings levity to the film with his villain turn; he is cocky and out-of-his-depth, yet strangely endearing. He becomes overtly antagonistic after the mob client Ponyboi was attending dies due to an overdose (or perhaps from over-stimulation from intercourse), and then he decides to take off with Vinny’s money. If that wasn’t enough to sour his mood, to top it all off, Ponyboi also reveals to Angel that he, her best friend, has been having an affair with Vinny. After successfully incurring the wrath of Vinny and the mobsters, Ponyboi needs to make his escape, but not before making several pit stops along the way.
Ponyboi uses he/him pronouns as he identifies as male and has a dependency on testosterone, which he uses out of his need to maintain a masculine appearance. His desperation to appear male was born out of his relationship with his father, which was once that of admiration but was severed when the father banished him from home after not accepting his preferences. The love Ponyboi once felt has deteriorated so much that when he learns the news of his father’s imminent death at the start of the day, he chooses to ignore it. There is a great scene where Ponyboi reveals how damaging the need to conform to a certain gender is when he bares his soul to an estranged coworker, crying out “No one told me I had options.”
There have not been many roles for intersex actors to play in film and TV, let alone genre films where they are the lead, and Gallo’s success in not only getting the film shot, but also having it play to a wider audience at Sundance is to be commended. Unfortunately, the film’s thematically rich component, the one of Ponyboi’s personal journey in coming to terms with identity and family, takes the backseat in service of a trope-filled genre-film plot.
For films that began as short films, the transition to a longer run-time means that a lot of nuances are lost with unnecessary additions. Ponyboi’s big issue is that many of the storylines, for instance, the subplot with Vinny and the one-note mobsters, follow a predictable formula of “you better have my money by – o’clock” to Angel getting kidnapped to lure Ponyboi out.
The biggest misstep that occurred from the dilution of new plot elements, is the main storyline that was present in the original short film. Ponyboi, in both versions, falls for the charm of a stranger passing through town by the name of Bruce (Murray Bartlett), who is dressed like a cowboy. Bruce strongly resembles Ponyboi’s father, who has appeared in flashbacks as a stereotypically masculine cowboy-looking figure in a truck. A strange courtship begins with the two as they sing together at the laundromat, share intimate details, and plan to elope to Vegas. Bruce’s intentions are unbelievably altruistic in this world as his help is offered not in exchange for sex like all the other transactions in the film, but out of curiosity to hear about Ponyboi’s past. Bruce offers Ponyboi a ride around town as Ponyboi’s reluctantly opens up about his feelings towards his father and reveals the meaning behind the name, which doesn’t amount to much; Ponyboi just really likes ponies. In the original short, the cowboy character was a symbolic tool to help Ponyboi find closure with his past, but in the full-length, he becomes a jarringly out-of-place romantic subplot and an exposition device.
Ponyboi was part of the U.S. Dramatic competition for this year’s Sundance, and I was able to watch the film online – which by the way, is a great option for those who would love to attend festivals but are unable to: Highly recommended. They provide you a link that’s open for several days and once you press play, you need to complete it within several hours. For this film, as a bonus, the screening included a chat with the director, Esteban Arango, where he spoke about the film’s creation process from its origins as a short film. However, in the effort to make Ponyboi (2024) more entertaining, the charm of the original, with its tight 20-minute runtime, was lost. Ponyboi is an okay film. If only the unnecessary plot elements did not get in the way of a unique personal story and inspired symbolism.
