Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano), a nine-year-old boy living in a housing project in Caracas, wants to straighten his wild curls. He pours mayonnaise and oil on his hair, and struggles to get a comb through. He experiments with his grandmother's blow dryer. Junior's mother Marta (Samantha Castillo), harassed and exhausted, sees her son's obsession with his hair as an ominous sign. When she looks at him, more often than not it is with an expression of disgust. His hair is from his black father, no longer in the picture.  Marta has another baby, seemingly from a different father, and the baby has long straight hair. Marta showers the baby with love and affection, all as Junior looks on from the next room. Maybe if his hair was straight, his mother would love him. Mariana Rondón's "Bad Hair" is a stark and often brutal look at one boy's pre-sexual awakening of identity and how that impacts his life. What is it like to know who you are before you understand what that will mean? Populated with totally naturalistic performances, and a stunningly observed relationship between mother and son (their scenes together are phenomenal), "Bad Hair" works by keeping its focus on the small details of everyday life and its rhythms. It is not didactic about sexuality, and it does not sentimentalize childhood or its main child character.

GTCN Movie Schedule

Bad Hair IMBD