Amar sin miedo

The title is not about gay guys loving other gay guys without fear, but rather straight women loving "bisexual" men without fear. Acting abilities were alright, but the drama scream scenes were over the top and scary. A man who is mostly straight is NOT going to make out with another man as depicted in this movie...they went all the way, as intimate as people can get. So the blue eyed actor's claim that he was totally straight fell flat. And NO woman should just overlook the fact her boyfriend is at least an active bisexual and maybe even a closet gay. We are told it's OK to love without fear of making bad choices. Horrible message and the story lacked any credibility.

This film is ostensibly intended to be a drama but it has so many elements of cheesy comedy it's difficult to tell what vibe the filmmaker is going for. Sadly, it fails either way. The "dramatic" scenes (people yelling at each other) play like a telenovela, and the ridiculously improbable ending could've been lifted from an Eating Out sequel. Everything is overplayed, for no worthwhile reason.

The lead character Josh (Andres Roma) is the archetypal nerdy, pasty-white, camera-toting gringo tourist. He speaks excellent Spanish, but with a blatant gringo accent that doesn't fit a guy at his fluency level who's had a Mexican girlfriend for 10+ (?) years; he can't even say the name of his new friend Leo in a non-Anglo way. When he speaks English, Roma pulls off a passable whitebread American accent but can't sustain it; he often lapses into a Latino rhythm of speech. At first this made me cringe as I thought Josh was mocking the locals, but his very Mexican pronunciation of certain words like "stubborn" (stah-born) reveals it as simply a case of bad acting.

Josh's awkward cluelessness is cartoonish and relentless. The utter lack of sexual chemistry with his new friend make Leo's persistent and obvious pursuit of him seem predatorial. There's nothing here that resembles a romance, although that seems to have been the filmmaker's vision. All in all, the film plays like writer/director Juan Frausto pulled two characters out of the 2014 HBO series Looking - the uptight ginger nerd and the scruffy Latino musician - and stuck them into a very improbable, overly burlesqued, and ultimately unsatisfying story line.

I love/hate this movie because it has very good moments in different aspects but it has the same amount of bad scenes.

I am a bit confused by the message that this film wanted to leave, since it is not a gay romance but it is not a personal drama either. I think this film wants to leave the message of exploring and searching for people who make you happy through faith, destiny and the nature of things, but in the end the message is lost.

However, it also has its good points such as the music used at very appropriate moments, they exploited the town and the culture of Taxco with very beautiful scenes that give the film a lot of personality, is moderately entertaining, plus I think it has some quite relatable scenes.

I STRONGLY believe that this movie would have done much better if they had made it in a comedy format (In the style of "The Proposal".), exactly the same movie but comedy would have fixed the errors at the script level such as certain strange plot twists, the exaggerated performances and the unreal things that happen just to advance the plot, in addition to clearly making the movie more fun and entertaining.

Despite everything, I did like this movie, the scenes between Leo and Josh were pretty cute to me, I think the ending is a bit bizarre but it's okay.

Sorry, I had to take it out because my chest isn't a hold.

It was a privilege to join two of the actors and the director in viewing this film the Seattle Latino Film Festival. Even if they weren't there/FaceTiming in, you could still tell how much they believed in and cared about their craft.

I have often found myself yearning for more sincerity when it comes to queer representation in film. In the case of Love Without Fear, I felt sincerity that was enhanced by some of the melodrama, their comedic moments, and relatable monologues and dialogue throughout.

I was magnificently surprised by the finale and a successful execution of using a short deneumont to the films advantage. I started rooting for every single one of the four core characters before they hit that climax and I see that as an indicator of well structured character arcs.

I really enjoyed and learn a lot from the film. It was really interesting to see how a man can be in love with his fiancee and fall for another person of the same sex. I was very compelled to the very end. The male actors were so hot and yummy, even the actresses were beautiful and sexy. I'm happy to learn that the film was done by Mexican people from Los Angeles, happy to support la raza. This film reminds of Brokeback Mountain but with a Mexican twist that I totally didn't expect. Is it not a gay film, but a love story that I thought was beautifully told. Taxco looks beautiful, can't wait to see it with my very own eyes.