The Prince (2019 film)
The Prince () is a 2019 Chilean film directed by Sebastián Muñoz, with a script written by Muñoz and Luis Barrales, based upon an obscure novel written by Mario Cruz in the early seventies. The film is set around 1970 in a prison cell in San Bernardo, Chile, just before Salvador Allende was elected president. It's a dark story about affections and loyalties between prisoners, the search for sexual identity, love, violence, and the rise to power behind bars. Its world premiere was in the "Critic’s Week" section at Venice International Film Festival 2019, winning  the prestigious Queer Lion Prize. "The Prince" was also selected to compete in San Sebastian International Film Festival, 2019 at the "Horizontes Latinos" section. Plot. Within a prison in Santiago of the 70's, Jaime, a young prisoner who has been convicted for the violent and inexplicable crime of his best friend, has a definitive encounter with ""the Stallion"", an older man who inspires respect and holds the power behind bars. Searching for protection, Jaime develops with the man a relationship of affection and tenderness, discovers love and the need to be recognized, and later, becoming ""The Prince"", finally rethinks  his sexual identity, and the reason for the crime that took him to prison. Production. The project of the film adaptation to the only novel written by Mario Cruz, a little-known author, was cherished many years ago by filmmaker Alicia Scherson, who was in talks with playwright Luis Barrales to prepare the script. Cruz's homo-erotic novel has its heyday in the 70s, it was never available in bookstores and could only be acquired in the newsstands of San Diego Street, in Santiago, becoming a cult novel. Director Sebastián Muñoz found it by chance and, along with Barrales  himself, refined the script to its final form. Subsequently, the Chilean production team "Niña Niño Films" and "El Otro Films", Argentine "Le Tiro Cine", and Belgian "Be Revolution Pictures" joined the project. The cast was completed with veterans actors Alfredo Castro ("From Afar", "The Club") and Gastón Pauls ("Nine Queens"), plus the young actors Juan Carlos Maldonado (from TV, in his first leading role in films), Sebastián Ayala (theater actor and film director) and Lux Pascal (theater and TV, and younger sister of the Chilean actor Pedro Pascal) Reception. During the Venice festival, most of the Italian specialty press evaluated  the film positively. Martina Barone at Cinematographe wrote": "a film of impetuous sensuality. A disturbing film, in its multifaceted sexual, emotional and primitive ferocity", Samuele Sestieri at PointBlank wrote: "The first work by Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Muñoz is a dazzling song of love and death, between pleasure and pain", Carlo Valeri at Sentieriselvaggi wrote: "A claustrophobic film, but at the same time full of desiring impulses. Asphyxiating and passionate as a last hug before saying goodbye". Finally the film won the Queer Lion Award for the following reasons, according to the Jury: After winning the Queer Lion and having goods  reviews in Europe, the first American evaluation came from Boyd van Hoeij from The Hollywood Reporter (and a former juror of the Queer Lion himself) and was a negative one, the bottom line being he wrote: "A prison fantasy devoid of personality." On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, "The Prince" holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of .