There’s a baseball game in the middle of “Los Frikis” in which you know you’re watching a film from Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz. It may be premature to suggest that one film removed from their first narrative feature collaboration “The Peanut Butter Falcon” that they have a signature, but after their road trip drama charmed with traditional scenes of Americana shaken up by having Zack Gottsagen, a man with down syndrome, front and center, the home run that occurs during a game being played in Cuba has its own twist when the base runner isn’t the one who hit the ball, but rather someone in a wheelchair who is invited to nonetheless participate, furiously wheeling around the diamond to beat the throw from center field. It’s a triumphant sight, even as the filmmakers aren’t immune to cranking up the score to wring out some extra emotion when they achieve the same goal that they’re celebrating, not by suggesting there’s a different metric for success but getting there in an unusual way.
Although the surprise success of “The Peanut Butter Falcon” at the box office (racking up an eye-popping $20 million in 2019 when crossing seven figures alone was noteworthy) would suggest a larger-scale follow-up, you can immediately see the appeal for Nilson and Schwartz in this tender, intimate drama, settling down at a tropical hospice where a group of punks have made the counter-intuitive choice to shoot themselves up with HIV-laced needles at the height of the AIDS epidemic. A likely death sentence at the time, it is made to appear to be a reasonable alternative to the lives that brothers Paco (Héctor Medina) and Gustavo (Eros de la Puente) have currently when the trade embargo against Cuba during Fidel Castro’s reign have left store shelves empty and the two twentysomethings have little to claim as their own besides the music they make at night. They’re eating scraps when the thought occurs they’d be better off in prison where at least their hunger needs would be taken care of and it’s mentioned that there’s an even better option if you have HIV, not only assuring three square meals a day, but given the fear of the communicable disease, they would be sent to a clinic away from civilization, which in Cuba with its beaches might not be all that bad.
That notion is largely borne out at Vilanes Sanitorium where Paco is sent after a positive test where he may be surrounded by the sickly, but those that reside there have a far healthier attitude towards life without the stress that hampers so many in the country and are under the care of a compassionate nurse (Adria Arjona), whose brother passed away from the disease. With this straightforward plan, there shouldn’t be much drama, but Gustavo, the younger of the two, at first has to locate Paco after the two are separated and then decides against injecting himself with the virus, urging a doctor to sign off on an HIV positive result so they can be reunited. Inevitably, the secret that Gustavo has to keep that he couldn’t make the sacrifice that his brother did to afford himself a better life comes to haunt him, but Nilson and Schwartz leave little doubt that they made the right decision to take the chance at a few more years of happiness versus their more dire daily lives that would’ve run them into the ground, particularly among the other patients that they have more in common with.
“Los Frikis” could disappoint those who might be expecting something as transgressive as the mohawk-headed hellion Paco promises by screaming into a microphone in its opening minutes when it ends up being a largely a peaceful hang in paradise, but nonetheless Nilson and Schwartz aren’t one to sand edges off as sweet as their dramas end up being. There’s a charming looseness to the scenes where any feeling that anything could happen doesn’t feel manufactured and that electrical charge carries through to the relationships between Gustavo and Paco, as well as with Arjona’s nurse Maria where his HIV status could be an issue as they develop feelings for one another. When operating from such a peculiar premise rooted in reality, normality becomes unexpected and precious and as “Los Frikis” settles into a rhythm where Paco and Gustavo can finally feel comfortable in their own skin, the film becomes just as much of a pleasure for those off screen as on.
“Los Frikis” opens on December 20th in Los Angeles at the AMC Burbank 16 and New York at the AMC Empire 25 before expanding on December 25th to the AMC Phipps Plaza in Atlanta, the AMC Boston Common in Boston, the AMC River East in Chicago, the AMC Aventura and AMC Sunset Place in Miami and the AMC Kabuki 8 in San Francisco. A full list of theaters and dates is here.