Fresh and Exciting

Don't listen to the negative reviews

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

ZONA ROSA is a colorful, lively, and entertaining documentary about the young men who are male strippers in the gay clubs of Mexico City's Zona Rosa. The credible parts of the film are those showing the actual dancing that takes place in these famous clubs: the controversial aspect of the 'documentary' is that portion (the major part) of the film that goes out of its way to emphasize that all of these hunky stripping Latin men are straight and are doing this work for the art of it and for female customers! Indeed, almost all the shots of the men in action on the stages of these clubs focus on the front rows of people in attendance - and naturally those are women, in gay clubs, without men in sight....Director Dan Castle uses a lot of film to interview one Christian, an exotic dancer in the most famous of the clubs, and the interview includes footage of his approving mother, his young son (he is divorced and living at home), and repeated declarations that exotic dancing cannot be examined as a preface to any other aspects of life. Likewise his fellow dancers are interviewed, declaring that the dances are intended for female clientèle, while at the same time the young studs are adamant in their claims that women are rude and intrusive whereas the gay clientèle are respectful of their roles as entertainers (wherever those reverential men might be hiding in the club shots). Jump ahead one year and we see Christian living with his protégé, a body builder/trainer who Christian is prepping as a stripper, each of the two men commenting at length about each other's physical erotic attributes...The DVD 'Extra' is an extended survey of several of the men's dancing routines, dances that ultimately include full frontal nudity. There is also a funny 'banana contest' which in many ways seems demeaning to the contestants. Along the way in this film we see interviews with club owners describing their complete control of the shows, gay activists who talk about the police censorship of the clubs, the failed attempts at gay pride parades, the closure of 60 of the clubs in 2001, and the lack of a vocal gay community. All of this goes along with the 'Latin macho' concept that everything associated with male stripping in gay clubs is solely for the pleasure of women. It leaves the viewer wondering why the very erotic film was made in the first place! Hello? Grady Harp, September 06

Zona Rosa a salacious romp into the hot and hard world of gay for pay strippers. The film provides both an up close and personal insight into the real world of these drop dead beautiful studs and strippers. It provides a voyeuristic spectacle as well as a not so glamorous glimpse beneath the skin and into the private world of these gigolos. Zona Rosa provides an insight into the guys' relationship with their male and female clients. Whether these lover boys are bisexual, gay for pay, closet gay, or just cashing in on their youth and beauty, who knows, but its up to the viewer to decide from the interesting interviews. A nefarious roller coast ride into the kinky back stage and on stage dramas and real life issues of these modern day midnight cowboys.

SEXY IN THE CITY, Dec. 5, 2005 Reviewer: Preston A dazzling display of dance and drama, Zona Rosa has been an international film festival fave and viewing the DVD even makes it better due to the bonanza of DVD extras. Director Dan Castle has taken his camera through the infamous and intimate strip joints of Mexico City's Zona Rosa. Not content to merely record performances, Castle has conducted up-close and personal interviews with the scintillating strippers, their family members and the actual club owners. The result is funny, sad, sensational and sexy all at the same time. This is the ultimate voyeur's trip into the exploration of the male psyche behind the meat market. The 40-plus minutes of DVD extras include complete strip routines from all the performers involved in the movie, obviously rife with male nudity. Of particular interest will be the raw Big Banana contest, which would seem to validate the old cliché that size does indeed matter. Latin lovers will savor this confection of Mexican machismo.

I don't buy movies for their prurient value. My DVD collection boasts maybe five porno titles. But I have a thing for Latin men and something in the promos made this film sound sexy and titillating. I must confess that's why I purchased it. Oops – disappointment time. The film consists of interviews with male strippers in the "Zona Rosa" section of Mexico City; the most in-depth is with an extremely handsome and pleasant but rather ordinary (in terms of lifestyle) hunk by the name of Christian Miranda. We meet his family - his son, his niece, his dog and his extremely open-minded mother, who says she prefers that her son would strip in a club that is "a little less wild" than the gay place where he currently works, but also says she never argues with his choices. Christian goes out of his way to let us know that he's straight, but, like all the other strippers in this film, he doesn't seem at all judgmental of his "gay clientele". That was surprising, because most of the dancers also emphasize how religious they are, and there is some discussion over whether or not they should pray at the statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe before they start their evening's dancing! Some thought it disrespectful to the Virgin to pray before showing off their privates, and others thought that they should seek a blessing before starting work, just like they would in any other job. Christian mentions that Saint Jude is his favorite saint. As you can imagine, this got real boring real fast.Part of the problem was the promos, which promised "young men who ply their flesh working at the numerous and quite popular nightclubs of Zona Rosa". From the phrase "ply their flesh" I assumed that there might be some juicy tales of male prostitution, or at least some good hints on where to spend my next Mexican vacation. No such luck - virtually every interviewee stressed that they were dancers ONLY, and would not dream of hustling to supplement their income. Interestingly enough, they all criticized "some of the others" who do hustle, but none of the dancers would admit that prostitution was a part of his own experience. For a 60 minute film, too much time was spent on filler between interviews – we get slide-shows of scenic Mexico City while a Mariachi singer drones endless verses of Cielito Lindo – several times. There is a fairly boring interview with an entertainer / drag queen who manages the club, although when he relates how he got his start as a cabaret singer, we get a few minutes of him on a microphone showing off a surprisingly pleasant voice.There is also a brief interview with a gay activist, who relates a two-minute version of Mexico City gay history. "We had our first Gay Pride parade in 1979, but the first time we all got together was in 1978, for the 10th anniversary celebration of the Massacre of Tlatelolco". Whatever the Massacre of Tlatelolco was, he didn't get to it. I guess the filmmaker was too anxious to get back to the religious convictions of the strippers and the cozy portraits of their families. The director made a few efforts to draw the dancers out on some titillating details, but his attempts usually went awry. "What's the strangest story you have about doing private shows?" (All the dancers do private shows for parties and even individuals, but insist there is no sex involved). "Well, the strangest is the (straight) couples who want a private show to spice up their marriage; the women will touch me while the husbands watch, or sometimes even the husbands touch me – but I understand that they've been together many years, so it's not really so strange". The club scenes include a "big banana contest" where contestants come out and display their erect penises while a woman from the audience measures them. The winner gets 2,500 pesos. Christian, our main guide to this sordid world (slightly more sordid than a DAR convention, anyway) disapproves of this contest, "What is this world coming to?" he asks. Speaking of women, did I mention that equal if not more camera time is devoted to the straight female patrons over the gay male clientele? I assumed this was to make the strippers – who never tire of telling us that they're straight – more comfortable. One does say that he prefers the gay customers, as the straight women are more prone to inappropriate touching, but the gay men are more respectful.At the climax of the film, we return one year later to the main interviewee, Christian, who has left the gay club and is now working at a strip club for woman. He introduces us to his new friend, an extra handsome muscular stud who is learning the business from him, and, with straight faces – and I mean straight faces – they praise each others bodies and talk about how having a nice ass is essential to attracting women. As a result, the last five minutes of this film seemed like it would never end. We then get a captioned postscript lamenting that the police have cracked down on Zona Rosa since the film's completion, and 60 clubs were closed during a two month period in 2001. Based on the scandalous goings-on shown in this film, it would appear that Mexico City really didn't lose much. In fairness, I must say that the dancers were all very handsome and quite nice to look at. And if they were totally straight, I suppose they could have been much more obnoxious about it. The DVD extras include 40 minutes of complete dance sequences (with full frontal nudity) plus the complete banana contest. But after all that talk about praying to the Virgin of Guadalupe, I was no longer in the mood.