08/08/2023 - Julia de Castro and Marìa Gisèle Royo’s film is a queer, feminist road movie, both hilarious and militant, which urges us to tackle life head-on without fear of the future

Omar Ayuso, Julia de Castro and Chacha Huang in On the Go

A multi-disciplinary Spanish artist who expresses herself through literature (The Whores’ Rhetoric), music, theatre and film, Julia de Castro isn’t one to mince her words. Her favourite subject areas revolve around sex and the body, tackled from a decidedly refreshing feminist perspective. Accompanying her on her new cinematic adventure entitled On the Go [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which has been selected for the Locarno Film Festival’s Cineasti del Presente competition, is Venezuelan director and producer María Gisèle Royo who was honoured with the Student Academy Award and the College Student Award for her graduate documentary Rediscovering Pape. Despite their very different personalities, the two directors have managed, by way of an open exchange based on reciprocal listening and respect, to create a surreal, crazy and irrational world inhabited by campy characters straight off the page of an early Pedro Almodóvar script (namely Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom). Ultimately, On the Go is a queer work in which hetero-hegemonic man is asked to pipe down (for once).

We’re in Andalusia in 2022, and Milagros - a famous DJ originally from the town of Ávila - needs to decide whether to go to an appointment which could change her life forever, at an artificial insemination clinic for single parents. But what would the consequences be of not knowing the donor’s identity? Rather than dwelling on a dilemma which there’s no real answer to, Milagros decides to leave for Seville in her father’s ‘67 Chevrolet Corvair. In the middle of this road trip, which is as delirious as it is hilarious, the protagonist (played by Julia de Castro) meets and clashes with characters who are colourful, to say the least, and who urge her to think about what she really wants. These include The Queen of Triana (the captivating and enigmatic Chacha Huang) - an international sex symbol who claims to be a mermaid and who only speaks English - and Jonathan (the irresistible Omar Ayuso), a long-term friend whose Grindr account Milagros hijacks in order to find her own personal stallion (aka the perfect sperm donor). Milagros wants Jonathan to provide her with used condoms so that she can inseminate herself, but the process turns out to be far more complicated than planned. The protagonist’s response to Jonathan’s questions over her obsession with maternity, however, “creating a dysfunctional family together is the perfect plan”, is incisive and perfect.

Travelling across an Andalusia reminiscent of the Wild West (the film’s 16mm format being incredibly helpful in this respect), our antiheroes and antiheroines follow their instincts and decide to take on the present with the delightful carefreeness and arrogance of youth, without worrying about the future. Music, dance and traditions linked to a land where Flamenco reigns supreme infuse each and every frame, reminding us that emotions matter more than rationality. A tribute to Gonzalo García Pelayo’s cult Spanish movie Corridas de alegría, On the Go is a road movie where nothing is planned and everything appears to be incredibly easy. The protagonists challenge the viewer, as if wishing to remind them that, ultimately, life is but a fleeting moment of experimentation and self-discovery. As pointed out by the directors, the film might even be seen as a 2.0 reinterpretation of the fundamental themes in Pelayo’s film: friendship and love. In this sense, the directors have become the spokespeople of a new dating-app-immersed generation who still believe in eternal life, despite rampant economic uncertainty.

On the Go is produced by Jur Jur Productions and is sold worldwide by MPM Premium.

(Translated from Italian)