The Last First Time review – a quirky coming-of-age drama that lends itself to entertainment | film

THis quirky coming-of-age drama from Mexico feels a little familiar, with its story of 18-year-old Eduardo, a small-town boy who finds himself in the big city. However, nothing about it feels forced or fake – it speaks frankly about pleasure and desire, Eduardo’s teenage excitement and his intense need to be in the gay world. There are great performances from its young cast too.

Alejandro Quintana plays Eduardo, a studious kid who arrives in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city, wearing a sensible button-up shirt to take his college entrance exam. His phone is constantly ringing with messages and calls from his mother, whose harsh tone suggests tension, perhaps over his sex life. After the exam, Edoardo meets the student Mario, a beautiful Caravaggio who invites him to return to his home. But when they arrive – surprise! – Mario’s family threw him a birthday party. Which only interrupts the connection briefly, as Mario is completely accepted at home.

In fact, one of the fun things about the film is that it never threatens to be dark — a devious older man in a club with predatory feelings aside. All the memories Eduardo has are happy ones. He knows it too, staring intently at everyone and everything as if he’s freezing time, storing away the details as he heads off to spend the night with Mario and his buddies. This is clearly the first time Eduardo has been out of his parents’ sight, and he is deeply affected. There’s sex, tequila, gay club, poppers, half tattoos. Eduardo vomits on his shirt and urinates on his phone. The next morning, on the bus home, the man had changed.

This is a small part of the film, and some viewers may feel like they’ve seen this kind of thing many times before, but the stories that come out are like snowflakes or fingerprints: no two are the same.