This is a great little movie. I was pleasantly surprised that it avoided falling into predictability and that it kept the characters, including the prudish grandmother, three-dimensional. In some ways, her character is the most interesting--like Violeta and Pedro, we want to hate her, but ultimately she turns out to be neither truly "evil" nor fully irredeemable--but nothing in the plot forces us to come around to liking her, either. I appreciated the fact that the movie's gay characters are bears, and that this is largely unremarkable.
Other reviewers commented on the frank sex scenes. These appear to have been cut from the movie in commercial release--and the cuts were especially noticeable and choppy. They rendered at least a couple of scenes pointless. There is a little bit of irony in sitting in a theatre near the West Village, in an audience that was probably 90% gay men, watching a movie that focuses on a (very) sexually active gay man, yet finding myself "protected" from witnessing the movie's sex scenes.
For instance, the opening scene, which I understand from reading reviews and comments is fairly explicit, simply opens with three men in bed together, and Pedro telling the other two to hurry up because family is coming. The bathhouse scene shows Pedro and another man walking off together, and then a very choppy edit finds us at the next scene. We do see some kissing and fully-clothed groping, and Pedro and his friend from Paris rolling around in bed and later waking up and cuddling. I don't have a particular need to see erect penises (at least, not in movies), but I have no idea what else I might have missed with the editing out of these scenes. And, of course, more to the point, these are (or were) part of the movie, whether they make some people uncomfortable or not.
I don't know--perhaps these cuts may have been a necessary compromise to put the film in commercial release, but it still sucks (so to speak). I guess I'll have to wait for the release of the DVD to see the film in unexpurgated form. (And maybe it'll include some cool outtakes, too?--no, just kidding).
