On the Road: A Tale of Love and Violence

David Pablos is a director renowned for the sensitivity with which he addresses certain social issues in his native country. His films seek to portray traces of humanity in vulnerable individuals, whether due to circumstance or their own actions. He often uses local settings in Mexico, environments that add complexity and maintain a connection to reality.

Films by this director-screenwriter, such as The Chosen Ones (Las Elegidas, 2015) and Dance of the 41 (El baile de los 41, 2020), are stories that engage with the diverse social atmospheres of their geographical context, while also featuring individuals brimming with kindness. They grapple with adversities that define their current situation and their future, which seems sometimes hopeless, and at other times catastrophic.

Pablos’s latest film, On the Road (En el camino, 2025), maintains these storylines, but takes risks by constructing a narrative of identity and gender within one of Mexico’s most hetero-patriarchal contexts. On the Road unfolds along the truck routes in northern Mexico, a world steeped in violence, sex, and drugs.

Veneno (Victor Prieto) is a young man who sells his body in nightclubs. He needs to flee north because he fears for his life. He is being pursued by a drug trafficker he robbed, a former partner of his. Coincidentally, Veneno meets Muñeco (Osvaldo Sánchez), a truck driver who gives him a ride across the arid terrain where the trucks travel.

Along the way, the two characters begin to forge an increasingly intimate and unconditional relationship, filling the existential void they both feel with human connection. Although their personalities don’t mesh well, they complement each other to such an extent that their connection becomes a space of resistance and affection.

The queer theme takes precedence over the traditional hypermasculine environments depicted in the film, creating a perspective adjacent to the seemingly familiar. This is accompanied by cinematography that favours close-ups to create intimacy. In contrast, and to delve deeper into the psyches of both men, the film also recurrently features desert landscapes that evoke a sense of uprootedness and isolation. These elements equally influence the emotional connection between the men.

Under the guise of a road movie and with unadorned language, Pablos maintains a constant evolution in the way his characters act and behave. They succumb to the intimacy afforded by the truck cab. Meanwhile, outside that location, the road becomes a symbol of transition, discovery, and uncertainty, culminating in a meticulous examination of the past and the possibility, as a timely necessity, of a future.

Furthermore, the director incorporates a suggestive stylization of violence into his visual framework, which, despite being a common resource in contemporary Mexican cinema, lends a dimension of beauty structured as flashbacks. This is situated within a discourse punctuated by harsh sequences, creating a balance that energizes the plot and offers a new perspective on the phenomenon of violence prevalent in Mexico. It dehumanizes it, generating a kind of enchanted cruelty, a truth disguised for easier digestion, while simultaneously forming part of a mechanism whose ultimate goal is to clash with reality.

With On the Road, Pablos has developed an intelligent film that appeals to sensitivity through a narrative that diverges from the world in which it is set. Its theme doesn’t get lost in the details; rather, it connects with the viewer through the diverse emotional tones it employs, even though it is constantly permeated by stark realism.

By Daryel Hernández
Edited by José Teodoro
Copyright FIPRESCI