Pelo Malo (Bad Hair) is the first film by Venezuelan director Miranda Rondon to have gained considerable international success, winning the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian film festival in 2013. The film was met with wide critical acclaim, and caused a stir within Venezuela when the director made comments to the international media about the politically and socially critical attitude that had inspired it.

‘Pelo malo’ is a term used in Latin America to describe afro-textured hair, and it is something the child protagonist, Junior, considers a serious affliction. Junior is a young boy living in Caracas who wants straight hair, so he can look like a pop star for his school photo. His unemployed, single mother is too distracted to indulge him, and becomes increasingly frustrated by his efforts to straighten it, which include massaging it with mayonnaise. It could be a set-up for a heart-warming drama in which misunderstandings are ultimately overcome and familial love helps to mitigate against the hardships of poverty. In actuality, pelo malo is used as a centralising metaphor for the difficulty of solving social problems such as homophobia and racism when people are caught in circumstances unconducive to understanding and respecting one another.

Using a child as a lens through which to view social issues is not a new narrative device, but it is employed to particularly disturbing effect here. In the opening scene, Junior has a bath in the house of a posh lady his mother cleans for. When he gets caught, he is bewildered by his mother’s shame and anger, which she communicates only in looks and gestures. Their tense bus ride home looks like a manifestation of normal child/parent frustration, but as the film progresses it becomes clear that this uncomfortable clash of child and adult worlds is a dominating aspect of the young boy’s life. Just after the bath incident, there is a lovely shot of plastic figurines silhouetted against the expansive pale blue sky. Junior and his friend Carmen are lying on the ground playing. Before the film can lull you into a false sense of security about the charming scene to come, Carmen’s squeaky voice makes Barbie shriek to a plastic soldier: “I’d rather die than be raped by you!”.

The non-judgemental direction never dramatizes these scenes, but presents them starkly and allows the viewer to make their own inferences. A lot of scenes are cut abruptly before they escalate, giving the film a see-saw dynamic as it moves from the brink of high drama to the colourful humdrum of life in a crumbling 1950s Le Corbusier apartment complex. The film is visually interesting and uses the sounds of dogs, basketball, birds, traffic and washing lines to great atmospheric effect. Where the direction falls down is in its focus on the central mother-son relationship. It is weird to the point of perversion, which could be perfectly satisfying if it shone a light on the wider issues the film purports to discuss, or provided an engaging psychological experience for the audience. However, it does neither, and makes the film feel overwrought and ultimately a little unrewarding.

Pelo Malo is out on general release from the 13th February.