WE THE ANIMALS
Acclaimed LGBTQ film starring Looking’s Raúl Castillo
After doing the film- festival rounds since 2018’ s Sundance — where director Jeremiah Zagar won a Next Innovator award, presented to him by RuPaul — queer comingof- age tale We the Animals finally arrives in UK cinemas this June. Independently made on a shoestring budget, it’s an arresting, beautifully shot film that focuses on a mixed ethnicity ( half- white, half- Puerto Rican) family living in upstate New York.
Based on a semi- autobiographical novel of the same name by Justin Torres, the story is told from the perspective of the youngest of three pre- teen boys, Jonah, played by Evan Rosado — just nine at the time — as he begins to discover his queer identity and grows apart from his brothers and parents.
The familial unit: Ma ( Sheila Vand), Paps ( Raúl Castillo) and three sons Manny ( Isaiah Kristian), Joel ( Josiah Gabriel) and Jonah live almost hand- to- mouth.
But there’s an intense bond between them, treading — sometimes crossing — the fine line between fierce love and violence.
The original novel, written by Justin over the course of six years at a time when he was estranged from his family — he still doesn’t speak to his father — was a bestseller in America and is now a frequently studied text in various university courses.
“Latino studies classes, queer studies
classes, classes about poverty or whatever, it ticks a lot of boxes,” says Justin, now a professor at UCLA. But it was initially intended as a personal project: a blend of fiction, poetry and memoir.
While the book is presented as a series of snapshots and fragments of memory, often written in the first- person plural but graduating to first- person singular to note Jonah’s disconnect from “the pack” over time, the film is a more coherent, sequential piece of cinema. Under Jeremiah’s direction, it switches between a rich, documentary style to animated sketching sequences: one of Jonah’s escape mechanisms is to secretly scribble illustrations and thoughts in a notebook at night when his brothers are asleep.
Originally, the central character is anonymous but in making the film it was decided that he needed a name. “In the book, I just wanted people to pay attention to ‘ we’ and ‘ I’, and the movement between the two as he changes from being completely immersed in the family to feeling isolated and alone, often because of his queer sensibility and sensitivity,” says Justin. “It was also really hard to name a character who is based quite a lot on me because names are so layered and have so many associations.”
Despite not wanting Jonah to have a name in the film either, in the end he just suggested it should be something biblical.
Watching them run wild on screen, it’s difficult to believe that none of the boys had previous acting experience. Evan in particular radiates sensitivity, his wide green eyes both mesmerising and impossibly emotive.
“The nice thing about children as untrained actors is that they are just so pliable and imaginative,” Justin says. “Imagination is the default at that age. And it’s a movie about family, so to a certain extent, they got attached really quickly to Raúl and Sheila, and they got sick of each other and would fight, which was perfect for the film.”
Raúl, who played hairdresser Richie in Looking, echoes Justin, musing that he doesn’t think they could have made We The Animals with young, professionally trained actors. “Evan, Josiah and Isaiah had no preconceptions, they’re not acting. They’re just living and had to learn to be brothers.”
As Paps, Raúl brings both joy and antagonism to the close- knit family. One minute, he’s tenderly cutting Jonah’s hair in the yard, or joining in and laughing with
“Evan, Josiah and Isaiah aren’t acting, they are just living”
the boys who are leaning out of the family truck as it speeds along, looking up at the sky. The next, he’s lashing out at Ma and walking out of the family home, leaving her injured physically and mentally, and the three brothers to fend for themselves, stealing food from fields and shops.
Although the story is specific to Justin’s experiences, the character of Paps wasn’t a million miles away from people Raúl knew growing up in South Texas. “I know what it is to grow up with parents who are struggling, barely making ends meet and dealing with the frustrations of that,” he tells me.
“I grew up around a lot of people like Paps but I’m mature enough to understand that people are complicated, so I was interested in getting to know who he is and getting to see him from the inside.”
I ask how he felt playing a character the audience would, at times, find hard to like.
“He does horrific things but I think that he’s written with a lot of tenderness and love,” he replies. “I never saw him as a bad guy, that’s the kind of work that I’m drawn to, stuff that’s not black or white but sits in a grey zone, where you’re not sure how to feel about things. I think that’s life.” Raúl also saw himself reflected in Jonah. Although straight, he says he’s always been the more sensitive one in his family, “a bit of a sensitive soul in a macho environment.”
Latinx culture is closely tied to the concept of machismo, defined as “a strong sense of masculine pride, an exaggerated masculinity” — demonstrated by Paps but at odds with Jonah and Raúl as a child.
“In a similar way that Justin found writing, acting became a source of solace for me as someone growing up in a very macho environment,” explains Raúl.
“That’s why I turned to theatre and film: it was something that saved me.”
While Justin agrees that machismo is a barrier to a lot of Latinx people’s coming out journeys, he argues that society is homophobic as a whole, stemming largely from the influence of religion.
“It comes from Catholic and evangelical Christian ideas, primarily, in Latinx culture, and from toxic ideas about masculinity,” he says. “You find that in black communities and white communities, as well as
Latinx communities. There are different expectations — or different shadings — of what a ‘ real man’ is, but I don’t think that one culture is worse than another.
“And when it comes to homophobia, everybody’s pretty fucking good at that.”
Another way the film differs from the book is the timespan from start to finish: several years in the novel but only six months or so in the film. Director Jeremiah felt that having significant time jumps and multiple actors playing Jonah would cause the audience to lose the emotional connection with him, and, with filming taking place before the success of Moonlight ( to which We The Animals has been compared), there was little evidence to suggest otherwise.
The book ends with teenage Jonah having a sexual encounter with an adult man at a bus stop — something that obviously couldn’t be carried through to the film given Jonah’s age.
But it was important to Justin that Jonah’s story remained queer, so a minor character in the book was developed into the film’s love interest. The nameless, pimply, blond, porn- obsessed teenager becomes a key character in Jonah’s eyes as he begins to understand his own sexuality.
“My biggest concern about changing the ages was that it would lose the focus on Jonah’s developing sexuality,” recalls Justin. “It’s a story about family intimacy and the ways in which ideas of masculinity influence sexuality, and it just had to be queer. There aren’t that many films where you see sexuality in children that young. I thought that was cool and kind of provocative in a way.”
After his turn as Looking’s Richie — often the show’s moral compass — Raúl was taken to heart by fans. In one episode of the second season, we see him open up about his relationship with his father, who doesn’t accept his sexuality.
Now we see Raúl playing a part similar to that, I remark. “As a boy,” he replies, “I remember being picked on for being a sensitive kid, then picking on other kids for similar traits. So, it’s interesting that the work I’m now getting allows me to navigate both sides of that.”
Reassuringly, both Justin and Raúl feel that stories from the Latinx community are increasingly finding ways to be told — and progress is particularly important when you look at the rhetoric President Trump has directed towards Mexicans and other immigrant populations in the US.
“I was definitely challenging that rhetoric by calling it We The Animals,” says Justin.
“I chose that title because we were called mutts, those slurs were hurled at us and I wanted to take that language and spin it. But I didn’t know that it would become amped up [ by Trump].”
He adds: “I do think there’s this idea that minority stories are in competition with each other. The issue is not that there are too many black stories or Asian- American stories being told, and it’s crowding out the space for Latinx stories. That’s not the problem.
“The problem is that everybody in the industry who has the money and calls the final shots is still white. Has it got better? Yeah. Exponentially better? No.”
But Raúl adds that he has seen significant improvements in opportunities coming his way, and playing gay in Looking did the opposite of pigeon- holing him. “Richie is a romantic lead, specifically Latino,” he explains, “and to be quite frank, a lot of Latino actors don’t get to play those kinds of roles because they are few and far between. So, it opened doors for me.” He points to his roles in two recent all- Latino projects — super- hero crime movie El Chicano, and TV drama Vida — as proof that ethnic representation is on the rise.
Working together has also sparked something of a creative partnership between Jeremiah, Justin and Raúl. It appears Justin is in quite an exclusive club of authors who actually love the adaptation of their work.
Having been approached by Hollywood scouts looking to buy the rights, Justin says he could have got more money out of the project, but it might have meant seeing the book adapted, bizarrely, into a sitcom rather than an arthouse film. “I’m glad I chose art. I’d have been heartbroken if it was just some schlock,” he says.
We The Animals is released on 14 June
“There aren’t many films where you see sexuality in children that young”