• Papi Chulo

    2016’s Handsome Devil, a minor hit and the second film from Irish director John Butler, turned on issues of gay estrangement and unlikely male friendship. It balanced melodrama and excesses — like Andrew Scott’s literature teacher and his ‘Oh Captain, My Captain’ grandstanding — with a genuinely sweet consideration of the loneliness and alienation that comes with being young, gay and wayward. Butler channelled his own difficult queer history into a generally broad treatment, a heightening and blending of Irish cinematic tones. Papi Chulo takes Butler out of the island for the first time, but operates along similar thematic and tonal lines for its story of…