The Mattachine Family

7/5/2024

When a film feels it has to beat its message to death to get it across, it loses much of its effectiveness, and that’s very much the case with director Andy Vallentine’s debut narrative feature. The picture tells the story of an upscale Los Angeles gay male couple, Thomas (Nico Tortorella) and Oscar (Juan Pablo Di Pace), who become foster parents to a six-year-old boy (Matthew Jacob Ocampo) whose drug-addicted mother (Colleen Foy) is incarcerated. But, when mom is released from prison, she wins back custody of the child to raise as her own, a development that tears Thomas apart. His anguish is exacerbated by many of his LGBTQ friends becoming parents and Oscar’s lack of interest in fostering another youngster, causing a serious rift in their relationship. To its credit, the premise behind