Sundance review: In 'Ponyboi,' a moving character study of an intersex person is bogged down in predictable crime melodrama

There’s a fascinating, groundbreaking character study at the heart of “Ponyboi,” exploring the hard life of an intersex person — played, the filmmakers say, for the first time in movie history by an intersex person. 

Unfortunately, and this is something the movie works to overcome but can’t quite make it, that character is trapped in the sort of lowlife crime drama that used to be a dime-a-dozen at Sundance.

It’s Valentine’s Day in the early aughts when we meet Ponyboi, played by River Gallo (who’s also the film’s screenwriter), turning tricks at a New Jersey truck stop. That’s one of the jobs Ponyboi performs for their boss, a wannabe gangster named Vinny (Dylan O’Brien). Another is working at a 24-hour laundromat, managed by Vinny’s pregnant girlfriend, Angel (Victoria Pedretti), who’s Ponyboi’s platonic bestie. What Angel doesn’t know is that Vinny sometimes takes Ponyboi in the laundromat’s back room for sex.

That room is also where Lucky (Stephen Moscatello), the brother of Vinny’s gangster boss Two-Tone (Keith William Richards), dies while having sex with Ponyboi — overdosing on a bad batch of crystal meth Vinny is trying to sell. Ponyboi takes the money from Lucky’s briefcase and tries to get out of town, if they can get their testosterone from the pharmacy, or from Charlie (Indya Moore), a trans cabaret owner with whom Ponyboi has a checkered history. Vinny is in hot pursuit, as is Two-Tone.

Ponyboi also gets news from his Salvadoran parents that their dad — who kicked Ponyboi out of the house over their sexuality — is dying. Ponyboi’s hope for rescue is Bruce (Murray Bartlett, from “The White Lotus”), a handsome man in a cowboy hat and a Mustang convertible who’s almost too good to be true. 

When director Esteban Arango (who debuted at Sundance in 2020 with “Blast Beat”) focuses on the aspects of Gallo’s script that center on Ponyboi’s identity, and how they cope with the day-to-day existence of being intersex, the movie is transcendently moving. Too often, though, it’s bogged down in the predictable grime of Vinny’s scheming and the gangster gunplay. 

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‘Ponyboi’

★★1/2

Screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Not rated, but probably R for strong sexual content, language, drug use and violence. Running time: 103 minutes. 

Screens again: Sunday, January 21, 10 p.m., Redstone Cinemas 7, Park City; Wednesday, January 24, Megaplex Gateway 1/2/3, Salt Lake City; and Thursday, January 25, 10:30 p.m., Egyptian Theatre, Park City. Also available online via the Sundance portal, Thursday-Sunday, January 25-28.