The Prince

Originally banned on Amazon Prime for its racy homoerotic content, this stylish and hot-blooded Chilean drama is certainly explicit, but it also offers an engagingly sober look at prison life during the country's Pinochet regime. Based on an obscure 1970s novel by Mario Cruz, it sees a young man (Juan Carlos Maldonado) imprisoned in a Santiago jail where his chiselled looks earn him the nickname "The Prince". Claimed as the bedmate of an older resident (a fantastically imposing Alfredo Castro), "The Prince" discovers that prison offers an unexpected outlet for his repressed sexual yearnings. On the downside, it also fuels his mounting narcissism. By opening on a shot of blood pooling across a floor and going on to depict explicit shower romps and upsetting scenes of abuse, director Sebastian Muñoz makes no apologies for his bold content. Instead, he uses it to explore the titular prisoner's splintering psyche. The combined allure of this rich subtext and Maldonado's brooding face help The Prince emerge as a hellishly beautiful portrait of a troubled man forged in the fires of an even more troubled society.