A young man cowers in gasoline-soaked clothing, flames licking at the edges of the frame. This opening nightmare of David Pablos’ “On the Road” establishes a world where violence and desire intertwine with terrifying intimacy. The director transforms Mexico’s highway trucking culture into a stage for transgressive romance, crafting a Venice Orizzonti prize-winning work that refuses easy categorization.
Veneno, a hustler fleeing his brutal past, encounters Muñeco, a weathered truck driver whose stoic exterior conceals profound loneliness. Their journey across northern Mexico’s unforgiving landscape becomes something unexpected: a love story that blooms in hell’s antechamber.
Pablos has created cinema that confronts audiences with graphic sexuality and unflinching violence while excavating genuine tenderness from the wreckage. Diego Luna’s involvement as producer signals the film’s artistic ambitions, which extend far beyond exploitation despite NC-17-level explicitness.
This harsh beauty emerges from Pablos’ conviction that human connection persists even in environments designed to crush the soul. The result challenges conventional notions of queer cinema, Mexican road movies, and crime thrillers by fusing all three into something singular and uncompromising.
Embodied Performances
Victor Prieto transforms Veneno into a fascinating study of survival through seduction. His performance radiates practiced confidence masking deep wounds, projecting sexual swagger while allowing glimpses of the traumatized young man beneath.
Prieto handles the character’s explicit encounters with remarkable authenticity, never allowing the sexuality to overwhelm the psychological complexity. When Veneno’s carefully constructed facade cracks, revealing the terrified boy who escaped sex trafficking, Prieto achieves genuine pathos without sentimentality.
Osvaldo Sanchez crafts Muñeco as masculinity under siege. His truck driver initially projects heterosexual certainty while betraying unmistakable curiosity about his passenger’s advances. Sanchez traces the character’s gradual emotional opening with subtle precision, showing how repressed desire battles ingrained shame. The actor’s portrayal of a man estranged from his family through drug dependency adds layers of self-loathing that complicate his growing attraction to Veneno.
The chemistry between these performers elevates their relationship from mere transaction to something approaching redemption. Their names carry symbolic weight: Veneno meaning poison, Muñeco signifying doll, suggesting mutual toxicity and manipulation. Yet both actors discover genuine affection within their characters’ damaged psyches.
The supporting cast, drawn largely from non-professional actors, provides authentic texture to this marginalized world. Together, they represent competing models of masculinity: one openly embracing desire despite danger, the other gradually acknowledging what he’s spent years denying.
Neon-Lit Brutality
Cinematographer Ximena Amann bathes this highway purgatory in harsh artificial light that transforms truck stops into garish theaters of exploitation. Her camera work oscillates between intimate handheld sequences that thrust viewers into uncomfortable proximity with the characters and wider shots that emphasize their isolation against Mexico’s vast landscape. The visual palette contrasts blazing neon interiors with sun-scorched exteriors, creating a world where shadows offer the only refuge.
Pablos employs stylized flashbacks to reveal Veneno’s trauma through fragmented, nightmarish imagery. These sequences achieve haunting beauty through their smoky, silhouetted aesthetics, transforming horrific memories into something approaching poetry. The director’s visual approach places audiences directly within his characters’ experiences, using close-ups and raw cinematography to eliminate comfortable distance.
The highway setting functions as both escape route and trap, with the massive eighteen-wheeler serving as obvious phallic symbolism that Pablos embraces rather than disguises. The film’s most transcendent moment occurs in an abandoned warehouse where the desperate lovers slow-dance to “Los Caminos de la Vida,” creating temporary sanctuary within industrial decay.
Here, Pablos demonstrates his ability to extract moments of grace from environments designed for degradation. The visual style supports themes of perpetual motion and rootlessness, suggesting that for these characters, movement represents the only available form of freedom.
Love in the Time of Cartels
“On the Road” excavates profound themes from its pulp framework, examining how queer identity survives within Mexico’s machismo culture. Pablos understands that for marginalized communities, sex and violence often occupy the same psychological space, each carrying the potential for both pleasure and annihilation.
The film locates hope within desperate circumstances without minimizing the genuine dangers faced by its protagonists. This exploration extends beyond surface-level social commentary to examine the psychological mechanisms that allow individuals to maintain humanity under dehumanizing conditions.
The director presents queerness as both liberation and vulnerability, showing how sexual identity becomes inseparable from economic necessity in environments where conventional social support systems have collapsed.
Veneno’s openness about his desires represents both strength and dangerous exposure, while Muñeco’s gradual acceptance of his attraction forces him to confront deeply ingrained cultural programming about masculinity and desire. The film suggests that authentic connection requires dismantling these protective facades, even when doing so increases physical and emotional risk.
The highway serves as metaphor for escape that becomes its own form of imprisonment. Veneno and Muñeco flee their respective traumas while hurtling toward inevitable destruction, their brief connection offering glimpse of what love might look like under different circumstances.
The road promises freedom while delivering only temporary respite from pursuing dangers, creating a paradox that mirrors the characters’ internal conflicts between desire and survival. Their journey becomes circular rather than linear, with each mile traveled bringing them closer to the violence they’re attempting to outrun.
Pablos avoids exploitation by addressing exploitation directly, showing how economic desperation forces individuals into dangerous intimate arrangements while maintaining their essential humanity. The film refuses to romanticize sex work or criminalize its practitioners, instead examining the systemic conditions that create such limited options. Characters make choices based on immediate survival needs rather than moral abstractions, creating ethical complexity that resists simple judgment.
The director achieves remarkable balance between brutality and tenderness, suggesting that human connection represents the only meaningful resistance to systematic dehumanization. This balance manifests in specific scenes where violence and intimacy intersect: Veneno’s scars become sources of comfort when Muñeco traces them gently, transforming markers of trauma into opportunities for healing. The film argues that love emerges from shared wounds rather than despite them.
Despite its bleak setting and violent climax, the film maintains surprising optimism rooted in the characters’ capacity for genuine affection. This optimism avoids naivety by acknowledging the temporary nature of their sanctuary while celebrating its existence. The characters’ ability to create moments of joy within desperate circumstances becomes an act of resistance against forces designed to strip them of dignity and hope. Their dance sequence represents pure defiance: two damaged people choosing beauty over brutality, even when they know such choices carry deadly consequences.
Pablos has created challenging art that earns its transgressive elements through emotional honesty and visual poetry. The film’s Venice recognition confirms its artistic achievement while its explicit content may limit broader commercial appeal.
Yet this represents precisely the kind of uncompromising vision that expands cinema’s expressive possibilities, proving that genre filmmaking can address serious themes without sacrificing visceral impact. The director joins a growing movement of Latin American filmmakers who refuse to sanitize their cultures’ complexities for international consumption, instead offering authentic portraits that honor both beauty and brutality within marginalized communities.
The movie “On the Road,” also known by its Spanish title “En el camino,” premiered on September 4, 2025, in the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival. There is no information available at this time on where it can be watched by the public.
Full Credits
Director: David Pablos
Writers: David Pablos
Producers and Executive Producers: Inna Payan, Luis Salinas, Diego Luna, Enrique Nava
Cast: Victor Prieto, Osvaldo Sanchez
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Ximena Amann
Editors: Jonathan Pellicer, Paulina del Paso
Composer: Andrea Balency-Béarn
The Review
On the Road
David Pablos delivers a visceral masterpiece that transforms highway brutality into unexpected poetry. Despite its punishing content, "On the Road" achieves genuine emotional resonance through fearless performances and stunning cinematography. The film succeeds where many transgressive works fail by earning its explicit elements through authentic character development and thematic depth. This is uncompromising cinema that rewards patient viewers with profound insights into survival, desire, and human connection.
PROS
- Exceptional lead performances from Prieto and Sanchez
- Stunning cinematography that transforms harsh environments into visual poetry
- Genuine emotional depth beneath transgressive surface elements
- Authentic portrayal of marginalized communities without exploitation
- Masterful balance between brutality and tenderness
CONS
- Extremely graphic content will limit audience accessibility
- Violent climax may overshadow the film's emotional achievements
- Some flashback sequences feel less innovative than the main narrative
- Challenging subject matter requires significant viewer commitment
