Film Review: The Last First Time
There’s a particular warmth and sensuality running through Mexican filmmaker Rafael Ruiz Espejo’s The Last First Time (El Fin De Las Primeras Veces) that immediately brought to mind something of the spirit of Y tu mamá también. Not because the films necessarily tread exactly the same ground, but because both understand how desire, youth and self-discovery can become tangled together in ways that feel exhilarating, confusing and occasionally heartbreaking.
The film follows 18-year-old Eduardo (Alejandro Quintana), who leaves his small hometown and travels to Guadalajara to sit his university entrance exam. Away from his mother’s watchful eye and suddenly presented with the anonymity and possibilities of a much bigger city, Eduardo finds himself entering a world he has seemingly only imagined from a distance.
After meeting a group of queer club kids, what begins as a relatively ordinary trip quickly becomes Eduardo’s gay coming-of-age awakening.
And The Last First Time certainly doesn’t shy away from the awakening part.
There’s a sensuality to the film that feels refreshingly matter-of-fact. Sex and physical desire are allowed to be part of Eduardo’s story without immediately becoming a morality lesson. Yet underneath those encounters is the much more interesting emotional turmoil of a young man caught between wanting to “do the right thing” — or perhaps what he has been taught is the right thing — and the increasingly irresistible urge to surrender to desires he is finally being given the freedom to explore.
That push and pull is where Alejandro Quintana’s performance works particularly well. Eduardo isn’t suddenly transformed into someone fearless simply because he has discovered queer nightlife and attractive boys. There’s hesitation, curiosity, guilt, excitement and vulnerability all competing for space, which makes his journey feel recognisably human rather than engineered as another tidy coming-out story.
The queer crowd Eduardo encounters also gives the film some of its most infectious energy. There is something wonderfully familiar about being young and discovering your people — particularly when you come from somewhere where queer life may have previously seemed distant or inaccessible. A night out can suddenly feel like an entire new universe opening up in front of you.
Director Rafael Ruiz Espejo has said he wants to tell stories about sexual and gender diversity without censoring them or making them more comfortable for heteronormative audiences, and that attitude is very much present here. The Last First Time isn’t particularly interested in explaining queerness to anybody. Eduardo’s attraction, sexual curiosity and contradictions simply exist as part of his life.
That alone makes the film feel quietly refreshing.
Something else I particularly appreciated was simply seeing Mexico presented through a different cinematic lens. So much mainstream film and television still seems determined to reduce the country to drug cartels, violence and dusty crime-thriller backdrops. Here, Guadalajara becomes somewhere vibrant, youthful, beautiful and diverse — a place filled with music, nightlife, sexuality and possibility.
For anyone who already loves Mexican cinema, that makes The Last First Time even easier to recommend.
At just 76 minutes, the film is a relatively intimate piece rather than some sprawling queer epic, but perhaps that suits Eduardo’s story. These aren’t necessarily the experiences that define the rest of his life. They’re the first nights, first attractions, first sexual experiences and first heartbreaks that begin to show him what that life might actually look like.
And sometimes those first times are the ones we remember most.
EQ Music recommends.
The Last First Time (El Fin De Las Primeras Veces) is directed by Rafael Ruiz Espejo and stars Alejandro Quintana, Carlos E. López Cervantes and Pabel Castañeda. The film is available now on streaming platforms internationally.
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