Average Rating: 7.2/10
Reviews Counted: 18
Fresh: 16 | Rotten: 2
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 8.1/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 0
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 1,087
An effeminate 12-year-old who dutifully plays mother to his criminal father and older siblings experiences a crisis of conscience after befriending an honest Manila cop in the sophomore feature from director Auraeus Solito. A young innocent whose devotion to his family finds him taking the place of his own deceased mother, Maxi spends most of his days cooking and doing the household chores. In the evening hours, Maxi can often be found on the streets shopping and taking in a film at the local
Sep 22, 2006 Wide
Aug 28, 2007
Unico Entertainment
All Critics (20) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (18) | Rotten (3) | DVD (4)
One of the finest Filipino films, shimmering with folkloric charm without softening its view of the harshness and injustice of a life of poverty.
Preteen sexuality is a sensitive subject, but director Auraeus Solito handles it with dignity, never becoming exploitative.
The newcomer Nathan Lopez delights as the flamboyantly gay Maxi, the youngest son in a family of thieves who falls in love with handsome police officer.
A unusual and potent portrait of the Filipino undersoul.
The film is alarming, endearing, and utterly unflappable.
This debut feature by Filipino director Auraeus Solito is a neatly observed take on Manila street life.
captures the street life of Manila's slums like no other film
Veering from adorable and light to bleak and tragic, Maximo Oliveros is all over the emotional map, but in a realistic way, sort of like life itself.
If this represents the best of Philippine cinema, I'd hate to see the worst!
Yet after all of the muck has been racked, the film's saving grace is the marvellously compelling naïveté and too-early reality-test of its star. Perhaps if queers were the majority there would be less senseless death and more fashion conscious citizens!
Okay, aside from the gay angle, this is actually a rather conventional film. Had Maxi been a girl, no one would have even thought of exporting this thing. But it isn't and it's saved by the brilliant work of young Nathen Lopez, who swishes and preens his
One of those all-too-rare films that handle preadolescent queerness with intelligence and unflinching honesty.
A neorealist coming-of-age story infused with the pulse-pounding anxieties and excitement of first love.
Congested Manila slums project both the adorable and harsh everyday reality in the coming-of-age film Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros), a mesmerizing piece of actuality in the midst of poverty, crime, family, forbidden love and everything in between.The superb direction from
August 8, 2010Super Reviewer
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