Budd Wilkins

Ultimately, then, for all its attention to historical detail, not to mention pictorial splendor, Goyo: The Boy General offers American audiences a puzzling, inconstant vision of the past.

Griffiths never quite manages to convincingly shoehorn her loftier themes into the modest narrative, resulting in some disconcerting tonal dissonances.

While the film’s vision of Nelly Arcan may ultimately remain just slightly out of focus (a notion that’s duly literalized in its final shots), Mylène Mackay’s powerhouse turn seems certain to resonate.

Cocote’s narrative structure exhibits a tidy symmetry, strongly suggesting that what ultimately transpires has a certain inevitability to it, that cycles of retribution and vendetta all too easily devolve into vicious circles.