Roberto, an 18 year old boy, joins his father in Montreal to escape the violence in Peru. His father, now Bob Montoya, fled Peru a few years earlier and now lives with his Canadian wife and daughter. The Clash shows both the culture clash for Roberto and the macho clash with his now Canadian father. It plays out a bit like a Martin Rejtman film in which the oddball humour has been switched out for a tense underlying machismo.
The arrival of Roberto is a challenge to Bob’s male pride. We don’t know how much of a success Bob was in Peru, but he’s desperate to present himself as a success story in Canada. Roberto obviously knows where he came from in Peru so Bob wants to show him how far he’s come. Roberto is the medium for Bob to prove himself to people back in Peru.
In order to maintain his image, he tries to sell how great Canada is to his son. He keeps telling him it’s a place where you can be anything, a place where you can make lots of money. He portrays himself as a businessman that is one step away from the next big deal with a nice house and a nice car. However, the house, the car, and his suit are all for show. The nice house and car that he ‘owns’ are really his wife’s and his suit is just a image that covers up the debts he’s incurring.
Like Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite, Bob Montoya resorts to machismo to present himself as a big man. Whilst he’s grateful to have his son with him – as it’s a chance to prove to someone he’s achieved the American dream – he also sees him as a challenge to his masculinity. He’s a new male figure in the house that takes some of his wife’s and mistress’ attention away from him.
Their relationship fits Freud’s Oedipus complex theory. Bob is the father figure that dominates the household. Roberto is the son that reluctantly lives within the rules his father sets. They rarely talk beyond a few awkward words as Roberto lives in silence. Bob asserts his male dominance over Roberto by kissing his wife and his mistress in front of his son. In contrast, Roberto has fantasies of hooking up with his father’s mistress. In a final awkward party, Roberto battles his father for a dance with his mistress. It’s only in the club when he’s drunk that he can overcome his ‘castration anxiety‘. However, his father never allows her to dance with him in order to preserve his position as the alpha male.
The Clash is a brilliantly awkward film about a father and his son battling to prove their masculinity in a place foreign to the both of them.
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