Armond White (inevitably; emphasis added):
All gay experience is on view in the Mexican film 4 Moons[,] the finest, most universal, and most moving gay film of the past year.
Almost perfectly timed for the centennial of D.W. Griffith’s 1916 Intolerance (which some critics, including myself, consider the greatest film ever made). 4 Moons is a comparable masterpiece in the way Velarde similarly interweaves four separate stories linked by emotional richness and a spiritual overview that dissolves time:
First, a youngster’s grade-school affectionate urge for a classmate; then an aged professor’s yearning for a young hustler he eyes at a spa; next, a young man’s deepening feelings for an old friend enhances his family relations; and a couple’s mismatch changes each man’s sense of self. Velarde dramatizes nothing less than the four ages of gay-male life[.]
The younger the actors and characters are, the Whiter they tend to be, ending with two fashionable young White Mexican boyfriends.