The film portrays a gendered society, a consequence of coloniality. Men and women have contrasting roles when it comes to labor and in societal life. Segundo's family is different. Anatolia needs to support her family so that Noe can be an artist. Perhaps one can argue that her disability is a metaphor for her carrying all that burden. But she is proud of her husband. He is not like the rest because his path is in the arts, not in the field. She wants Segundo to follow his steps, not to be like the rest. However, the community doesn't share that sentiment. As the narrative progresses, there are several clashes between the family and them, with a greek tragedy ending.
Segundo often gets teased because of his sensitivity, his work, and his family. He is at crossroads because of that. His father -whom he admires deeply- asks for gentleness "if you don't relax, you won't be able to hear at them" while the community demands manliness. The embodiment of that is Maradonio, Segundo's best friend and foe. He -a teenager- overly sexualizes women, recurs to physical violence, drinks excessively, etc. He replicates the modes of society.
When the town uncovers Noe's queerness, he gets heavily punished, and the family gets isolated. As Andean communities are inherently gregarious, this means the death of the family. A provincial town cannot have subjects acting with their own agency. This, again, is a product of colonization. When Spaniards arrived in America and saw that indigenous societies embraced queerness, they exterminated -more like tried to- them —tying up gender and sexuality with sin. A conception applied to this day.
