Welcome to Queer Window, MovieJawn’s new column where we share stories and perspectives from queer cinema old and new in order to explore the breadth of LGBTQ+ lives on screen.

by Gary M. Kramer, Staff Writer

Bolivian writer/director Rodrigo Bellot’s 2019 feature, Tu Me Manques, which he originated as a stage play, is a remarkable queer film. As title cards at the end of the film explain, the theater production, which premiered in 2015, was as ambitious as it was unlikely; a cast of 32 non-professional actors portrayed issues of homosexuality and suicide in a production that involved live Skype and Facebook. The show ended up winning Play of the Year. Moreover, it inspired Bolivians to come out and discuss homophobia in the conservative Latin American country, creating what the media called the “Tu Me Manques Effect.”

The film brings this important story of hate, rage, and healing to wider audiences. Bellot uses several of the conceits from the stage production for the film adaptation, such as multiple actors playing the central character of Gabriel (Jose Duran, Ben Lukovski, and Quim del Rio), as well as including snippets from the play-within-a-film’s staging and production to tell this story of the aftereffects of a young man’s coming out and suicide.

Jorge (Oscar Martinez) is bereft after the death of his son, Gabriel. He blames Sebastian (Fernando Barbosa), who was Gabriel’s boyfriend before his death. When Jorge contacts Sebastian, he tells this stranger to have no contact with him or his family. Sebastian responds, “You have no fucking clue who your son is.” It is not long before Jorge arrives on Sebastian’ doorstep in New York, looking for answers.

The relationship between Gabriel’s father and his lover is complicated. Both want to have happy memories of Gabriel, who lived a “double life.” Jorge was not aware Gabriel was gay, and Sebastian was repeatedly asked to keep their relationship secret, and not to post photos of them on social media.

The title, Tu Me Manques translates as “I Miss You,” indicates the essential part of a loved one’s absence. Much of the film has Sebastian and Jorge reflecting on the Gabriel they knew, which enables them to educate the other on who Gabriel was. The film toggles back and forth in time to show how Gabriel and Sebastian met, or for Jorge to recount favorite memories of his son. Bellot intercuts these episodes with scenes of Sebastian staging the play he has created to “turn his pain and anger into something good.”

As Sebastian explains to an interviewer, he employs multiple actors to play Gabriel because memories keep changing, and with one actor, Sebastian fears replacing the memory of the real Gabriel forever. One of the most moving sequences has Sebastian auditioning performers who narrate personal stories about being gay and/or closeted.

Tu Me Manques also features scenes and characters that address other aspects of gay life. At a rooftop party, TJ (Tommy Heleringer) amusingly explains the “7 phases of gay men” to Gabriel, and a later segment has Chase (Rick Costnett), a painter, talking to a group about how he grappled with his pain about being gay through anonymous sex.

These testimonies are essential, and the film is refreshingly frank in its discussions about masculinity and queerness. It is potent when Sebastian tells Jorge that his parents may accept his sexuality, his father preferred when Sebastian had a partner who was shorter or younger, because that would suggest Sebastian was the man in the relationship. The characters in the film debate what it means to “be a man,” and the answer is being honest and brave; manliness is not tied exclusively to sexuality.

The film’s message—“It’s OK to be gay”—is not a widely held belief in Bolivia. Bellot interrogates the shame and guilt that gay men in Bolivia feel, and how suicide is one way of dealing with the pressures and self-hate the queer youth in particular experience.

As the film progresses, truth remains difficult for the characters. Sebastian informs Jorge that Gabriel was afraid of him. Jorge and his wife may have lied to Gabriel to try to get him to return to Bolivia, and escape queer New York. One of the most impactful lines in the film is when Sebastian acknowledges, “Art is the only lie that tells the truth.”

Another comment in the film that resonates is, “We don’t see the world as it is, we see the world as we are,” indicating that we often have a jaundiced view of others. The brilliance of Tu Me Manques is that Bellot lets its characters walk in the shoes of someone else, to understand their lives and appreciate their complexities. (This may also explain why Gabriel is played by three actors in the film and 30 on stage.)

Jorge’s fears about homosexuality are reduced as he comes to know his son through meeting his friends. While this involves some subterfuge—Sebastian tells TJ that Jorge is just coming out—it provides a way of making Gabriel’s father understand his son’s found family as well as queer culture. There are, of course, difficulties with this ruse, which creates some additional friction between Sebastian and Jorge, but it is layered into the film and played to a canny effect.

Late in the film, Gabriel comes out to his sister—Jorge hears a recording of the conversation—and Bellot milks this scene for all its emotional power. The stage production that follows contains an equally impassioned speech by Jorge that may reduce viewers to tears.

Sebastian is told before the curtain goes up on his play, “This is no longer your story, it belongs to the people now.” Viewers will be grateful that Bellot had the honesty, courage, and ability to share Tu Me Manques with the world.

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