Tu me manques: A Bolivian father in New York seeks memories of his son in this solid adaptation of an influential gay-themed play

By Liam Lacey

Rating: B-plus

Based on a hit 2015 Bolivian stage play that was credited with having a significant impact on gay acceptance in that traditionally Catholic country, the film, Tu me manques, has a complex time-shifting structure built around an emotionally direct call for tolerance and love.  

Bolivia’s 2019 Oscar submission for best international picture, adapted by writer-director Rodrigo Bellott, the film floats freely through different chronologies, creating a level of intellectual play that prevents the drama from sliding into earnest messaging.    

A bereaved father (Oscar Martinez) and his son’s grieving lover (Fernando Barbos) play the blame game.

The central story is about a meeting over several days  between Jorge (Oscar Martínez), a middle-aged businessman from Bolivia, and Sebastian (Fernando Barbosa),  the New York-based Bolivian lover of Jorge’s son, Gabriel, who’d died by suicide shortly after returning to his native country from New York.

The two men initially meet, accidentally, on a video call where they argue bitterly, each accusing the other of driving Gabriel to his death. 

Jorge believes Sebastian led Gabriel astray into a sinful lifestyle. Sebastian, in turn, blames Jorge and his family for their homophobic attitudes. Although he signs off angrily, Jorge takes up Sebastian’s invitation to come to New York and learn more about his son’s life and friends.

He arrives unannounced at Sebastian’s apartment and promptly faints from having forgotten to take his hypertension medication. Sebastian’s roommate tends to him, and over the next few days, Sebastian introduces the uptight older man to Gabriel’s world.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

It’s an immersion in Gay 101: Golden Girls, Grindr, gay bars and gossip (a funny Tommy Heleringer as Sebastian’s over-sharing friend TJ). Covering all the bases, there’s even a gay pastor who challenges Jorge’s religious orthodoxy with a theory that St. Paul, celibate and obsessed with temptation,  may have been in the Biblical closet.

Critical to Jorge’s own conversion to acceptance is a woman of his own vintage, an art dealer named Rausana, played by Pedro Almodóvar’s actress muse, Rossy de Palma. The biological mother of a transgender daughter, and den mother to Gabriel, Sebastian and their friends, she dispenses wisdom and comfort. 

She is the one who explains the phrase “tu me maigres” to Jorge, emphasizing how the reflexive pronoun “me” emphasizes how a part of yourself is missing when a loved one is gone.

There’s a secondary timeline, triggered in flashbacks as Sebastian tells Jorge about their life together. It follows the evolution of Sebastian and Gabriel’s relationship, from their first “meet cute” in a clothing store, to their final goodbye.  

Here things get a little trickier: Gabriel, a young man with a shy affable manner, is played by three different actors (Jose Duran, Benjamin Lukovski and Quim del Rio), which is a teaser to the third future timeline.

Two years after Jorge’s New York trip, Sebastian, inspired by the visit and the memory of Gabriel, has returned to Bolivia. There, he struggles to create a multi-media performance piece, involving 30 actors all playing Gabriel, all wearing the same glasses, maroon polo shirt, all with the same red backpack that Gabriel had when he died. It’s a multiplication of overwhelming sincerity that teeters on kitsch. 

Finally, there’s a fourth timeline, a framing device, in which Sebastian, now a successful playwright back in New York City, is interviewed about the creation of his play, what facts are real and which ones invented, and his desire to hold on to multiple images of Gabriel. 

Contemporary viewers might have reservations about the film’s confluence of gayness and tragedy, inescapable during the AIDS crisis, and echoed again in the decade-old It Gets Better movement focusing on LGBTQ youth suicide. 

In the era of Moonlight and Love, Simon, gay happy endings are more the norm. But in its defense, Tu me manques reminds us that progress is only measured in comparison to the past, and the whole world does not move forward on the same time-frame.

Tu me manques. Written and directed by Rodrigo Bellot, adapted from his stage play. Starring: Oscar Martinez, Fernando Barbosa and Rossy de Palma. Tu me manques is available on VOD and DVD from May 4.