CLEVELAND, Ohio — Suicide related to the destructive, self-loathing cocktail of fear and shame is what filmmaker Rodrigo Bellott deftly explores in his new transformative movie “Tu Me Manques.”
Originally staged as a 2015 play of the same name in Bellott’s Bolivian homeland, the movie focuses on a grieving and conservative father flying from South America to New York City hoping to find answers as to why his closeted gay son committed suicide.
For Bellott, the fear of being ostracized in his home country was only exceeded by the desire to publicize the devastating number of suicides related to living as a closeted gay man in Bolivia.
For comparison stateside, a 2020 Trevor Project survey revealed 40 percent of LGBTQ youth ages 13 and 24 have seriously considered suicide.
The Cleveland Institute of Art’s Cinematheque is currently featuring “Tu Me Manques” in its virtual screening room.
We caught up with Bellott, who came through Northeast Ohio in 2004 when his film “Sexual Dependency” appeared at the Cleveland International Film Festival, during a recent Zoom call to Bolivia.
Rodrigo, congrats on the film, which despite receiving a 2019 premiere continues to find new life around the world.
In the context of the pandemic, we never thought people would get to see it or get to share it. It’s incredibly humbling. We were so surprised we were able to sell the film all over the world at the worst possible moment. I think people are really eager to watch emotional journeys and know what’s going on in other people’s hearts.
“Tu Me Manques” (Courtesy of Dark Star Pictures)
Initially, were you thinking about a movie adaption?
Not at all. The reason why I made a play was because of a sense of urgency to tell this story that went beyond an audience or commercial thinking. We were thinking about doing this play to save lives. We had no support, no money, so we initially made the play for a one-day show. We never expected it to be this well-received. I was really expecting to be kicked out of my country. We thought it was going to be social suicide in 2015. Nobody had ever done anything openly gay or a play that talked about these issues with frontal male nudity. The morning after the play, we just got so many entries on our Facebook page of people sharing their stories about how they came out or parents talking about their kids being gay. It just became a snowball. We decided to do it one more day and that show sold out within hours. It just became a big box office success. We started getting offers from all over the world, including a Broadway producer who said this would be a great film.
Could you discuss how fact and fiction intertwine in “Tu Me Manques,” which is based around your life experience?
What’s interesting is I play with memory and what is real and what is fiction. When you’re in the closet, you are gay and you’re not — and both of them are real. Obviously, I never met the father. It’s really a great essay on what’s fiction and what’s reality and how life reproduces itself with wishful thinking. I knew I would get a lot of criticism saying no Latin American machismo-driven father would go to the U.S. to meet his late son’s boyfriend or friends. I said that’s exactly the revenge fantasy. That is what people should do. If parents would actually take the leap of faith and know their kids, a lot of lives would be saved. (NOTE: Bellott said during the three years it took to complete the film he lost seven friends to suicide).
“Tu Me Manques” (Courtesy of Dark Star Pictures)
Continuing that thought, while “Tu Me Manques” is billed as a gay film it really speaks to the difficulty parents have seeing their children for who they are.
Absolutely. For us, it was ultimately a story that if you see that tenderness, if you see the struggle, if you see the pain and the love, you understand this is about the connection between mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. During the play, I had a lot of mothers talk to me about their relationships with their daughters and trying to protect them and survive in this violent and misogynistic world. In that process, they never let them be who they are because they’re relieving their own fears and projecting them into their daughters. It’s just great how people see beyond the anecdotal part of a gay story and just connect with the emotions of human beings.
Something else that felt groundbreaking in the film is its use of nudity in sex scenes. There was no shying away from the subject, which forces those uncomfortable viewers to confront any biases.
We knew we were making a point with the sex scenes. For me, they were important because I had never seen a gay film that showed tenderness. That was really important to see two guys laughing, being tender and loving. You’re going beyond the nudity and going beyond the sexuality and just sharing their hearts. That’s what making love is. I can imagine a lot of straight audiences have never seen gay sex on screen. They’ve seen gay films that just show muscular guys. I wanted to show tenderness with no shame of their bodies, no shame of nudity and no shame of being vulnerable.
It’s interesting you mentioned shame because there’s a good argument that could have been the film’s title with so many of its characters — gay and straight — dealing with societal conventions tied to religion, family and so on. That said, what’s surprised you the most about how “Tu Me Manques” has been received.
I thought this would be a film that would speak to young gay guys and girls but the audience that comes to see the film and loves the films are mothers and fathers and grandpas. That just says a lot about that the universality of that love story. The fact it’s felt worldwide gives you an idea it’s also transcending language and cultural barriers. People are seeing themselves on the screen in this father’s struggle to understanding his son and the mourning. Ultimately, this is “Romeo & Juliet.” It’s the same old story told many, many times — we can’t just let people love.
