The Bolivian film with a French title and American and Bolivian actors, speaking English and Spanish successfully brings in the disparate sources for a universal story of acceptance and the hard road to getting there.
In Tu Me Manques (I Miss You), Jorge (Oscar Martínez) is the grieving father whose estranged gay son, Gabriel (José Durán), has died in a most tragic way. While sitting at his computer, Jorge accidentally clicks on a video call to Sebastian (Fernando Barbosa) who was Ganriel’s former lover.
With Jorge in Bolivia and Sebastian in New York, their video call is as awkward and acrimonious as you can get and still be thousands of miles away from each other. Sebastian says it was Jorge who killed his son by never accepting him. Jorge says Sebastian and the people “like him” somehow corrupted his son.
But with Sebsatian’s words ringing in his ears and the realization that he hardly knew his son at all – at least for a long time – Jorge flies to New York to meet one-on-one with Sebastian and hear the answers to the questions he never wanted to ask.
Now with Sebastian as his guide, Jorge is taken on a kind of “tour” of Gabriel’s life in New York. He meets his friends and his given a kind of temporary queer life induction. The film flashes back and farther back and forward again, and the flexible timeline ends up being a good narrative device.
The film was written and directed by Rodrigo Bellott, a Bolivian who adapted the story from his play of the same name. Now to get really meta, in the film Sebastian is writing that play, an artsy, modernistic play that features 30 different “Gabriels,” a device Bellott used/uses for reasons you will learn.
If the story seems otherwise all too familiar, it is because, sadly, it is. But having this cast and setting gives it a fresh context and makes it a watchable experience for anyone.
Tu Me Manques | Not Rated | 3 out of 4 Stars | Reviewed by Kyle Osborne
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