From local films like Olivia Lamasan’s In My Life and Jun Robles Lana’s Die Beautiful to international releases like Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain and Gus Van Sant’s Milk, gay men dying is a subtle way of cementing the narrative that gay people are doomed to a life of tears, heartaches, and despair, or that their existence is somewhat more dispensable than those with different gender orientation.
Joel Lamangan's entry to the 2018 Metro Manila Film Festival, Rainbow’s Sunset, departs from this gay movie trope by killing off the hustler and not his gay benefactor.
In Rainbow's Sunset, Ramon Estrella (Eddie Garcia) is a renowned political figure who, at the age of 84, leaves his home, wife, and children to be in the company of his dying friend and lover, Alfredo (Tony Mabesa). Ramon’s decision leaves his three adult children, aware of rumors of their father’s sexuality, baffled and concerned that coming out at such an old age would prove to be a PR disaster for their family.
But let’s stop right there and dissect the supposedly “romantic” relationship between Ramon and Alfredo. Growing up poor, Ramon receives all sort of help from the well-to-do family of Alfredo. As adults, Ramon remains on the receiving end of Alfredo’s help: from tutorials on algebra to tuition for his law school education to financing his wedding to providing campaign funds in order to bolster his political career, down to the lot where his family home is built, everything Ramon has came as a result of Alfredo's generosity. Because of this unabashed spending, Alfredo reaches old age with a very much reduced estate.
As a sort of “payback” to his generous gay benefactor, Ramon treats Alfredo like a dirtbag by marrying Alfredo’s friend Sylvia and sires three children from her, leaves him to the periphery and sneaks in once in a while for some male to male smooching, and even has the bravado to make Alfredo the godfather of all his three children. One goes through the movie wondering where Alfredo’s sense of self-respect went, or if it was there in the first place, and how Ramon is the quintessential example of an unapologetic hustler.
The degree of masochism Alfredo imposes upon himself for being the unrequited gay lover and benefactor of a man who keeps slapping him with a series of cold, brutal dejections is just plain nauseating. The over-romanticization of an overeager gay lover willing to sacrifice and give all his money away to a man who can never quite reciprocate is not love, as the film’s makers suggest, but a losing commercial proposition.
All the ensuing drama involving Ramon’s and Sylvia’s children are all a sideshow. The real highlight is the film’s very hollow, cliche-driven narrative of a generous, kind, masochistic gay lover and the object of his desire – a man who just keeps receiving without giving, to the point where even in death, with his sexuality still unresolved and his supposed love for Alfredo still a huge question mark, he leaves behind heartaches for everybody else to suffer. A true hustler through and through.
Winner of the 2018 MMFF Best Picture Award, among a horde of other recognitions, Rainbow’s Sunset is unimaginative, delusional, overwrought, and feeds on misconceptions and cliches. For verily, there is a method to madness insofar as gay love is concerned, but here it’s just endless madness.