A high-camp catwalk show of flamboyant queerness, fabulous hair and weapons-grade Resting Bitch Face, Rains Over Babel is an attention-grabbing debut feature from Spanish-Colombian director Gala del Sol. Bursting with music and colour, tropical sizzle and magic realism, this hot-blooded melodrama features a sexy cast of drag queens, smouldering hunks and gender-fluid party animals, methodically hitting every letter in the LGBTQ+ alphabet along the way. Screening in Rotterdam this week fresh from its well-received Sundance world premiere, this occasionally muddled but hugely charming bohemian rhapsody should enjoy a healthy festival run, with pretty good prospects for niche theatrical release.
Rains Over Babel first began to take shape during Covid lockdown, initially as a kind of shared group therapy project between del Sol and her team of young theatre actors, before gradually evolving into a full-blooded screen drama. The sprawling multi-character plot is very loosely based on Dante’s Inferno, though any clear parallels are few and far between. This neon-saturated trash-punk fairy tale owes borrows far more from drag legend Divine than from The Divine Comedy. In fairness, it is a safe bet that the target audience for this maximalist spectacle was never going to be purist scholars of 14th century Italian literature.
The film’s carnivalesque patchwork of characters and plotlines revolve around Babel, a bacchanalian nightclub in Del Sol’s home city of Cali. A regular fixture at the bar is La Flaca (Sarai Rebolledo), the Grim Reaper reimagined as a seductive Afro-haired glamazon beauty, who enjoys making high-stakes bets with her desperate victims, risking their souls for a few more years of life, for themselves or a loved one. Currently hoping to cut one of these deals is junkie poet Monet (Johan Zapata), who is shocked to find himself dead from a drug overdose, and hunky ex-soldier Dante (Felipe Aguilar Rodríguez), who died on the battlefield 20 years ago, only for La Flaca to keep him stranded in purgatory while he works as her soul-collector.
Meanwhile, anguished Jacob (William Hurtado) is eager to explore his clandestine double life as a dancing drag queen, but still hiding his queer side from his stern pastor father, whose conservative Christian faith comes with a heavy dose of homophobia. The club’s owner Gian Salai (John Alex Castillo) is also facing imminent certain death over his debts to local gangsters, a fate he can only avoid by booking beloved salsa-punk singer (real-life Cali music scene star Jacobo Vélez) and his Mambanegro band. Unfortunately for Gian, his headline attraction has mysteriously vanished just hours before showtime, so he must dispatch his son Time (Jose Mojiva) and Babel regular Uma (Celina Biurrun) on a frantic mission to retrieve El Callegüeso from the hellish bowels of a subterranean hotel sex dungeon. Aided by a talking salamander, obviously.
For all its timely gender-queer currency, Rains Over Babel frequently looks and feels like a stylistic homage to previous breakthrough eras of gay-themed indie cinema. Fans of early Pedro Almodovar, mid-career John Waters, Gregg Araki and others may recognise the film’s stagey, brightly hued, glam-punk aesthetic. The 111-minute runtime drags in places while the crowded jumble of plots, which del Sol and her cast conceived in improvised workshops, fall apart under basic scrutiny. The infernal underground hotel sequence, probably the film’s closest echo of Dante, also leans a little too heavy on laboured slapstick comedy.
But despite a few minor tonal bumps, this highly assured and admirably ambitious hot mess of a debut is mostly great fun, sexy and glossy, big-hearted and playful. Del Sol also brings strong visual flair to every scene, even the disco dance-off epilogue and goofy animated collages that spice up the end credits. The soundtrack is a vital uplifting presence too, a rich musical feast spanning salsa to gypsy folk, vintage garage rock to lusty Latin dance-pop.
Director, screenwriter: Gala del Sol
Cast: Jhon Narváez, Celina Biurrun, John Alex Castillo, Sofia Buenaventura, Sarai Rebolledo, Felipe Aguilar Rodríguez, Jose Mojica, William Hurtado
Cinematography: Sten Tadashi Olson
Editing: Gala del Sol, Hadley Hillel
Production design: Jaime Luna
Music: Martin de Lima
Producers: H.A. Hermida, Ana Cristina Gutiérrez, Gala del Sol, Andrés Hermida, Natalia Rendón Rodríguez
Production companies: Gala Del Sol Films (Colombia), Fabrica Mundi (Spain)
World sales: Latido Films
Venue: Rotterdam International Film Festival (Bright Future)
In Spanish
111 minutes
