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Chained To My Bully Stepbrother (AI Vertical BL Drama)

By Golu
This is the second vertical AI BL drama I've sat through, and honestly I went in knowing better. I had it on while I was doing cardio at the gym, and what struck me was just how much the plot echoed the last one I watched. Same step brother romance angle, same mystery girlfriend showing up near the end, same extra guy pining after one of the leads. Genuinely the only thing going for it was the runtime, the whole thing wrapped up in forty five minutes flat.  The setup kicks off with Finn moving schools because his mom just married into money. He finds out his new step brother Aiden goes to the same place, and he's warned to keep his distance from him. Their first run in at school is rocky, just like you'd expect, but there's this odd pull between them neither can shake off. Finn keeps telling himself not to read into it because Aiden's straight and openly homophobic. Things shift when some kids start bullying Finn and the student council president, Ryan, steps in to ...
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Tu Me Manques (Spanish/English) [I Miss You in Me]

By Golu
So this film is inspired/adapted from an actual play that happened in Bolivia in 2015. It became really popular and  became part of the national conversation about anti-discrimination laws and homophobia. Apparently, thanks to the play a lot of people started sharing their coming out stories. In an interview, the film maker said "It's so interesting how people try to cover suicide. It's shame. Homosexuality in life was one thing, and the other one is in death. It's a double denial that infuriates me." This film is an interesting case study of that. I personally was not aware of the still existing homophobia in many latin countries especially Bolivia. Sadly, even though the subject of the film is so powerful, I found that the film falters majorly in a very uneven and hard to follow execution.

The film starts with us knowing that Gabriel has died after committing suicide and his father telling the news to his ex-boyfriend Sebastian, since he found that Seb was trying to get in touch with him. The idea that his son was gay is totally unacceptable to the father but unable to bear the pain, he travels to New York to find the answers on who his son really was. Of course, he is initially met with hostility from Sebastian, who eventually introduces him to various friends of Gabriel.  Ironically, it's not his son's gay friends that have the most impact or connection. It's a straight woman who saw Jorge's son as a surrogate son of her own. In fractured timelines there are 2 other events happening which we get to see back n forth. We see how Gabriel and Seb actually met, fell in love and Gabriel's closet situation led to their breakup. And we see that post the death, Sebastian is trying to put up a play about their life with 30 actors playing Gabriel at the same time. And it’s between the two, the current events and the play, that we learn about Gabriel, Sebastian and Jorge and come to terms with what happened.

A very interesting thing about the film is that the role of Gabriel is played by 3 different actors interchangeably, which I didn't even realize until much later. The idea is that if he picked one actor it’d replace the memory of Gabriel forever. Their theory works at an extent. It sometimes is confusing but overall it does give a good impact. I was not totally convinced of Sebastian's idea to take the father to gay club and other social gatherings to explain to him who his son really was. Besides the scenes just flow one to another between real story to the play and eventually we see the father himself acting in the play. So did Sebastian really meet the father or not will be a mystery. The acting in general is really good with some very handsome and good looking actors. But in the process of mixing reality with art, we are given multiple themes without any effort and the dialogue feels like a movie script, not like conversations that normal people are having. That works in theatre but according to me, it didn’t work for a cinematic experience.

Tu Me Manques is a film that people should see because the story it’s telling is poignant and heart-breaking and deals with some very very important issues in the LGBTQ community but they’ll have to sit through a heavy-handed plot in order to get there. I was really enjoying the beginning but the film really tested my patience in the last 30-40 minutes. (6/10)
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