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Showing posts with the label Bolivia

The Sun from Another Star (Thai Series)

The whole Fourever You universe in Thai BL has been expanding quite a bit lately. I liked the original show a good amount, but these spin offs have honestly been hit or miss for me. This particular one's been getting massive praise all over the internet, so I went in expecting to love it too, but turns out I'm apparently the outlier here because I really didn't enjoy it. You know something's wrong when you just stop caring about the main characters, and that's exactly what happened to me watching this. At eight episodes plus a bonus special, with each one running anywhere from 55 to 70 minutes, it's also asking for a serious chunk of your time. The story kicks off when Daotok lands a new condo after scoring an insane 70% discount on rent. The catch is that the building's crawling with restless, noisy spirits who won't stop causing chaos. Since ghosts don't scare Daotok at all, he takes the deal without a second thought. He's an introverted guy wh...

Blood-Red Ox (English/Spanish)

A gay psychological thriller on paper must sound good, but this film by the Bolivian filmmaker will most likely go over most people's head. At the onset, you will notice some very beautiful landscape and cinematography and that is consistent throughout the film, but the senseless plot that I tried to make sense of, plenty of times, I just couldn't comprehend. The film tries to capture the essence of classic psychological horror, but ultimately fails to deliver a satisfying ending. Gay couple Amir and Amat arrive in Bolivia from upstate New York on invitation by Amir's friend Amancaya, a local female activist revered by all. As they drive from the airport to Amancaya's house, they come across an ox that has been hit by a car. The animal is obviously suffering, and so Amancaya shoots it. Soon Amat begins having strange, blood-drenched dreams.He confesses to Amir that he used to have them after his mother committed suicide and they stopped and that he doesn't want to l...

Tu Me Manques (Spanish/English) [I Miss You in Me]

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 tryin...