I’m Gay, Got a Problem With That?

Hugot

The age of digital queer/pink films has arrived. Well it already has and it’s getting stronger and more powerful as we are offered one good pink film after another. After Ang Lalake sa Parola, RoXXXanne, Ang Lihim ni Antonio, Daybreak and many more, comes another indie gay-oriented film.

Enter Hugot. (Uhm wasn’t that an oxymoron?).

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Hugot is a three-episode film with a different man, a different story as the unifying theme. We see three different stories of three different men – all happening in one night. Or as the trailer says,”One night will change their lives forever.”

The first episode, “Raymond,” is a story about how a young man deals with the responsibility of raising money to pay for the hospitalization of his younger sibling who fell victim to a hit-and-run. In (kind of) an expected twist, Raymond and a friend find prey in Dorina, a transsexual beauconera (A beauconera = someone who always joins beauty contests. From beau + con = beaucon). The plan got out of hand and led to the eventual death of the old gay man. This episode seeks to answer the age-old question of justice. Does the end justify the means, or is it the other way around?

The second episode, “Anton,” is about a man’s recurring evocative dreams of the rice field clothesline, burning garments, and ashes into his eyes. What do these dreams mean? Will these dreams inspire him to finally finish a poem for an erstwhile lover? How are his dreams related to his angusih and solitude?

The last episode, “Bimbo,” is about how two young activists deal with circumstances around them. After going home from a rally, one of them falls to the ground, due perhaps to hunger and exhaustion. A middle-aged man offers help by bringing them both to his nearby apartment to rest. More expected twists later, the young activists get drunk with the middle-aged man and their conversations meander from politics, activism, gay rights, and well, sex.
Looking at the trailer and reading the synopsis, it all seems very familiar to us and the twists may appear to be quite expected. But are they really? I guess we all will find out on April 23, 2008 as Hugot holds its Grand Premier Showing at the UP Film Center in UP Diliman.

Award-winning actress Ana Capri topbills this indie film which also introduces us to new faces in local cinema: Jerome Ebreo, Christopher Canizares, Cris Castillo, and Alvin Espinosa. This film was produced by Wilbert Ting Tolentino and was written and directed by Jonison Fontanos.

Have we had too much of gay films? I doubt it. We need more and we hope the next ones that are about to come will offer us more than just the usual tragic plots which end up in having at least one of the (gay) characters killed. Will this film start what I call Pink Indie Re-Revolution? Let’s see…

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