Thank You for Pissing on the Grass

Beware: Land of the Gay Engkantos

“The Thank You Girls”, which almost surreptitiously premiered at Robinsons mall last January, is the directorial debut of Charliebebs Gohetia. Being of an ilk of coltish indie denizens riding on the frothy and dithering waves of the digital phenomenon, Gohetia is not adverse to the predictable allure of experimentation. Fresh from his Asian Film nomination for editing Tirador, he attempts to form from sheer rawness a slam book type tribute to the exquisite campy-ness of the Gay Beauty pageant scene set in the relatively remote but breathtaking landscapes of the Southern region. In his film he wishes to display the gamut of the homosexual spectrum. What comes out is a fractured narrative teetering between occasional gusts of insight and a perfunctory storm of baroque linguistics.

The film essentially belongs to the road trip category. Six Gay beauty pageant junkies set off to Cagayan de Oro to try their luck in the provincial competitions. They trek from city to city, quaint hamlet to hamlet, riding a “Hail to the Queens” jeepney in search of the elusive plastic-beaded tiara which validates their very existence. Along the way they come across the usual epiphanies of longing, desire, and an extant loneliness that is somehow a pervasive mood in the whole film. This is especially represented by Mommy Paola (Pidot Villocino), the aging but still flaming Queen mentor of the motley crew. Villocino’s performance is the summation of a whole generation of homosexuals driven by the emotionally pressing needs of social recognition and reliable companionship. His gay son on the other hand, the more mannish Chris (EJ Pantujan) is a deconstruction of an entire gay stereotype. Their relationship unravels through the course of the film conveying the stark and sometimes lovely gray shades of father-and-son bonding that is in no way depersonalizing. It makes some men thankful that their fathers are more withholding with their personal lives.

The most queer (in the sense of obscure) aspect of the movie is supposedly the director’s strength. The scenes are done in a semi-nonlinear fashion, possibly of an Eternal Sunshine or Amoresian influence, but executed in such an awkward fashion that the effect comes off as haphazard. Certain scenes are interjected in sheer redundancy without adding much to the substance of the plot. It is postmodern for the sake of postmodern, belying the shift in the confidences and views of a new brand of young directors. The least queer (in the sense of gay) facet is the soundtrack. It is more mainstream and representative of a youthful vibe that is not exactly thoughtful or contemplative which is usually utilized in certain films of the same subject matter but instead robust and playfully sanguine. The patronage of less well-known bands, most of them probably based in Davao, is something to be commended. Everything else in the film with regards to the technical aspect moves toward a certain aesthetic that tries to capture a sort of casual realism that centers on the little nuances and vicissitudes that make up the breadth of an entire subculture, much to the dismay of the hardcore political realist.

But in truth what the film tries to achieve is deceptively simple but ambitious in the intellectual sense. Gohetia uses a subjunctive style of scripting, very reminiscent of his writing in the movie Daybreak. The characters are always in a state of desire, always babbling (in this case in Visayan) about the what-ifs and what-nots on a background of nihilistic solipsism that they themselves are probably not fully aware of. But this is for the more thoughtful characters. The others are too extrinsically driven that they simply reinforce some of the molds while revealing certain aspects that are less obvious about the homosexual psyche. Is it not wonderful to see how gays can be quite amusing from afar but to their own kind they can be mutually judgmental with the occasional helping of cruel endearment and a species of love-hate symbiosis, seeing within the circle the call of the I’ll-be-there-for-you-but-don’t-ask-me-money-my-friend-my-bitch philosophy. The movie is very informative, but I doubt if anyone from outside the gay enclave can process the information. It is indeed expressed that homosexuals bleed and cry and fornicate just like most humans, an incendiary (and repetitive) theme since the end of the 20th century. But I think the public gets it, that gays are more than just cross-dressing sodomites. They have an idea of what gays are. I think the challenge at present is to make them forget.

Written by: Alex Milla (Guest Critic)