“I say the style is retro-futuristic, tropical, punk,” Gala del Sol tells Latina Media Co. The writer/director is talking about her film Rains Over Babel, which had its world premiere at Sundance on January 26.
From the moment the film flickers across the screen, it’s clear we are somewhere different. The world of Babel, a nightclub in del Sol’s native Cali, Colombia (but in “another dimension”), is highly stylized. At first, I felt like I was in something akin to a Julio Torres’ universe with so many bright colors, touches of whimsy, and a leading man with a dangly earring.
But Rains Over Babel is both more coherent and more personal than Torres’ Problemista and Los Espookys. And while the guy with the dangly earring (black eyeliner and leather skirt), El Boticario (Santiago Pineda Prado) is important to the Sundance selection, he’s hardly the protagonist. Instead, Rains Over Babel casts women and Black men as the central characters in many of its arcs.
For the film is an ensemble narrative, weaving together multiple stories of young people all convening at one epic concert at Babel, a bar where Death herself likes to hang out.
Del Sol took a decentralized approach to creating the film, shaped by the tumultuous early days of the pandemic. In 2020, she caught “the last flight” out of Los Angeles and returned home, isolating herself in a room for 20 days, uncertain if she had contracted COVID-19. Once the situation began to stabilize, she collaborated with a group of young actors transitioning from theater to film – just as she had. Reflecting on that period, del Sol shared, “We were all between 20 and 25, and for the first time, we were confronting death, illness, or the very real possibility of both.”
Death had become a central character in all of their lives. So when de Sol asked them to “create a character that they’ve always wanted to play, and to create a character that will help heal something within them,” she saw a common thread of dealing with mortality. Having gathered this inspiration, she then sequestered herself again, this time with much more joy, and wrote the first draft of the script within six months.
When it came time to film, she relied on Cali’s quirks, her network of connections, and their shared artistry to achieve the film’s distinctive aesthetics. The opening scene features a recreation of Remedios Varo’s painting “Armonía,” integrated into the meticulously crafted sets they built so each character’s home would tell the audience something about who they’re meeting. And the most mad-cap sequence takes place in a real Cali sex motel that defies belief with campy polar bear statues, an Egyptian room, and so much of what the writer-director jokingly calls “production value.”
By combining death with silliness (a talking lizard features prominently), Rains Over Babel is able to explore themes of queer acceptance, regret, and familial love with a light, but evocative touch. “I did speak with an exorcist priest once, and he said, what binds us to the material world is guilt,” del Sol says by way of explanation. “We’re here because we’re judging ourselves and because we feel guilt from what we’ve done. We are the ones that have to forgive ourselves. That’s the key to happiness.”
All of the film’s threads are fundamentally “about empowerment, forgiveness, and love,” del Gala further explains. “All of the characters are feeling guilt for some reason. Even though their stories are so different, that’s what connects them. And some of them are able to, in the story, go through that and to heal. And some are not – like in real life.”
For example, there’s Jacob, played by a quietly powerful William Hurtado. The son of an evangelical preacher, he’s hiding his queerness from his family, which may sound like a story that’s been done before. But with del Sol’s visuals and the set-up based on Hurtado’s real experience, Jacob’s arc is imbued with a “raw energy” that reverberates off the screen, creating a unique viewing experience.
Del Sol says the common wisdom may be that “People don’t want to watch Queer, Black people. And it’s like, why not, you know, why not? I want to watch that!” So now, she’s calling on all “who are not afraid to dream and watch something different,” to check out her healing, vibe-rich film. Watching Rains Over Babel is to be transported to a magical realistic version of Cali, Colombia where redemption is possible but not guaranteed.
