‘Rains Over Babel’: Rotterdam Review

Dir/scr. Gala del Sol. Columbia/USA/Spain. 2025. 111mins.

Drenched in neon, accessorised with fetish gear and steeped in extravagant queer Latin-punk perspective, Rains Over Babel is impressed by Dante’s Inferno however pushed by the contradictions and rebellious spirit of town of Cali, Colombia. The characteristic debut from Spanish-Colombian author/director Gala del Sol, that is an eye-popping, sexually-charged journey which knits collectively the interlocking destinies of a gaggle of gender-fluid misfits who congregate at a dive bar known as Babel. Alighieri purists and college students of 14th-century narrative poetry would possibly query how a lot of the supply materials made it into this retro-futurist city fantasy however, as a showcase for del Sol’s playfully iconoclastic imaginative and prescient, the image fizzes with vitality and mischief.

 Retro-futurist city fantasy

Rains Over BabeI, which screens in Rotterdam’s Vivid Futures after premiering at Sundance, ought to take pleasure in additional publicity on the pageant circuit. With a pop-punk aesthetic paying homage to the work of Gregg Araki and a vivid queer-surreal aptitude that evokes the Rwandan sci-fi fantasy Neptune Frost, this can be a title that ought to determine extremely on the watch lists of LGBTQ+ programmers and, maybe, specialist distributors.

The movie’s most important location, the hedonistic nightclub Babel, represents purgatory. Each evening La Flaca (Saray Rebolledo), the extraordinarily funky, flamboyantly manicured grim reaper, gambles the evening away with determined souls hoping to purchase just a little extra time for themselves or family members. One who takes her probabilities with La Flaca’s loaded deck of playing cards is Uma (Celina Biurrun), who dangers years of her personal life to try to lengthen that of her significantly sick daughter. Uma joins forces with Timbi (Jose Mojica), the son of the membership’s debt-ridden proprietor Gian Salai (John Alex Castillo), who fears for his personal life by the hands of a pair of samba-loving gangsters.

Gian Salai’s destiny rests upon a stay efficiency by salsa orchestra La Mambanegra, led by the charismatic frontman El Callegüeso (Jacobo Vélez). Sadly, El Callegüeso has gone lacking, and Uma and Timbi should acquire entry to My Petit Pony, a type of themed fetish lodge/underworld, to find him. Elsewhere, Jacob (William Hurtado), the seemingly straight-laced son of a pastor, is about to make his drag efficiency debut at Babel. His mother and father know nothing of his alter-ego, though his mom suspects that he’s maintaining secrets and techniques when she spots his fishnet ankle socks. After which there’s Dante (Felipe Aguilar Rodríguez) who collects souls for La Flaca, however who has forgotten his personal life and entered right into a contract with dying.

There’s a lot happening, and never all of it makes quite a lot of sense – Del Sol workshopped the screenplay for the movie with a gaggle of younger actors, which maybe explains the truth that it could actually really feel just a little overloaded with characters and subplots. However Del Sol ties the numerous disparate plot traces along with consistency within the movie’s hanging design and intriguingly eclectic music selections. A riot of scorching scorching pinks and dissolute blues, with veins of neon tubing carving up the body and graffiti daubed on each obtainable floor, the movie’s look is an emphatic assertion. The costumes are equally distinctive, veering in the direction of the peacocking new romantic finish of the punk spectrum.

However the lifeblood of the movie is the music, which takes in every part from vibrant salsa to entice, techno and flamenco; the latter carried out in a gypsy bar by Kiko Rathore. The movie’s climax, set towards the live performance by La Mambanegra, is a spotlight, a wildly energetic and thrilling collision of intercourse, ecstasy and dying.