The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela
October 3, 2008
Olaf de Fleur, the director and writer of The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, describes the film as a “visionmentary”: a film that mashes together elements of both fiction and documentary.
After meeting the real-life Raquela Rios, a transsexual or “ladyboy,” on the streets of Cebu City in the Philippines, de Fleur decided to shoot a documentary about Raquela and her dream to find a rich and handsome man to marry. But as the project continued, the filmmaker began adding narrative elements and hired actors to realize the new story that was emerging.
In the film, Raquela is a prostitute pursuing her dream of finding true love and going to Paris. She ends up working for an Internet porn site run by the New York-based businessman Michael Ardillo (Stefan Schaefer) who quickly learns his latest find is immensely popular and a big money-maker. Michael eventually invites her to Paris on his dime and appears to be Raquela’s salvation, but things happen in Paris that may threaten her dream just as she is closest to realizing it.
This film could have easily degenerated into another story of a Third World outcast thrust into a tragic-victim role, but de Fleur wisely does everything to avoid it. He is able to somehow strip the story of any overt sentiment but at the same time makes us invest our emotions in Raquela.
The film is helped in this regard by Rios’ performance. A first-time actor, she has a natural ease in front of the camera that masks a lack of technique. Even when she’s turning tricks, Rios brings an innocence to her character that makes us care about her. She may inhabit an X-rated world, but she’s a dreamer who believes someday her prince will come. And like all genuine dreamers, she never asks us for our pity or sympathy, which makes us all the more willing to give it.
The film has its flaws: Some of the transitions feel jerky and at times unmotivated. When the conflict arises between Michael and Raquela in Paris, it feels less like a natural progression in their relationship and more like a plot device to move the story to its conclusion. But de Fleur’s sure hand and the actors’ fierce commitment to their characters cushion the occasional speed bumps.
Watching this film brought to mind the work of the late, great German director, Rainier Werner Fassbinder. I can think of no other filmmaker who showed such sympathy for society’s outcasts—women, homosexuals, minorities and the elderly—yet never sentimentalized their plight.
In Fassbinder’s 1974 masterpiece Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, we were treated to the story of an elderly German woman who falls in love with a much younger black Berber immigrant and the problems they face because of the unorthodox relationship.
At the end of that film, the two characters sit across from each other in a modest apartment, having overcome obstacles to be together. But it’s not a clear-cut victory; many of their problems still remain, and their situation has not improved. But Fassbinder’s point seems to be that we are all destined to be alone and that it’s better to be alone with someone you care about then be alone by yourself. That moral may be even more true today then it was in 1974.
The Amazing Truth About Raquela is currently playing in limited release in select cities. For more info go to: Queenraquela.com.
Philip W. Chung is a writer and Co-Artistic Director of Lodestone Theatre Ensemble.
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