Llevo tu nombre grabado (2020)

MY HEART

I don't know whether to start sobbing or not. This movie was so heartbreaking and bittersweet. ?

It being based on a true story/true events hit me even harder. My heart truly breaks for everyone in the closet and for everyone who never got to experience acceptance and change in their lifetime.

Times may have changed, but for some places and cultures this is still very much a reality. My heart simply hurts so much for every member of the LGBT+ community and the struggles faced.

Thankfully this movie's ending was so sweet and optimistic. This is a must see, but grab your tissues!

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Painful coming-of-age with frustrating characters

I found this film to be effectively frustrating. Going into this film with the mindset that it's less of a BL and more of a tragic/wistful nostalgic exploration of young boyish teenhood and the rampant ways toxic masculinity and ideas of what is 'normal' and/or 'acceptable' have stifled generations upon generations of queer(?) or potentially bicurious young men will help the viewer understand more about what this movie attempts but it's not made clear from the get-go.

The dynamic between Birdy and Jia-Han is always changing and hard to pin down in any reasonable way. Jia-Han is introduced as the more stoic, less outwardly queer individual who, for the first half, is made to seem by his peers as being under the influence of Birdy and that Birdy would 'gay' Jia-Han. Then this dynamic flips when Birdy actually flips the script and finds a girlfriend in Banban and then becomes very cold, almost as if he's an entirely different character. All of this happens in a en media res narrative structure where Jia-Han is in a violent distress that we aren't sure what the cause of is until we get there in the movie. There are moments of sweetness layered between a lot of meandering and almost schizophrenic scenes of the two boys clashing. Even the shower scene, which should've been the peak of the tension between the two, felt incredibly muted and stifling, although if you stick out to the end I guess that might've been the point but it still feels very unsatisfactory. This ambiguity then gets funneled into a far neater ending where we presume they just went on with their lives and then confess to each other in a painless way but they've already lived their lives and there's nothing to be done. Did anything even need to be done?

What I needed from this film was more structure, more of a sense of belonging to a certain place and more worldbuilding. Everything felt very disparate and disconnected and in the few scenes of coherence we have two men who want to love each other but from circumstance and writing, they are destined to never be together. I enjoyed the ambiguity that it ends on and that there isn't a succinct answer to what happens next, even though they neatly say that they did love each other, albeit only after 30 years of having entire lived experiences apart from each other. This movie is very relatable in that aspect but as a story I also had a hard time enjoying it or seeing any kind of satisfaction from the conflicts.

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DO NOT WATCH THIS!! BUT PLEASE WATCH THIS!!!!

okay i’m not great at reviews there’s a reason i never write them but i couldn’t not write a review for this movie. Honestly the only reason i watched it was because Zhang Hao from ZB1 sang one of the OSTs on live and i thought “hey let’s watch this random movie hao obviously likes!” without looking into it anymore. biggest mistake of my life.

Honestly if you don’t like to cry this movie is NOT FOR YOU. It had me sobbing to the point of hyperventilating and nearly throwing up more than once. But i think that also proved just how well written and amazing the acting of this film is and how clearly the passion of the director and writer (who this story is based on) shows through.

This movie is so worth a watch as long as you know what you’re getting yourself into and want to cry a river!

I’d also recommend looking up a list of TW for this movie if there are certain things your sensitive too :)

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Some of the actualities of an LGBTQ+ love-life.

I cannot emphasize how much, I am in a state of dilemma, on whether I should be sad about the ending of the story or rest on the bitter realization that not every love story would be a happy one. The story wholly describes how a person comes to terms with their sexuality, and how they develop feelings for the wrong person. I am so content with how Jia-Han had accepted being gay, starting from having a crush on Birdy, then experiencing jealousy when Birdy hangs with a girl to conditionally coming to his parents just to confess his feelings for him.

The life lesson argued between Jian and Father Oliver is the gold to be mined. "How is your love greater than mine ?" would be the epitome of subtle inference to the gender equality issues we face even today. This story made me realize how religion can a boon and a curse to your life. The old pedagogy of the church has derogatory effects in the community even today.

I was very personally hurt and disappointed by the story of Jia-Han, I think he is the one the story didn't do any justice to. I feel, that even in the end when Birdy subtly confessed his real feelings toward Jia-Han, he wasn't accepting it wholly. I was distraught to see Jia-Han still getting rejected for a drink by Birdy, after all these years.
In the end, a dream is portrayed of their younger versions joyfully singing the theme song, in the streets of Montreal.

So, in the end, there is this dreamy picture that we paint for ourselves of living with our loved ones, irrespective of gender, caste, or race. But in the end, we do realize that we are chained by the norms of society and religion, who dictate our life for us and paint our lives just in black and white.

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Too dark

Soo as i have written before i dont really like dark movies/drama...i live the fluffy cheesy ones with picknicks in and sunny bright skies!

However after reading some reviews on this movie i thought i should give it a try...

I really love the story! And the reality behind it! It is really difficult to be honest about your sexuality as it is let alone in a christian community.

I could really feel the pain of the male lead that was expkaining the story to the pastor. He was hurt sooo bad....and it was soo difficult to express....

I do think they could have made this movie 10 times better if would have expanded this to a drama or elaborated more about the mix feelings between the leads and the struggle against sociaty.

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