Shades of Gray, Shades of Beauty
By Mikee dela Cruz
PUBLISHED: JULY 2009

“People love to look at the world with right and wrong, black and white.  This is a classic case of shades of gray.”

This, says the character of Stefan C. Schaefer, a Westerner who “helps” the character of Filipino transsexual sex worker Raquela Rios, is how Olaf de Fleur Johannesson’s The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela should be viewed.

And so it should be.

Queen Raquela tells the story of, well, Raquela, a Filipino transsexual who, having worked as a street-based sex worker in Cebu City, wants to build a new life in – of all places – Paris, France, the representation of everything dreamy romantic coming true.  She becomes an Internet porn star, working for one Michael (Schaefer), who, eventually, sent enough money for her to fly to Europe to start afresh.

The narrative’s idea came from Johannesson’s experience when he visited Cebu City.  To wit: “In my first visit to Cebu City in the Philippines, I happened to be walking in one of the poor neighborhoods where I saw three girls who were at odds with the location. They were dressed more like famous movie stars than someone on an every-day stroll among the locals in Cebu City.  This caught my attention as anything with such contrasts often bears a light of a possible film,” the film director recalls in The Making of Raquela in poppoli.com.

The “girls” turned out to be transgenders (TGs), described to Johannesson as “men who have the soul of women.”

Johannesson then spoke with about 30 TGs – and that was how he noticed Raquela.

And so Queen Raquela came into being.

No, the story may have been told docu-style (subsequently personally dubbed as a “visiomentary”), but it isn’t “real,” e.g. yes, Raquela wants (for real) to find a “real” man to marry her, but, no, she wasn’t a porn star.

“I wrote the story (of Raquela as a) cautionary tale of TGs (who) start at the bottom as street prostitutes, (then) going into Internet porn, (expecting to) be hopefully saved (from such life) to travel abroad to seek for her prince and follow her dreams,” Johannesson says.  Rios, even if she has “the occasional flirt and meet with Westerners in Cebu City,” happens to be a “great actress, very talented and full of ideas, and she was a TG, so who better to play the part?”

And this, arguably, is Queen Raquela’s biggest plus – that it uses a real Cebuana TG to tell the story of, well, a Cebuana TG.  Rios herself encountered what the character she plays encounters – from getting discriminated against to being objectified as a seeming non-entity to being delimited by society, et cetera, so that Vittorio de Sica’s The Bicycle Thief comes to mind in the play with realism (i.e. use of non-actors to tell socially relevant stories that may have been experienced/could e experienced by the same actors playing the roles).  This sure beats seeing, say, Epy Quizon playing the same or similar role/s…

Yes, the issue of exploitation may be brought up here – with the crossing of the life of Raquela on, and then off camera, her narrative is invaded, and by a Westerner at that, so that, much like her experience in Cebu City, she remains being objectified, albeit through a Western way of looking this time.  And, yes, this could be true, too, since Raquela’s real story is the one actually greatly re-interpreted in the film – e.g. we get to know that she quit schooling, her accident is replayed to be captured in film, her first-time HIV antibody test is shot as part of Raquela the character’s story, et cetera.

And this, too, even if Rios gives full consent to her portrayal of Raquela – and Raquela’s portrayal of Rios’ very own story.

But then again, there lies the film’s very strength – the boundary between real and not real is straddled, which plays with the very logic of filmmaking not just as an entertainment tool, but as representative of truth; or perhaps of the truth made consumable through entertainment.

Yes, TGs exist as women – even if the likes of Mel Tiangco and Mike Enriquez continue to politically incorrectly (arguably, even sans proper awareness) refer to them as bakla.

Yes, many resort to prostitution to make ends meet – at times, even to finance their heterosexual family members.

Yes, they are hard-pressed finding fulfillment of expressing their true selves while in the Philippines because they are not afforded the chance here, so that living overseas may be their one way out (not the best, but better than staying here).

And yes, they continue to be underrepresented, often still considered as novelties – even in the GLBTQIA community, still stereotyped as parloristas, Japayukis, and beauconeras.

With the likes of Queen Raquela providing a way for their issues to be raised, that avenue doesn’t seem so… bad.

Entertain this film does – winning for production company Poppoli Pictures, among others, the 2008 Best Film in the Teddy Awards at the Berlin International Film Festival, 2008 Best Feature Film at the Zinegoak Film Festival in Bilbao, Spain, 2008 Best Film and Showtime vanguard Award in the New York LGBT Awards, and 2008 Award for Contributing to Contemporary Film Language at the Exit Festival in Serbia.

But that it manages to show what Filipinos themselves fail to show (but should show), it deserves more appreciation than anything else.

And this is even if the film could be boring –irritating, even, because it already has this grand topic, and then it’s characters discuss what’s trivial (as if, at the end of the day, despite the attempt to paint them differently, it’s their triviality that surfaces at most times).

No matter…

When Rios, with Johannesson, accepted the Teddy Awards in Germany, the film director mentioned her for inspiring him to make the film – and in that alone, Raquela (as the movie character, and as Rios) achieved what could very well be an achievement already: she was referred to as “she.”  An affirmation of her true identity that is getting acknowledged first outside the place she calls home (the Philippines) – and so, for a while there, the shades of gray of Pinoy TG living burst into colors.