the filmlinc blog

NYFF09: Balancing Life and Death, Fantasy and Reality in To Die Like a Man

João Pedro Rodrigues’s To Die Like a Man is centered on the almost unbearably tragic life of Tonia, a drag queen whose fantasy of being a lady and a star is constantly interrupted by the ugly realities of a drug-abusing boyfriend (Rosário), spiteful AWOL son (Zé Maria), and deteriorating body. Containing multiple contradictions that violently clash against each other (man and woman; Catholic and hedonist; mother and father), Tonia seeks to keep balance in a life that is constantly threatening to topple over. What ensues is a tragic, often beautiful melodrama full of visual style and honest emotion that questions what it means to live and die genuinely.

The film begins with a perfectly subversive image: a soldier in extreme close-up applies camouflage face paint with delicate care, the same way a lady (or drag performer for that matter), would put on rouge or eye shadow. The image is appropriate because it comments on both the way To Die Like a Man constantly shifts our expectations within the film and the violent nature inherent to Tania’s world. Tania has a knife pointed at her by her boyfriend, a gun aimed at her by her son, and one of her organs constantly leaks blood – violence follows Tania every step of the way. Yet at the same time, she is drawn to it and nearly seems to seek it out. In a telling scene Tania accidentally cuts a fellow drag queen while pulling up her zipper and suddenly sucks on the open wound, her lips smeared with blood.

But the entire film is not as gloomy as all that. During a road trip to Rosário’s relatives they get lost and stumble upon a quaint little cottage in the middle of the forest in which they find two more drag queens living comfortably and happily within their own fantasy away from the world. It is in this passage that To Die Like a Man shifts into the fanciful frivolity perhaps expected of a drag queen that is otherwise denied by the rest of the film (we never see Tania perform, though we understand that she is a star). In a particularly transcendental scene the screen is flushed with a pink tint provided by a pink moon and the characters sit still and listen to Baby Dee’s “Cavalry” in its entirety, inviting us to share in the magical moment with them. But, as with all of her other fantasies, Tonia is unable to remain detached from reality and slips quietly away from the scene before the others are able to notice.

The film’s narrative arc finds Tonia’s saint-like perseverance and love for Rosário and Zé Maria (often rewarded with a curse and spit in the eye) coming full circle in a particularly bittersweet scene where Rosário gives Tonia a sponge bath on her hospital bed, something Tonia did for Rosário without thanks in the depths of his drug abuse. It is a scene of redemption for a mistreated soul, and as we watch the rag wipe Tonia’s frail body we become keenly aware of her mortality and her tender humanness, something that powerfully connects her with all of us – whether we are drag queens or not.

To Die Like a Man is playing Wed. September 30 at 9:15PM and Thu. October 1 at 6:00PM.

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-Kazu Watanabe

About Kazu Watanabe, Film Society Correspondent

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