DIE BEAUTIFUL: In Memoriam Of A True Queen

The film begins and ends with a grainy collection of a young boy in dazzling costumes from sultry two-pieces to traditional outfits, striking poses, and walking runways, while the beauty pageant spiel of a proud introduction and gratitude runs in the background. In the same lieu, Die Beautiful wears many outfits — identity, motherhood, and family — but the spotlight all turns to the boy who identifies herself as Tricia Echeverria (Paolo Ballesteros).

Life Shown Through Death

Shortly after being crowned Binibing Gay Pilipinas (Miss Gay Philippines), Tricia Echeverria dies. Her best friend, Barbs (Christian Bables), fulfills her last wishes by transforming Tricia’s corpse into a different female celebrity each day of the wake. While it calls to their shared hobby of makeup transformations and youthful imagination, it also alludes to the many faces that Tricia had worn in her life.

The film gallantly leeways between Tricia’s present death and living past without pause wherein piecing together her history, we discover her identities. (Many because she was more than just a transwoman.) Early on, Tricia was a son thrown out by her transphobic father (Joel Torre) then, with Barbs, pursued living out her true name and beauty queen dreams. On the way, she survived rape, discrimination, and heartbreak, and became a mother by adopting an abandoned little girl (Faye Alhambra and Inah de Belen).

As a transwoman in a generally conservative society, Tricia’s life is a constant challenge yet director Jun Robles Lana’s efficiency in non-linear storytelling humanizes her character in letting Tricia exist outside of childhood trauma. She’s also a woman seeking genuine love and partnership, who consistently works to one day bring home the crown. All the while, Tricia is not on a pedestal nor is she just a victim. She is alive beyond a caricature of abuse and through an unpredictable weave of past and present, Lana invokes empathy around retrospect. The beauty shots of Tricia’s corpse in full makeup in the present time remind us of a life well-lived. To pity would be an insult.

A Visual Experience of Life

Die Beautiful features a mastery in the devious “show, don’t tell” through cinematographer Carlo Mendoza. The film maximizes the potential of its visuals — the glamour of beauty pageants, the unique fashion of its trans characters, the rainbow makeup palettes, and big dressing room mirrors. Mendoza avoids the renowned shaky cam and adds effort into long, still takes that gather the energy of the scene before shifting to daring close-ups at the last second. Humor and banter find itself often between Tricia and Barbs which contrasts Mendoza’s committed stillness yet both reflect the inner turmoil and grounded relationships that drive the film forward.

While Die Beautiful does not escape the occasional cheesy speech of love and loss, and sudden celebrity cameos, it leaves the exposition to the camera which ends in a deep emotion that Ballesteros carries throughout. Particular moments are emphasized by Tricia’s poignant silences that grant heavy impact against the high sensory sequences of beauty pageants and the natural volume of life. By the last day of the wake, the end of the film, Tricia’s experiences and the audience’s emotions have been compounded then released in a beautiful and cathartic round of applause.

Life as Criticized in Art

Even with the radical new generation, the Philippine society with its traditions and prejudices has a long way to go in accepting the LGBT+ community beyond caricatures and stereotypes. Die Beautiful does not censor this truth. Lana instead works with the colorful spectrum of beauty pageants without playing into the stigma of gay pageantry in the Philippine mass media.

Furthermore, the film doesn’t shy away from acknowledging Catechism, that through Tricia’s father, manifest bias and hate. Regardless, Tricia and Barbs are far from renouncing their religious faith. In a well-crafted conversation about their deaths, Barbs requests a barong Tagalog (traditional clothes for men) that she may return her borrowed body in its original form. On the other hand, Tricia owns up to her extravagant makeup and glamorous outfits knowing that God would accept that she had made more beautiful what He had given. It’s a refreshing and soulful perspective of how the traditional and the queer can prosper together once given the chance.

Conclusion

Philippine media’s caricatures and stereotypes of the LGBT+ community has become a palatable means by the industry to its audience without the risk of ostracizing the majority. This is only a toxic and temporary fix. As a result, Filipino mainstream films on LGBT+ realities are far and few in between.

Die Beautiful presents a contestant to the mainstream, whose Q&A skills could use some work but whose strength and resilience wins her a beautiful life. Through a cohesive back and forth between past and present, the film showcases Tricia’s humanity where some may consider her otherwise. It depicts a present reality that is aware and earnest in its narrative and cinematography. In the same way that Tricia, in her survival, has earned the crown so has Die Beautiful with its awards and platitudes.

At its core, however, as we spend a week (rather, two hours) in Tricia’s wake, Die Beautiful offers a refreshing and invigorating perspective on life and death; the culmination of human experience tucked in a casket.

Tricia asks us, how would we like to be remembered? Do you think her life was well-told? Let us know in the comments below!

Die Beautiful is now available on Netflix.

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