Manolo Caro’s fresh take on the Mexican telenovela sees LGBTQ characters at the forefront, but how successfully so?
When Mexican director Manolo Caro’s series, “La Casa de las Flores” (The House of Flowers), was described as bearing similarities to ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” my ears obediently stood up like those of a rudely startled bunny rabbit. Despite no Eva Longoria, Netflix’s most recent original series certainly brings the drama, glamour and humour courtesy of the de la Moras, an upper-class Mexican family who own a never-particularly-busy flower shop and whose lives attract both tragedy and scandal in startlingly equal measure. The series has also received attention for including several LGBTQ identifying characters, namely a bisexual lead character, a gay male lover, a troupe of drag queens and also a transgender woman. As well as its own fair share of controversy.
Julián, played by Dario Yazbek, is the only son of the de la Mora family. Throughout the series he openly struggles with his sexuality, as he grapples with labels, the opinions of his family and his own conflicting attraction towards men and women. This more nuanced, conflict-ridden portrayal of queer experience – as opposed to the archetypal “gay male hairdresser” or “gay best friend” – is worthy of praise and a clear step forward for the genre. Julián’s coming out and subsequent relationship with Diego Olivera, played by Juan Pablo Medina, also sees a telenovela touch on LGBTQ-specific issues of familial rejection, jealousy within a relationship, the use of dating apps and polyamory for the most part very credibly.
Diego and Julián’s visit to a shopping centre, where Julián becomes visibly uncomfortable when Diego makes physical advances on him, is also worth mentioning. Although we are seeing more (albeit predominantly white, male) gay characters on our screens, seeing a character display such vulnerability and insecurity over the consequences of simply kissing their partner in public is powerful. It reminds us that in certain circumstances us queer folks still feel pressured into censoring our own behaviour in public for fear of generating a negative reaction. The ensuing controversy surrounding the filming of this particular scene seems to only ironically add to this point.
Julián’s subsequent frank and quick-witted conversations with the troupe of drag queens, who sashay into the series as part of a subplot I won’t spoil here, also prove refreshing. The drag queens themselves are portrayed as entrepreneurial, strong-minded and as talented performers. They are, of course, also named after various Mexican pop divas, for that very necessary touch of camp. As such, they are not included to inject some poorly constructed “man-in-a-dress” humour into the show. As the de la Moras’ lives slowly fall apart, the troupe emerges as a stronger, much more stable family unit, despite the queens not being biologically related to one another.
The topic of gender and family is taken further when we are introduced to Maria José, Paulina’s husband, who we learn is a transgender woman. The series rightfully does not shy away from depicting the daily violence and harassment that trans people face, particularly while out in public. Maria José’s own struggles to be taken seriously as a lawyer and not seen, as she refers to it, as a “man in a wig” offer a sobering reality check for viewers. Her powerful declaration of “esto no es un disfraz (This is not a costume)” was also one of the script’s finest moments for me.
Representing a violent everyday reality however is by no means a trade-off for the decision to cast cis-gender actor Paco Leon in the role. Representation begins by giving trans roles to trans actors. Casting directors truly empowering trans actors means allowing them to embody and tell their own stories. In doing so, we avoid interpretations of trans lives made through the cis-gender looking glass. As Meredith Talusan eloquently puts it, this obvious oversight should also be the easiest ill for Hollywood to fix. Perhaps then the scene of Maria José exposing her breasts at the request of Paulina could have been rethought. As, once again, the focus was drawn to the trans body, a site of constant textual violence, and to the reducing of trans identities to “wrong bodies”, ones that require the surgical addition or removal of specific parts of the anatomy in order to gain “validity”.
The series must be praised, however, for the radical yet relatable dialogues it introduces to a genre of television that has traditionally revolved heavily around heteronormative roles and relationships. As Netflix expands and continues to produce more of its own content, it must be extremely mindful of the communities it depicts and the power it has to begin much needed conversations. Crucially, it must not use our community as click-bait, as part of trend-hopping, marketing exercises or tokenise our hugely complex range of identities. It must continue to open up these discussions, while also letting queer talent speak for itself, that’s my message. After all, we’ve got more than enough to say for ourselves.