Rains Over Babel: Eclectic Retribution and (Literally) Dancing With the Devil
by Varsha Murali Kaushik
Courtesy of Sundance Institute
Rains Over Babel (2025) is director Gala del Sol’s feature film debut at Sundance 2025, and what an intimately enthralling and adventurous debut it is. Primordial beings walk amongst drag queens, desperate souls roll the dice with a deathly seductress, and angels leave messages of hope in varied hues of red and pink lipstick on mirrors in the film’s enticing world of gods, devils, humans, a talking gecko, and everything in between. Through three separate character arcs that are also closely interwoven with each other, the film highlights the trials of not just coming to terms with your identity but being able to openly embrace it and celebrate it with the people who matter.
The plot and the production both flourish under the retro-futuristic structure which the film uses to highlight moments of tension and unresolved conflicts between the past and the future of the characters. The film captivates you in its intricate fantasy world and well-written coming-of-age plot with characters like the seemingly innocuous barman El Boticario (Santiago Pineda) who is hiding much more than a few cocktail recipes behind his cheeky elvish smiles, Gian Salai (John Alex Castillo) who is the owner of the bar and more than what his sleazy exterior suggests, the dangerously attractive boss lady La Flaca (Saray Rebolledo) who appears to run the circus, and Jacob (William Hurtado), a Pastor’s son who leads a completely different life outside of his house and the church.
I am a big fan of the production of Rains Over Babel. While most of the film takes place indoors in an alternative mix of warm and cold shots between character homes and public spaces like the bar, the church, the drag academy, etc., the occasional outdoor shots are well-lit with a good balance of exposure and depth of field. Each indoor location follows its own colour scheme, reciprocated in full by the characters’ costumes and props. Babel the bar, for example, is lit with bright neon colours set against a darker blue and maroon backdrop; as the characters move about and interact with this space, their body language and features are highlighted in the soft glow of neon colours, shrouded in the darker tones of the club or a mix of the two. The lighting and the colour grading result in vibrant, colourful visuals which are aesthetically pleasing to the eye. The sound design crisply captures every noise made on camera, such as the very realistic clunks of the soul stones inside a bag, hissing textures while sifting through paper money, and the click-clacks of the drag queens’ heels as they practice their dance routine. The well-placed energetic background music, used both diegetically and non-diegetically, heightens the mood of every scene, comic or otherwise. The match-on-action editing between two simultaneous fight scenes occurring in two different locations and involving more than 20 characters is particularly well done. All in all, the vibrant colours and rich sound design make for a well-rounded visual and aural treat.
Courtesy of Sundance Institute
Clichéd in the best way, Rains Over Babel’s discerning treatment of the characters is one of my favourite things about it. The plot starts with unreliable narrators El Boticario and Erato (Sofia Buenaventura) who act as our guides into the film’s world and downplay their value in the film’s lore. Slowly, as the film settles on a medium-paced plot progression, we meet other characters and get to know the three main story arcs: Dante (Felipe Aguilar Rodriguez) who is on a tight deadline to collect the souls of the newly departed mortals while trying to recollect the memories of his own mortal life, Jacob who struggles to embrace his true identity under the roof of his pastor father’s orthodox Christian household and perform at that night’s pre-concert drag show at Babel, and gypsy Uma (Celina Biurrun) who’s thrown out of the bar after an altercation and gambles away years of her life in an attempt to save her daughter’s life. Each conflict has a different emotion associated with it while remaining connected to the others, thus forming a coherent and fascinating narrative that kept me hooked.
Rains Over Babel left me curious about how the facets of time, space, life, and death work in its fascinating world, with its purgatories situated in dive bars, a love motel encouraging the pursuit of debauchery, and a church that does neon backlighting and where people break into dance numbers. These topsy-turvy elements that seem random actually work together to make for a memorable, intriguing story that stays with you long after the film ends. In some instances, I thought the happy endings of the story might be unrealistically happy, but I also recognized how intensely realistic the characters’ hurt and challenges were, thus leading to the conclusion that Rains Over Babel’s world is a balanced reflection of the best and the worst of the real world.
Here, prejudices and biases co-exist with the joy and beauty of self-expression, and life-risking gambles and actions driven by love (romantic and otherwise) pay off in the end provided that you fight for it. It is a world where romantic retributions come back in full circles with a message of queer joy, compared to the broader media spectrum of similar plots which often end in queer tragedy. Rains Over Babel is a fun, adventurous film right from the start, which will delight a couple of laughs out of you with its eccentricity and warm your heart right up with its poignant yet unabashed love for friendships, acceptance, and the sense of belonging and community. It is a helpful reminder, especially in times where identity, expression, and morals are tested and denounced at every turn, to be who you are, to hold onto the things that make you happy, and keep you going into a better future, even (and especially) when your biggest obstacle is the literal devil herself.
Courtesy of Sundance Institute