Magnifico (2003)

Minggu, 25 Desember 2011

Magnifico (2003)

Magnifico (Maryo J. de los Reyes, 2003)

Curiously snubbed by the Metro Manila Film Festival during the same year the festival had films like Boy Vinarao’s Hula Mo... Huli Ko, Tony Reyes’ Lastikman and Enrico Quizon’s Home Along da Riber competing for the top plum, Maryo J. De los Reyes’ Magnifico was eventually released the following year to much critical recognition. Unfortunately, the film failed miserably in the box office. Nonetheless, the film, despite its very traditional filmmaking style, was way ahead of its time. In a way, it preceded the independent films of today in the sense that the story, more than the famous actors and actresses that lend their names and talent to the film, was the very vehicle that drove the film to acclaim. However, its unsuccessful local commercial run also preceded the mostly unsuccessful attempts of today’s independent films to break into mass consciousness.

Written by Michiko Yamamoto, the film is about the titular young boy (then newcomer Jiro Manio) who attempts to give his ailing grandmother (Gloria Romero) a decent funeral. Along with his best friend, he naively goes around town, talking to various personalities or finding ways to earn money, to piece together his grandmother’s funeral, from the coffin that he constructs from the extra plywood he gathered from the local crafts factory to the actual lot wherein his grandmother would be buried.

Yamamoto crafts an entire town populated with quirky individuals with realistic intentions and motivations. Gerry, Magnifico’s father (Albert Martinez) who works as a carpenter working for the local crafts factory, seems to be content with his family and their modest lifestyle. Edna (Lorna Tolentino), Magnifico’s mother who is mostly left in the house to take care of both her sick mother-in-law and her daughter (Isabella de Leon) who is suffering from cerebral palsy, takes her lot in life with a lot less of her husband’s optimism. Magnifico’s elder brother, Miong (Danilo Barrios) has just returned home from Manila after losing his scholarship and is now trying to court the daughter (Girlie Sevilla) of the factory owner (Tonton Gutierrez) in an attempt to escape his family’s fate.

Around town are a bevy of similarly complicated lives. Domeng (Mark Gil), the town’s bus driver, still morose and mourning months after his mother’s demise, is oblivious to the charms of Cristy (Cherry Pie Picache), the town’s primary source of gossip and as a result, the rival of Tessie (Amy Austria). Ka Doring (Celia Rodriguez), the owner of the town’s lone funeral parlor, has turned into the town’s laughing stock because of her seemingly incurable hoarse speaking voice.

De Los Reyes’ directs with precision, making sure that each character adds up to the emotional heft of the story. Although brimming with acting talents, he never allows any of the supporting cast to overshadow Magnifico or his younger sister, whose heart-warming interactions turn out to be the centrepiece of this finely tuned drama. Lutgardo Labad’s beautifully composed score is probably one of the very few in recent Philippine cinema that is truly memorable and hummable. It is quiet and subdued at times and swells whenever necessary, allowing the film to sink deep into the hearts of its audience. Magnifico is a masterfully orchestrated tearjerker. Each of its individual elements are weaved perfectly to create an emotionally rousing experience that never feels slight or ill-conceived.

Magnifico is that rare children’s film that tackles mortality, the inevitability of death. It buffers the seriousness of its subject matter with levity and humor, allowing the children to create for the film an atmosphere of endearing innocence amidst the drollness of the affairs of the adults.

By portraying life as a colorful tapestry of relationships affected by small acts that are fuelled by good intentions, it emphasizes its value while underlining its fragility. It is hardly an empty product that exploits Filipino sensitivity for shocks and tears, like the many melodramas that populate the Metro Manila Film Festival that unfairly neglected it because of its lack of commercial appeal. It is genuinely moving, as it makes you familiar with its characters, allowing you to understand instead of merely witness their virtues, flaws, and humble ambitions. Undoubtedly, Magnifico is a film that will be remembered far longer than any of the films that made it to that miserably misinformed film festival that year.

(Cross-published in Lagarista.)

www.XXX.com (2003)

Jumat, 14 Maret 2008

www.XXX.com (2003)

www.XXX.com (Tikoy Aguiluz, 2003)

Tikoy Aguiluz released www.XXX.com during the waning years of the sexploitation boom in Philippine cinema which started in the late nineties and extended up to the early years of the new millenium. It's easy to accuse www.XXX.com as also primarily exploitative like other similarly-titled movies (like Talong (Eggplant, Mauro Gia Samonte, 1999), Balahibong Pusa (Pussy Hairs, Yam Laranas, 2001) or Itlog (Egg, Francis Posadas, 2002)), but as with most films by the reliable Aguiluz, the film has something truly intelligent boiling beneath its fleshy and sexy come-ons. It's a reactionary film in the sense that it tackles issues that were pertinent during its time like the proliferation of online prostitution, and the Philippine-made I LOVE YOU virus, a worm that has gained international infamy because of the damage it caused. These issues have wormed its way into the nation's collective consciousness through various media outlets that even to the technologically-challenged, the issues arouse a sincere curiosity, if not shame or disdain.

The film details the story of Joanna (Juliana Palermo), who returns to the Philippines from the United States after discovering that she is pregnant. Because of her limited money and her inability to find a job because she did not finish high school, she decides to take the offer of Rick (Gary Estrada), proprietor of an internet cafe and a pornographic website called Webdiva which concentrates on Filipino women, to star in his website. Although Joanna's reasons for entering the internet flesh trade is mostly financial, the film never implies her job as a source of exploitation. She is paid well, and as it turns out, discovers that she has an immense talent for seducing men worldwide. Habibi (Angelu de Leon), the expert webdiva, prides herself of her occupation. Prostitution is stripped of the usual grim disposition Philippine cinema has given it, where the girls would always be unassuming and naive nymphs from the barrios who are tricked into the business by shrewd thugs. Instead, prostitution, at least the online kind, becomes a tool for economic leverage for Joanna and the other models. In a larger scale, it can even be said that online prostitution also caused sexual leverage where men from all over the world mindlessly give their money to women who are forever unattainable fantasies.

The set-up here echoes the words of filmmaker Lav Diaz (who along with Jeffrey Jeturian had cameos in the film as interviewees for a news program) who implies that the internet has paved for the Filipinos an avenue for world domination. While the internet has undoubtedly made the world smaller by making communication easy, it has twisted humanity's perception of reality, where pertinent emotions are transmitted to persons with the not only the efficiency but also the inhumanity of digital sounds and pixelated images.

This is the world that Rick invests in. He is exactly the type of person who can and will make a quick buck out of the by-products of a world-wide social and philosophical revolution. Actor Estrada captures near-perfectly the very Faustian characteristic of Rick. He infuses Rick with worldly shrewdness and experience coupled with a very dangerous desperation. As such, Rick becomes this charming devil as he effortlessly mouths internet-age philosophies while recruiting Joanna into his prostitution ring. In one scene, he interrogates Joanna of the tongue ring she is wearing. He first sends a message of disapproval, supposedly suspicious of her inability to give oral sex, to the point of ordering her to remove it. He finally gets what he wants when he finally seduces Joanna to go down on him, on the impression of giving him a first hand experience of the benefits of the tongue ring. The scene is evidence of Rick's mastery of negotiation and bargaining; he is a capitalist beyond any kind of redemption.

Joanna falls in love with one of her customers, Spike (Carlo Maceda), a hacker who has been hired by the police to help out in its investigations regarding hacking and online prostitution. While the love story is clumsily fleshed out as we never really realize that Joanna and Spike's online flirting transcended their initial motivations of greed and lust respectively, it nevertheless grounds the film's lofty examinations with something earnestly plebeian. From its dim and compelling examinations on the internet, www.XXX.com suddenly takes a different more conventional route, introducing into the storyline the police operative that is targeting the Webdiva operations. The climax of the film involves the scheduled raid, made known to Spike by his commanding officer (PJ Abellana), allowing him to be there just at the right moment to rescue his online lover from harm. Rick devolves from cunning devil into crazed criminal, betraying all the subtle ruthlessness and innovativeness he once possessed, thus ending in what I feel is a hugely disappointing demise for the suave villain. However, Joanna, along with her co-webdivas, are finally caught. Their inevitable destinies, despite the financial freedom and personal contentment, seem to be intertwined with the rest of the poor, pathetic, and naive flesh traders that have become staple in the evening news: embarrassed women in various stages of undress with their towels, hands and hair covering their faces exposed and exploited on camera.

Is prostitution really exploitation, or is it female domination or at least an opportunity for social equality, as the film so lyrically emphasizes with Joanna's self-determination and Habibi's ability to provide despite being a single parent? In connection with the burgeoning presence of Filipinos in the seedier corners of the internet, is it really ludicrous to consider Diaz's suggestion that such are mere modes for Filipino world domination, or at least an opportunity for equality in an international arena that makes it impossible for poorer nations to gain an identity? These are the questions that www.XXX.com subtly proposes with its non-didactic and non-moralizing presentation of what are conventionally portrayed as social ills. Unfortunatly, it feels like the public and most close-minded critics can't go beyond the seemingly lascivious trappings director Aguiluz chose to drape the film with to reach a wider audience. That said, I believe www.XXX.com is a good, if not great misunderstood film.

Keka (2003)

Senin, 28 Januari 2008

Keka (2003)

Keka (Quark Henares, 2003)

Nearing the end of Quark Henares' Keka, everything stops to make way for a song and dance number, reminiscent of the ones that populated popular Philippine cinema during the eighties. It's reflective of Henares' undying affection for cinematic camp, and to finally direct one, complete with the obvious dubbing, the hilarious choreography, and the signature freeze-frame that would signal the rolling of the end credits of a cheesy comedy, is probably a dream come true for the then-young director. However, above the very personal reasons behind that number's existence in the movie is the fact that it's an enjoyable and very effective cinematic device for Henares to portray the inevitable realization of the repercussions of the actions done by Keka (played quite playfully by Katya Santos). The freeze frame thaws. The dancers leave. Keka is all alone, reciting her frank monologue about how life is different from the happy endings of the corny movies she cherishes and that the story will definitely not end when the director decides to freeze the frame during that moment of extreme happiness and start rolling the end credits. Her dilemma remains. She has killed four men out of vengeance and is now deeply in love with the cop tasked to solve the murder mystery she started.

Keka remains to be Henares' lone truly satisfying effort (apart from the several wonderful shorts he made during college, most especially A Date With Jao Mapa (1999), a film that playfully pits real life matinee idol Jao Mapa with one of his obsessive fans). Previous to Keka is Gamitan (2002), an unremarkable soft core pornographic picture wherein it is obvious that Henares was wrestling his artistic integrity with the viler commercial requirements of the movie studio that hired him. After Keka, Henares would be directing the more interesting half of Wag Kang Lilingon (Don't Look Back, 2006), a plot twist-reliant ghost story that had him team up with television hack Jerry Lopez Sineneng, and Super Noypi (2006), a miscalculated sci-fi fantasy picture made for the Metro Manila Film Festival that had too many untalented teenage stars yet too little spark, an apparent mismatch of talent and studio bickering. Its indubitable that Henares has real filmmaking talent and of equal importance to that talent, a graspable and workable sense of pop culture cultivated through the years of cinephilia mixed with arguably good taste. With Keka, Henares was able to utilize everything he has in a project he wanted to do thus the very good results.

The story of Keka will inevitably invite comparisons to other films that is fueled by vengeful women in a murderous rampage like Francois Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black (1968), about a widow who leaves town to kill the five men who killed her husband right after their marriage, Toshiya Fujita's Lady Snowblood (1973), about a lady samurai who was born to kill the perpetrators of the massacre of her family, and Lino Brocka's Angela Markado (Angela the Marked One, 1980), about a raped woman who swears to kill every single one of her rapists, among others. The amusing thing about Henares' film is that unlike the mentioned films wherein the women are adequately burdened with psychological anguish to fuel their quest for vengeance, Keka's motivation is comparably slight, a sudden spark of extreme emotion that led her to that obsessive and illogical of ridding the world of her boyfriend's killers. The intent of Henares for Keka is for her not to be taken seriously.

The emphasis here is not the depth of pain or emotional turmoil that led Keka to become a serial killer, but the insignificance of her motivation. That insignificant motivation is something we've become consistently aware of through the many stories and movies that romanticized that blur of a feeling, love. In a sense, Keka attempts to replicate what has been done countlessly before, to romanticize the concept of love and to exaggerate the feeling of losing such love. The film approaches the romanticization in a completely different manner, by converting the traditional sweetness that accompanies the feeling into a maniacal tendency that would easily erupt upon acquisition or loss of such emotion. Remarkably, the repercussions of Henares' decision to showcase the more extreme facet of being in love is not totally alien in reality. Henares pumps humor in the quirkiness and corniness of that feeling that will drive most of us drunk with depression or elation, depending on whether you lose it or earn it: such as when the cop Jason (played charmingly by Wendell Ramos), upon being dumped by his girlfriend the night he was going to propose to her, disastrously tries to keep his tears from falling when looking at an album of pictures of them together, before completely covering the face of his girlfriend with bits of masking tape; or when he finally gets Keka to drink with him and talk for hours in a roadside canteen, he expresses his delight with wild gestures of happiness, all to be seen by those who pass through that major thoroughfare.

Does it have anything important to say? I believe not, but is saying something important really important in cinema? What Keka does so proficiently is to commit to celluloid the idiosyncrasies of Henares' generation, the generation he shares with his main character Keka, the generation that was fed with the pure escapism of eighties pop culture and its larger-than-life representations of love and losing it. It is the reason why despite its fantastic elements and the several inconsistencies with reality (like the fraternity ambush inside the school building since smarter fratmen would choose a less conspicuous location; or the careless conversations in public about murder between Keka and her best friend Bhong (Vhong Navarro)), the overall feeling never strikes you as too strange or absurd. It's still very reachable, still very watchable.

In the end, Keka becomes less a tale of revenge and more a celebration of the irrational things we do for love. Keka is correct when she said that in reality, the story does not stop when the director decides to freeze the frame but what she could not foretell is that in her story, there is another thing that might just catch her by surprise. Although already deeply entangled in the series of murders she has committed, she has learnd to move on and has in fact, fallen in love with someone and in return, that someone has fallen in love with her.

In the film's brilliantly conceived conclusion, Keka is caught red handed by Jason in her apartment while engaging in a violent brawl with Bobby Domingo (Ryan Eigenmann), the last of her boyfriend's murderers. During that scene, something miraculous happens. Instead of ending in the realistic way Keka expected it to end as she has envisioned in her post-song-and-dance monologue, or ending in the escapist way those cheesy eighties movies would cause it to end through songs and freeze frames, it goes into a totally different direction, a direction that convincingly reiterates the thesis that if the sudden loss of love can cause a woman to turn into a killer, the sudden gain of it can cause the world to spin, turning a dire situation such as where one is cornered by a horde of armed policemen into a moment of pure bliss.

Ang Huling Birhen sa Lupa (2003)

Selasa, 17 Juli 2007

Ang Huling Birhen sa Lupa (2003)

Ang Huling Birhen sa Lupa (Joel Lamangan, 2003)
English Title: The Last Virgin

Ang Huling Birhen sa Lupa (The Last Virgin) takes its cue from Ishmael Bernal's masterpiece Himala (Miracle, 1982). Both films have practically the same conceit: a provincial town suddenly bursting with life and commerce because of a miracle. Both writer and director of the film worked under Bernal in Himala: screenwriter Racquel Villavicencio as production designer and director Joel Lamangan as crowd director.

The biggest difference between the two films is that Lamangan's lacks a coherent direction, while Bernal's is grand in its cornered simplicity (that famous line by Nora Aunor's character "walang himala, ang himala ay nasa puso ng tao," translated in English as "There are no miracles, miracles are in the heart of men," is practically the film's lyrical cornerstone). If there's a line that probably paraphrases Lamangan's film, it would be the one spoken by Lorena (Ara Mina) in the end of the film, "ang maidudulot lang ng kasakiman ay kahamakan," or "greed only results in tragedy." It's hardly an original or interesting theme to ground your film on, and Villavicencio and Lamangan know that, as shown by the rows and rows of narrative embellishments and subplots that muddle the film.

An epidemic left the seaside town of San Rosario in social and moral disarray. Extremes populate the town: the pious as exemplified by Cion (Maui Taylor), who sees the Virgin Mary (depicted visually as a modern-day burning bush) regularly, her saint-muttering ill mother, and the ex-nun who teaches catechism to the children; those who have lost their faith on religion are Lorena, Cion's older sister and town whore, the town captain (Elizabeth Oropesa), who explains her lack of faith as a result of her daughter's unexplained crippled-ness. When Fr. Emman (Jay Manalo), who washed ashore one day, starts conniving with Lorena in making up a miracle to elicit a steady income from the needy faithful, greed unhealthily mixes with the affairs of the soul.

It's played out as straight melodrama with several encounters that expand on the logical limitations of human reason, like that unexplainable mutation of the priest's sexual lusting for Lorena into something so easily referred to by Lorena as love, or the relative ease that the miracle goes out of proportion (Lamangan even reprises the carnivalesque crowds, complete with journalists and television crews, furthering the implausibility of the exercise; especially since Villavicencio's story hinges on fake clergymen, corrupt low-ranking government officials, and shady crooks --- certainly, a grandiose media coverage would cause unwanted attention to an enterprise that works best if kept in an intermediate level of awareness; enough to arouse needy patrons but not large enough to create suspicion with the government and the church).

But there are the details that are unintentionally funny that counter its aims for social commentary and realism, or even its meager attempts at effective melodrama: the insanely large polyester breasts of Taylor in gratuitous display (abnormally gifted for a fifteen year old lass), or the libidous climax that seems drawn out of the many other Filipino films that require rape scenes (this time, the decision to rape seems out of place --- Mike Magat's character is supposed to be an enterprising businessman; why then would he allow himself and his gang to deflower their most prized commodity), or even the ridiculous ending that gives the film's title its meaning: an unintended conclusion that there's such a thing as hymen that remains indestructible despite a vicious gang rape (either that, or the men of San Rosario are not so well-endowed); or maybe, the hymen is really such an invaluable commodity for sanctification that divine powers are needed to preserve its intactness. Nevertheless, it's just such a silly, silly film.