Isda (2011)

Sabtu, 20 Agustus 2011

Isda (2011)

Isda (Adolfo Alix, Jr., 2011)

English Title: Fable of the Fish

Adolfo Alix, Jr.’s Isda (Fable of the Fish) appears to be just another movie set in the overexploited slums of Manila. Lina (Cherry Pie Picache) and Miguel (Bembol Roco), a childless couple despite several years of being married who have just relocated from the province to the city to change their fate, arrive at the slums just in time to witness an unsurprising altercation between a slum dweller and the police, which is expectedly spiced by rowdy and overly involved onlookers. Unstirred by the unexpected but commonplace boisterous welcome of their new home, the couple settle in. Miguel finds a job in the nearby ice plant. Lina stays at home, taking care of the children of her neighbors if she’s not helping her husband in trying to earn money from the dumpsite. Despite the harrowing conditions of the place where they decided to live, Lina and Miguel’s new life is strangely perfect, except that they have not been blessed with a child of their own.



Then Lina gets pregnant, and gives birth, amazingly, to a fish.



Alix does not completely abandon reality in his foray into the supernatural. Picache and Roco admirably wear their roles with unquestionable conviction, blurring further the line that separates the gnawing reality of the depicted poverty and the fantasy of the couple’s situation.



Isda is also visually intriguing, with the scenes framed purposefully, either to direct humor or to forward the narrative. Cinematographer Albert Banzon ensures that the film is not too grimly lit or too bluntly framed. The music, melodies randomly conjured from a single violin, lends uneasiness to the affair.



Absurd is a word that Isda draws its power from. From the absurdity of families etching out decent lives from the indecent conditions of the slums and the dumpsite to the absurdity of Lina giving birth to a fish and attempting to be normal in an obviously abnormal family situation, Alix maintains an unwavering consistency in his depiction. The film is refreshingly mischievous, wearing a mask of seriousness amidst the hilarity of everything that is going on. The film appears to be just one big joke, the same big joke that screenwriter Jerry Gracio played on Lina and Miguel when he wrote Lina’s birthing to a fish into his screenplay. However, the film is indisputably bigger than the sum of all the chuckles the obliviousness of its characters of the blatant absurdity that they’re living could ever produce.



Beyond the absurdity and the tabloid-worthy uniqueness of the story that would most probably be the center of all discussions about the film is a very simple but very earnest portrait of a family. Alix maps the family’s story with astute tenderness, establishing relationships between each member, grounding them with logic and emotions. More importantly, Alix does not place his story within a lifeless vacuum. He concocts a community for the family to exist in and relate to. He has created a world, exaggerated it seems with people living and raising families side by side with garbage, that is ready to admit another glaring anomaly. The truths of Isda, I believe, are as weighty if not weightier than its delicious and deliriously memorable flights of fantasy.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Chassis (2010)

Selasa, 14 Desember 2010

Chassis (2010)

Chassis (Adolfo Alix, Jr., 2010)

Adolfo Alix, Jr.’s Chassis opens with Nora (Jodi Sta. Maria) ironing the school uniform of her daughter inside a modest house. The house, perhaps a few square meters wide, consists of very few belongings, some furniture, the ironing horse, cheap ornaments hanging on the wall, one of which Alix’s camera becomes fixated on because it showcases the ideal house. Nora finishes her chore and thanks the owner for her kindness. No, this is not Nora’s house. She lives elsewhere.

Alix’s camera follows Nora as she crosses a wide cement gap that separates her neighbor’s house with the parking lot of huge container trucks. Underneath the chassis of one of the parked trucks hangs a hammock where Nora’s daughter is sleeping. Nora’s husband sleeps on the cold cement. This is Nora’s home, or at least until the truck drives off to one of its many destinations. She wakes her daughter, bathes her, helps her into her uniform, and finally sends her to school. It seems that the events of that morning have ripened into routine. Shockingly, normalcy has inevitably crept into what is obviously a situation that can only be described as both unjust and absurd.

With its opening of expertly mounted visual cues, Chassis immediately forces notice of the gravity of its oppressive milieu. Alix separates from the tattered houses of the slums, clichéd by the dozens of films that are situated there, and slides further and deeper into penury, focusing primarily on individuals who have made homes and attempt to raise families out of parked trucks. Alix overemphasizes the bleakness of his chosen setting, visualizing his setting in monochrome, effectively removing any semblance of color from the sorry lots of his characters and the place they live in.

The images Alix creates, with the help of cinematographer Gabriel Bagnas, are astoundingly austere, more stylized and carefully framed portraits of extreme poverty in the midst of what supposedly represents a bustling trade economy than anything else. Chassis, if experienced only as a series of moving pictures, feels like an album of black and white postcards of Manila in its most deplorable, most depressed and most desperate.

Alix often shows Nora’s face, suspiciously serene despite her troubling circumstance, in close-up. It is as if he commands from Nora’s the same irony as he does from his milieu. After all, both subjects, Nora and Manila as represented here by its port area, are beautiful yet tarnishing. In the frequent close-ups, Alix prompts his viewers to observe Nora, to become intimate with her, and to understand the lack of any intense emotion from her face as she goes about her daily routine that is rife with oppression, from the men who pay her a paltry sum for a quickie, from her husband who can’t provide for her and her daughter decent shelter, and from the society that fosters her dire situation. She has been calloused to the point of being deprived of truly feeling. She only expresses genuine emotions, of joy, sadness and later on anger, with events concerning her daughter.

Alix exploits both milieu and subject, creating a film that instantly grabs you by strength of both its premise and Sta. Maria’s presence. However, the film attempts to go beyond observation of the severe human condition, participating further by enveloping such observations within a story that attempts to push gender discourse. Alix basically paints a grim community where dominating males are unable to provide, forcing the stronger women to prostitute herself for mere survival. The film’s debatable conclusion portrays Nora’s revolt towards her severely iniquitous predicament, bringing the film closer to being unduly didactic if not totally academic, betraying ultimately any emotions already invested on the fate of the film’s female protagonist. Thus, Chassis persisted as a powerful piece of cinema verite until it mistakenly took that final-minute drastic turn for inexplicable shock to forward a negligible and passé statement on the state of patriarchy in the Philippines’ poorest sectors.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Manila (2009)

Jumat, 17 Juli 2009

Manila (2009)

Manila (Adolfo Alix, Jr. & Raya Martin, 2009)

Adolfo Alix, Jr. takes the experiment seriously. The latter half of Manila, a modern reiteration of Lino Brocka's Jaguar (1979), tackles Philip (heartthrob Piolo Pascual, artificially darkened to match his character's lower income roots), the personal bodyguard of an ambitious although reckless scion (Jay Manalo) of a big-time politician. After shooting and killing a man in defense of his boss, Philip is suddenly left on his own when his boss abandons him for fear of getting involved in the murder. Alix directs with admirable restraint and his portion of the film operates with the same energy and rhythm that Tambolista (Drumbeat, 2007) possesses which gave his visualizations of urban squalor a treacherous personality. Albert Banzon's black and white cinematography, jerky when necessary but never disorienting, contributes to the prevailing unease. While adeptly filmed, Alix's portion is more repetition than anything else. He does not even attempt to stray from what every Brocka disciple, from Joel Lamangan (Bulaklak ng Maynila (Flower of Manila, 1999) and Hubog (Wretched Lives, 2001)) to Mel Chionglo (Sibak (Midnight Dancers, 1994)), have made careers out of.

A belated colored credit sequence, which separates Raya Martin's first half and Alix's latter half, showcases something bizarre: Lav Diaz, director of films whose average running time is seven hours, is filming a romance starring Iza Calzado and Jon Avila, both of whom are popular television stars. It's an unlikely scenario (especially since Diaz seems to be quite comfortable in the set where he has klieglights, a sizable crew, and teen idols, at his disposal), both improbable and impossible. The credit sequence, funny, ironic and bursting with subtle sarcasm, gives an adequate outlook point to view Martin's portion. It begs to ask the question "do we simply believe the images as projected in the big screen, no matter how improbable and impossible they are?"

There is something subtly subversive in Martin’s portion, which opens the film. Seductively immaculate in the way he captures the city as atmospheric backdrop to the tale of William (Pascual, with whitened hair), perpetual drug addict who we first see escaping a police raid, the day portion of the film, loosely based on the characters of Ishmael Bernal’s Manila by Night (1980), is driven not by narrative or a set of written characters but by an indescribable force that fuels the titular metropolis. Martin’s Manila is formless, like a nebula of rustic landmarks thinly connected by a shared motif. As with its first few minutes where Martin economically introduces his characters as cued by a jazzy soundtrack, the film exists primarily as a montage of exquisitely photographed (again by cinematographer Banzon) sequences that celebrate the allure of the city despite the thematic corruption that pervades its citizenry.

Pascual walks around a park only to lie down the grass. Martin cuts to his face. He cuts to show the sun. Martin cuts back to Pascual's face, now glowing with the sunlight, slowly being illuminated and fading to divine white. In an earlier sequence, Martin features Pascual being chased by the police after the raid of the massage parlor Pascual's character frequents. Out of the darkness, Pascual's worried but still very handsome mug appears. The subversion lies not with how expertly crafted these sequences are but by how his camera lovingly lingers to catch Pascual's face, to the point of utter ridiculousness. The visual satire of Pascual's celebrity reaches a climax during the confrontation between his character and Charito (Rosanna Roces), where an onslaught of maternal violence, tears, screams, and pleas, is captured in slow motion and extended much longer than necessary. It is supposed to be Pascual's moment to showcase his acting chops after being plastered as ornament to Manila's landmarks but Martin steals the show and creates a sequence so cinematically absurd and enthralling, that everything else, including Pascual who struggles to be convincing in slow motion, is overshadowed. Hitchcock once said "all actors should be treated like cattle." Thus, if you only have one cow and it is a goodlooking cow, you put it on display, and when it tries to do something it cannot convincingly do, you do something spectacular so attention is diverted somewhere else.

We actually never get a feel that Bernal is the driving force of his portion, except for the characters and the slow motion sequence in the hospital, all borrowed from Manila by Night. Given that Pascual seems to be a permanent fixture in Manila's seductive beauty, Martin's portion is more a hilariously surreptitious sabotage of a mainstream icon than a tribute. Pascual is the sole driving force, and Martin acknowledges it and to my mind, creatively pokes fun at it. Pascual, who after being groomed by the country's biggest television station, has turned into an insanely lucrative commodity. Pascual is not only a matinee idol, he is also a singer, a commercial model (Alix and Martin shares credits with Bench, a clothing line, Sanmig Coffee, a brand of instant coffee, Centrum, a brand of multivitamins, and a few other brands which Pascual endorses), and now, a film producer. Manila, more than a tribute to Brocka and Bernal, two of the Philippines' most prized filmmakers, is a vanity project for Pascual, and I suspect, whether it is voluntary or subconscious for Martin, is not satisfied with keeping it at that.

Tambolista (2007)

Jumat, 29 Agustus 2008

Tambolista (2007)

Tambolista (Adolfo Alix, Jr., 2007)
English Title: Drumbeat

Fourteen year old Jason (Jiro Manio) and his older brother Billy (Coco Martin) aspire for two entirely different things. Jason is saving to buy a drum set while Billy, who has gotten his girlfriend pregnant, is finding ways to earn enough for an abortion. When their friend Pablo (Sid Lucero), a hustler who was recently evicted by his landlord after being caught stealing from and having sex with his wife, stays with them for a few days while their parents are in the hospital, a plan is hatched to steal from Nanay and Tatay Trining (played by Anita Linda and Fonz Deza, respectively) who reside across their house. The money they would steal from the elderly couple will supposedly pay for Jason's drum set and Billy's girlfriend's abortion, and fix Pablo's dire financial situation. However, things don't turn out as planned, and the repercussions of their actions are far graver than what they originally imagined.

Adolfo Alix, Jr.'s Tambolista (Drumbeat) is all about Manila's urban rhythm. It is about that rhythm's comforting inconsistencies and its hypnotizing unpredictability. It is also about the dire consequences of missing a beat. The city's unique soundscape is characterized by the barrage of different noises that swell into a distinct although cacophonous drumbeat. Alix consciously laces the film with a soundtrack of frequent ambient sounds: of the loud sirens that announce the arrival of the police, of the endless blare of cars rushing down a busy highway, of the nightly barks of the neighbors' pet dog, of the repetitive nagging of Nanay Trining, of the heavy breathing and the loud moaning heard from Pablo's bootleg porn videos. Even Khavn De La Cruz's musical score, a hypnotic mix of infrequent drumbeats and short melodies, possesses the same quality and rhythm that aurally replicates Manila's uniquely delirious moods.

The screenplay, written by Regina Tayag, is by itself a tense and engaging piece of work. The characters she created are not explicit stereotypes of Manila's poor folk, and in turn, deviates from being a mere repetition of the many images and stories of the impoverished urban dwellers Philippine cinema has and continues to conjure. The characters are poor and we see their surroundings as cramped, dirty and often hostile. However, the film concentrates more on the moral deterioration that accompanies the economic and social decay that perpetually burdens the city.

Thus, Jason, Billy and Pablo do not beg for the film viewers' sympathies or understanding, nor do they seek to represent the inhumane consequences of the nation's enveloping state of poverty like the petty crooks of Brillante Mendoza's Tirador (Slingshot, 2007), with their aimless and cyclical state of destitution. In fact, they are seen as repulsive with conflicts that arise, not from their financial situation, but from their own acts and decisions. While it is true that Jason and Billy's family is poor and Pablo even more so, they are not cornered into a life of crime and penury. Their decisions are not results of lacking the basic necessities of living. Instead, these decisions are emissions of a corrupted generation that venerates money, shallow ambitions and restless fantasies of the flesh.

Alix's direction here is commendable. His visual sense, with the aid of Albert Banzon's cinematography, is sublime, choosing to shoot the film in total black and white, save for some bits in color. Tambolista may probably be Alix's most audacious work, which is saying a lot since Alix has directed a few adventurous features like Kadin (The Goat, 2007), Alix's tribute to auteur Lav Diaz which is essentially a kid's film that features Lav Diaz-esque pacing, Daybreak (2008), which details the final few hours of a gay relationship, and Adela (2008), which concentrates on an old woman on her eightieth birthday. In Tambolista, Alix experiments in storytelling as he tells his story not with chronological logic but with the same aura of unpredictability that pervades the entire production. The narrative method is not entirely novel (Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams (2003) is similarly structured), but Alix pulls it off with admirable ease. More importantly, the structure does not feel pretentious, since the seemingly illogical sequence of scenes of verbal and physical violence or sex is apt to the chaotic cadence of the city.

Adela (2008)

Jumat, 11 Juli 2008

Adela (2008)

Adela (Adolfo Alix, Jr., 2008)

The fourth edition of the Cinemalaya Film Festival opens with a film by Adolfo Alix, Jr. Ever since Alix debuted his first feature film Donsol in the 2006 edition of Cinemalaya, he has never stopped working, directing at least nine feature films during the span of three years. The screening of Alix's Adela coincides with the festival's tribute to Anita Linda, an actress who works just as hard as Alix, having appeared in more than a hundred movies since before the early 40's up to the present, including films directed by Gerardo de Leon (Sisa (1951) and Ang Sawa sa Lumang Simboryo (Python at the Old Dome, 1952)), Lino Brocka (Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (You Were Weighed But Found Wanting, 1974) and Jaguar (1979)), Ishmael Bernal (Ligaw ng Bulaklak (Wildflower, 1976) and Mario O'Hara (Babae sa Bubungang Lata (Woman on a Tin Roof, 1998) and Pangarap ng Puso (Demons, 2000)), among other renowned Filipino directors. There is no doubt as to Linda's artistry and generosity. She has gracefully aged with Philippine cinema, witnessing the film industry rise, fall, and rise again through the years, still eagerly inhabiting roles with an unwavering zest whenever called upon.

In Adela, Linda plays the titular character, a retired radio voice talent who is celebrating her eightieth birthday. The film accounts for that supposedly special day in the life of Adela. We first see her alighting from a tricycle, hurrying past a crowd of useless onlookers, to help a neighbor who is giving birth right in the middle of the commotion. The day goes on, with routine mixing with the clever turns of circumstance. Adela misplaces her wedding ring, gets swindled by the neighborhood fence, hears mass, visits her son in prison, chances upon a co-worker, and finally travels to the outermost area in her seaside dump site to conclude that special day. The film is introspective, forcing the viewers to experience the starkness of living alone in the world through the profound mundaneness of Adela's birthday.

There are at least three important scenes that astounded me, on the basis that these scenes are emotional crests in a film that is deprived of an explicit plot. The first one was when Adela was listening to the radio drama, she suddenly changes her voice to match the two characters in the radio drama, seamlessly shifting from the high pitched pleas of the daughter to the stern alto of the angry mom. It's a beautiful scene for the simple fact that it both showcases Linda's acting prowess and it emphasizes the feeling of reminiscence (of a former, unattainable past) that hounds the character of Adela that day.

The second one was after the party, when Adela walks into the house of the new mother she helped that morning. She chances upon the mother breastfeeding the baby. The camera then concentrates on Adela's face which changes from delight to sadness, where a heartfelt smile becomes soaked with tears. If the first important scene emphasized the passive emotion of reminiscence, this second scene attempts to break the character, pushing Adela to react to the heartbreaking fact that she has become alone, while the rest of the world has somebody to love and love them back.

The third scene happens near the end of the film. Adela sets up her picnic blanket, prepares the noodles she cooked, and against the backdrop of Manila Bay, contemplates on her situation: aged and even amidst the the crowdedness of her neighborhood, alone. Again, the camera centers on Adela's face. This time, there is no pretense of joy. She is just there, crying precisely because of the fact that everyone has physically (previous to her picnic, the entire neighborhood attends a political rally, leaving her behind) and symbolically left her alone. She walks past the bushes before the film ends, with an air of thought-provoking ambiguity.

Adela works solely because of Linda's terrific performance. Linda is an actress who can tell stories with a mere movement of her lips, or a momentary flicker of her eyes. The sparseness of the film's narrative is grounded on the fact that Adela is a film that relies on Linda to add untold depths to the knowledge that the titular character's passed-upon past: that she has a daughter working for a rich man in Makati who couldn't get a day-off to spend the day with her; that she has a son who is wasting away in jail for whatever petty crime; that she has another son working abroad who left a broken family in the Philippines. Linda, with a subtle trembling of her eyebrows, the sudden flowing of helplessly restrained tears, and coupled with the vast experience of portraying a wide array of characters ranging from a mother gone insane with the loss of her kids (in de Leon's Sisa) to a forgotten movie actress (in O'Hara's Ang Babae sa Bubungang Lata), has done enough to turn mundane into magical. Adela might very well be Alix's best film to date. Alix has Anita Linda to thank for that.

Kadin (2007)

Selasa, 24 Juli 2007

Kadin (2007)

Kadin (Adolfo Alix Jr., 2007)
English Title: The Goat

The story is pure simplicity. A boy (Rico Mark Cardona) wakes up and finds his goat missing. He tries to find the goat before nightfall with his sister (Monica Joy Camarillas). The simple plot's focus is innocence. Set in the backdrop of unclaimed natural beauty (subtly portrayed as being threatened by the arrival of outsiders; there seems to be tension between the natives and the outsiders as shown by a quick fight between the boy and a group of young transients), there are moments wherein the boy's purity is tested; wherein an easier way out from his predicament is to succumb to thievery and other means.

There's a whole lot of walking in the film. It is presumably writer-director Adolfo Alix's hommage to Lav Diaz, whose films span five to eleven hours, mostly consisting of long stretches of travel or other banalities, but are all fascinating works of art. Kadin (The Goat), if anything is fabulous. Alix showcases the ponderous beauty of Batanes, a group of storm-tattered island in the northernmost portion of the Philippines. He even dedicates a prologue to show an engaging ritual by the islands' residents, involving a hog being bled to death and its internal organs used as instruments for fortune-telling --- the rest of the carcass is brought home to serve as meals for the next few days.

However, Diaz is anything but fabulous. Diaz's endless footages are mostly shot in black and white, in low angles, usually immobile, and with almost nothing happening except the natural flow of time. Alix has a canvass of numerous colors, he directs his actors to first walk and then sprint (it is as if his hommage is turning into a critical assessment of Diaz's artistic methods; why walk when they can run), he would always shoot in camera angles that supply aesthetic satisfaction (showcasing the gorgeous bends that carve a mountainside, the serene blue skies, the wind-choreographed vegetation).

That's what differentiates Diaz's films and Alix's trite homage (aside from the obvious, like the running time). Diaz understands the value of duration --- its duties to immersion and contemplation. Alix's aesthetics are mere skin-deep; you understand the tiring mission of the two kids but that is all there is to it, there is no accompanying ache, no gargantuan cross to bear, no historical lesson or psychological burden to ground those minutes of walking deep into our souls. Alix's visuals are just that, visuals --- colorful post cards of unparalleled beauty that are easy on the eyes; no anthropological value, no interesting social milieu, zip, Nada.

I guess my complaint may seems off-tangent; this is after all a kid's tale and their burden is not as ravaging or soul-puncturing as those fractured characters in Heremias (2006), Ebolusyong ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino (Evolution of a Filipino Family, 2004), or Batang West Side (West Side Avenue, 2001). Yet that is Alix's burden to bear since his methodologies allude to grander things, and he delivers a story that is safe, accessible, and inconsequential. If Kadin has any message to bear (again, aside from the obvious morality which is less taxing to be learned from the dozens of picture books in your local book store), it is to cement Lav Diaz as a unique filmmaker. True, Diaz's films look like somebody forgot his camera in an abandoned road side, but there's always something there which is decades ahead and before the moment you set your eyes on his films.

******
This film is in competition for the 3rd Cinemalaya Film Festival.