Palitan (2012)

Kamis, 06 Desember 2012

Palitan (2012)

Palitan (Ato Bautista, 2012)

English Translation: Exchange

Ato Bautista’s Palitan (Exchange) opens with a business transaction. Ramiro (Mon Confiado, who gives a performance that carries the film from start to finish), the shrewd owner of an electronics shop, is convincing a client to buy his surveillance cameras. The client, troubled by his wife’s brazen infidelity, wants to build proof of her cheating. Ramiro then coolly suggests another one of his wares, a pistol, declaring that the only way for a jealous husband is to kill the cause of jealousy. Ramiro is a convincing businessman. He has a distinct way with words, delivering them with the primary objective of making a sale and enjoying the profit. His client, given the freedom of choosing the surveillance camera or the gun, is hooked and ready to let go of his cash for the peace of mind he desires.

Throughout the film, Ramiro is in the process of bartering and bargaining, to convince Nestor (Alex Medina) to give him videos of his wife (Mara Lopez) showering in exchange for the erasure of his debts, or to woo the wife into having sex with him, and later on, loving him back. Nestor is pitiful, a miserable loser who works in Ramiro’s shop to supposedly pay off his debts that only keep increasing. Nestor’s wife, newly plucked from the province and wasting away in a rundown parlor doing pedicures of horny clients, is the ultimate prize for Ramiro. When Ramiro finally wins the wife, through a marvellous display of gab and cunning, he is rewarded with an indulgently long sex scene, enunciating the near-soulless quality of the newly formed relationship. In the end, he begs to be loved by the confused wife. There is still work to be done, a deal to be closed.

Bautista admittedly pegs Peque Gallaga’s Scorpio Nights (1985) as an inspiration for Palitan. He replicates the design of the film, setting his story within the cramped interiors of the electronics shop or Nestor’s unkempt apartment. Unfortunately, the setting of Palitan is unconvincing. Unlike the tenement in Scorpio Nights where the audience is able to physically map out the mechanics of the characters’ strange sexual affairs and establish the spaces that allow for the possibility of the connections, the setting of Palitan feel like convenient stages that only serve the purpose of approximating claustrophobia. While Gallaga painfully recreates a heightened reality, creating a festering and heat-infested environment where it becomes entirely logical for the characters to be trapped in their sexual longings, Bautista seems satisfied with merely the idea of suffocation, utilizing the most minimum of production design to convey the illusion. Palitan feels too clinical and smart, too removed from the rest of the world. The sweat seems manufactured. The violence becomes only a narrative function. The sex becomes too long and repetitive.

Fortunately, Bautista modifies something new to Gallaga’s masterpiece. He intelligently maneuvers the politics of Scorpio Nights, appropriating the role of the voyeur not to the helpless and powerless but to the moneyed and prone to be abusive. While Gallaga’s desperate voyeur, a struggling student renting the apartment directly above the home of his target, steals his sexual thrills, Bautista’s, the slickly abusive Ramiro, buys his. Despite the variation, the differently situated voyeurs become addicted to the women of their fantasies to the point of falling in love, eventually leading to tragic consequences.

Palitan could be seen as exploitative, especially with its overindulgent bed scenes that seem to overpower what essentially is a thin story. However, the exploitation is an overt part of the milieu Bautista attempts to explore. It is a milieu where everything is traded, judged with whatever commercial value they have. In the absence of love and money, even our souls have a tag price.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Blackout (2007)

Kamis, 14 Juni 2007

Blackout (2007)

Blackout (Ato Bautista, 2007)

Twenty-somthing year old Ato Bautista follows-up his Sa Aking Pagkagising Mula Sa Kamulatan (My Awakening From Consciousness, 2005) with something less sprawling and more focused. Blackout reinforces the fact that Bautista might be one of the most interesting young directors to have come out of the recent cinematic baby boom in the Philippines. On the strength of his first film (flawed but distinctly resonating in its harsh grittiness), Bautista was adopted by Unitel who provided him with funds and technical help to realize his sophomore feature.

Blackout concerns Gil (Robin Padilla), an alcoholic who frequently blacks-out due to a combination of overdrinking and emotional stress. Left by his wife, Gil takes care of his son Nino (John Michael Reyes). The film begins with Gil waking up in his car. He notices his car's backlights broken with traces of blood all over. Bautista then cuts to Gil again waking up, but this time inside his small apartment's bathroom --- we see traces of vomit (probably from an entire night's worth of drinking) inside the toilet. Nino wakes his father and the latter starts religiously doing the daily routine of preparing his kid for school.

Bautista trusts his audience enough to not reveal everything. In fact, Bautista plays his audience. He purposely lets us into the world of Gil which is uncomfortably unfamiliar. Images burst in and out; hazy memories are shown with a warning that they can't exactly be trusted; even reality should be taken with a dash of caution. On top of that, Bautista populates his film with characters who don't exactly exist to forward the narrative, but merely to contribute to the atmosphere of claustrophobia, guilt and dread --- a tenant walks with a suspicious limp and dons tattoos of wide-opened eyes; Belen, Gil's next door neighbor (Iza Calzado) keeps her daughter, who is prone to car accidents, under close discomforting watch.

When Gil does end up killing the young girl by accident, he becomes torn with guilt, suspicion, and confusion. Momentary rays of hope are provided --- Gil ends up calling his wife and offering promises of change and reconciliation, and starts boiling water for Nino's morning baths and preparing fresh socks for school. However, Bautista merely teases you to that possibility of a happy ending; that the crime by negligence has been successfully covered up and is in fact that impetus for Gil to change. Weirder things start happening. The confusion, the little bits and pieces of information offered, the astounding and effective atmosphere created --- all these intertwine to render a conclusion that despite its being completely revelatory, is satisfactory.

Interestingly, Bautista's two feature films are very similar with each other with regards to its overall theme. There's a sense that Bautista's films presents a world that is treacherous and completely unsafe. In Sa Aking Pagkagising Mula Sa Kamulatan, society breeds angst and violence and all the film's intertwining stories end up with some sort of betrayal, culminating in a final act that ultimately surprises.

In Blackout, the treachery is even more intimate; it arises from the self, from the people you trust, from concepts of reality and memory. Such treachery culminates in an ending that resonates with overt remorse. The film's postscript details a conclusion that is somewhat hopeful, somewhat manages to alleviate the bitter taste of tragedy. However, knowing Bautista, there's more than meets the eye and in Gil's case, certainty is practically impossible.