I Do Bidoo Bidoo (2012)

Senin, 11 Maret 2013

I Do Bidoo Bidoo (2012)

I Do Bidoo Bidoo (Chris Martinez, 2012)

Chris Martinez’s I Do Bidoo Bidoo is a film whose acclaim is more a product of sentiment than cinematic merit. Its plot is characterized by clichés. Its charm is but a product of nostalgia and novelty. It contents itself in reaping the rewards of its sheer existence, unwilling to push the envelope and to explore areas outside acknowledged comfort zones. It is the kind of crowd-pleaser that is satisfied to exist for the current clamor of a crowd whose addiction to anything from the past has turned into something that resembles more a fad than anything else.

It is quite unfortunate, really. Martinez is perhaps one of the more consistent and reliable screenwriters actively working today. He not only has a gift for humor that transcends genders and social classes, he also has the knack for framing that amiable humor with concepts and storylines that are outrageously unique. However, I Do Bidoo Bidoo seems to be the black sheep in Martinez’s writing credits. It lacks the ingenuity and wit Martinez usually embellishes his screenplays with. Instead, Martinez insists on merely reworking the very tired storyline of young lovers separated by class and family into a musical that makes use of the popular songs of the Apo Hiking Society to hopefully inject color to a hopelessly colorless narrative.

The erstwhile feud between the Polotan and Fuentebella families started when Rock Polotan (Sam Concepcion) and Tracy Fuentebella (Tippy Dos Santos) suddenly decide to get married. In compliance with Philippine pre-wedding traditions, the Polotans, a humble family sustained by the meager royalties earned from the one hit song of patriarch Pol (Ogie Alcasid) and the income from the catering services of matriarch Rosie (Eugene Domingo), decide to pay the Fuentebellas, a wealthy family suffering from the deteriorating relationship between patriarch Nick (Gary Valenciano) and matriarch Elaine (Zsazsa Padilla). As expected, the visit goes awry, creating much tension between the two families, forcing the soon-to-be-wed lovers to do all they can to fight for their love.

Martinez, presumably inspired from the convolutedly plotted and melodramas with too-convenient endings that have plagued and continue to plague Philippine television and film and the forgettably light-hearted, sadly light-headed, and atrociously manic stagings and filming of Mamma Mia!, crafts a story that treads no new ground. Its insights to cross-class relationships are slight. Its examinations of such psyches are skin deep, overpowered by the need to be nothing more than a fleeting piece of entertainment. Fortunately, Martinez’s stylized humor is still in display, especially when he exaggerates the immense gaps between social classes (the Polotans are greeted into Fuentebella mansion by the pirouetting maids who respond in unison), homosexual longing (John Lapuz, in a cameo role as a karaoke host, tearfully expressing the possible future of Rock’s best friend and closeted admirer), and other well-observed realities.

The music, which is supposed to be the film’s strongest suit, is underwhelming. Martinez sets up the songs in a predictable fashion, preparing the scenes with dialogue or circumstances that would logically lead to the appropriate Apo Hiking Society hit. The songs used are those indisputable classics, songs that are incessantly played in cabs and jeepneys around Metro Manila and sung by frustrated singers and wasted lovers in karaoke bars. However, most of the songs were arranged to make them sound dated. They have become shockingly draped with excessive embellishments, exposing how the song’s success is really so intimately intertwined with the sincere and simple singing voices of the original singers. Dramatically belted out by the film’s cast of gifted singers, the songs lose a certain quality, perhaps the very personal meaning of the songs, the true reason why such music has lived longer than expected. The film has turned them into trite novelties.

I Do Bidoo Bidoo has a very specific charm. It is a charm so specific, it tends to go bland, to immediately wear off, to tarnish to those immune to it. To the rest, the film is sure to entertain, the same way a variety show would momentarily entertain before its pleasures are replaced by the next television spectacle. It lacks the elements that would make it linger for a little more time, as it tends to be purposely simplistic, harking to a need of a certain audience clamoring for blunt entertainment and a worldview where love is inexplicably the center of the universe. Sure, its optimism is truly a joy. But its lack of ambition is an annoyance.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Shake, Rattle and Roll 13 (2011)

Rabu, 28 Desember 2011

Shake, Rattle and Roll 13 (2011)

Shake, Rattle and Roll 13 (Richard Somes, Jerrold Tarog & Chris Martinez, 2011)

In Chris Martinez’s Rain, Rain, Go Away, the final episode of Shake, Rattle and Roll 13 which was touted by its producing studio as the last and the best of the horror franchise, water, more than the predictable ghosts that appear every now and then, is the main source of chills. Martinez, who is probably the cleverest writer and director actively working for the mainstream today, mines the collective paranoia of floods brought about by the horrific experiences during recent rain-related calamities the country barely survived from.

In the episode, reliable comedienne Eugene Domingo plays the wife of Jay Manalo’s businessman whose plastics business moved from its former flood-prone factory to a safer location. Brought about by experiences from the onslaught of typhoon Ondoy which caused her a miscarriage, among other traumas, the littlest instance of abnormal weather causes her to wilt in terror, forcing her to fear even the most unlikely and ordinary of objects.

Martinez’s episode is most likely to be the most relatable, considering that while it still deals with supernatural elements and relies heavily on the easy shocks of sudden apparitions of stock ghosts, it stems from a horror that is very close to home. Martinez has a knack for creating stories around very real experiences in the screenplays he writes like in Chito Roño’s Sukob (The Wedding Curse, 2006) where the sordid entanglements caused by marital infidelity is the actual curse. With Rain, Rain, Go Away, Martinez has crafted a predictable but effective ghost story that has greed and guilt in the midst of calamity as its heart.

Dealing also with greed, not by the upper-middle class businesspeople of Martinez’s morality tale but by people who are desperate for survival, is Richard Somes’ Tamawo. Somes’ episode, which opens the film with the type of otherworldly fantasy that usually dictates the franchise, is inspired from the Hiligaynon myth of elf-like creatures that inhabit strange places. Somes masterfully creates a rural landscape that serves the setting of both the coming of age of a young boy (a very expressive Bugoy Cariño) who struggles to win the affection of his stepfather (Zanjoe Marudo) while taking care of his blind mother (Maricar Reyes) and the horror tale of the titular creatures who would do anything to take back what the human occupants of their town have taken from them.

Irresistibly pretty at times, with sequences that are intelligently shot and directed, the episode shows a master craftsman at work. There are certain scenes, such as when the blind mother is being stalked in her house by the tamawo and Somes only reveals the monsters’ eerily white faces and menacing bodies partially, that emphasize the very raw horror of being absolutely vulnerable. And the episode is really about vulnerability, of the young boy who only wishes to belong to a family, of the mother whose lack of sight makes her more prone to danger, of the stepfather whose desire to provide for his family forces him to make questionable decisions, of the tamawo whose existence is being threatened by humanity’s interference.

Jerrold Tarog’s Parola (Lighthouse), the middle episode in this triptych, is also about vulnerability brought about by adolescence. Lucy (Kathryn Bernardo) and Shane (Louise de los Reyes) are best friends whose friendship is suddenly threatened when during their school trip to an abandoned lighthouse, two rival witches (Julia Clarete and Dimples Romana) decide to use their bodies to continue their feud. The plot, while admittedly convoluted, is thankfully just a frame for an otherwise atmospheric and moody exploration of teenage paranoia.

Tarog, through telling scenes that are remarkably observant of juvenile conflict, creates an atmosphere of subtle disturbance that is only enunciated by the premeditated acts of cruelty that the witches’ interference allowed the young girls to do. Tarog successfully turns what essentially is the normalcy of high school life into something seductively sinister, like a Freudian nightmare. Immature infatuations, corridor-set insults, chemistry experiments, menstruation, and friendship bracelets are fascinatingly turned into threatening objects and occurrences.

Sparingly paced and ominously quiet, Parola weaves the commercial intentions of the franchise’s shrewd producers with Tarog’s creative integrity and exquisite craftsmanship to create what possibly could be the entire franchise’s crowning achievement --- a truly harmonious mix of all the bad (the hackneyed storylines and stretches in logic) and all the good (the surprising invention some of the intrepid directors manage to sneak into their films) that Shake, Rattle and Roll is most known and loved for.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Chris Martinez: The Man Behind the Golden Septic Tank

Kamis, 11 Agustus 2011

Chris Martinez: The Man Behind the Golden Septic Tank

The Man Behind the Golden Septic Tank

If it’s from Seiko, it must be good. The tagline of the movie studio that has made for itself a reputation for churning out half-baked soft pornography with mouth-watering titles like Talong, Kangkong, and Itlog has turned into a joke. Then Bridal Shower (2004) came along. The film, written by newcomer Chris Martinez with mentor Armando Lao and directed by Jeffrey Jeturian, follows the exploits of three ad executives as they search for love in the big city. The film is ridiculously funny, but the humor, thankfully, is not grounded on slapstick or gimmick. Bridal Shower is funny because it exaggerates the realities of love and life in a metropolis that is getting more and more materialistic.



Martinez’s second film is Bikini Open (2005), also directed by Jeffrey Jeturian and also from Seiko Films. A mock-umentary that goes right in the heart of the then-popular bikini contests, the film mocks not only the men and women who parade their bodies, their life stories, and their motherhood statements for the entertainment of the sex-starved but also mass media who is quick to point fingers to the obvious wrongs of society without acknowledging its own viciousness...



(Read more on Chris Martinez's film career in the super-fantastic site on anything and everything that is Philippine cinema called Lagarista.)

Here Comes the Bride (2010)

Selasa, 18 Mei 2010

Here Comes the Bride (2010)

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Wedding

A Review of Chris Martinez's Here Comes the Bride

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

All it took was a solar eclipse and five-car collision atop the Magnetic Hill for the souls of five individuals --- the virginal bride-to-be (Angelica Panganiban), her histrionically litigious godmother (Eugene Domingo), her ringbearer’s destitute nanny (Tuesday Vargas), her husband-to-be’s amorous grandfather (Jaime Fabregas), and her gay beautician (John Lapuz) --- to switch bodies. With the bride-to-be’s soul transferring to the godmother’s body; the godmother’s soul transferring to the nanny’s body; the nanny’s soul transferring to the grandfather’s body; the grandfather’s soul transferring to the beautician’s body; and the beautician’s soul transferring to the bride-to-be’s body, the dream beach wedding turns into a hilarious riot, where long-dormant passions are awakened, sexual fantasies are fulfilled, economic alleviation is achieved, and a chance at love is obtained.

Let us get it out of the way. Chris Martinez’s Here Comes the Bride is top-notch entertainment. Martinez was able to come up with everything most recent Filipino mainstream comedies lack: that no-nonsense singular objective of making people laugh. From the getgo to the post-credit extra scene, the film never stopped to be overtly pedantic or moralistic, a problem that most Filipino comedies have since there always seems to be this need to use cinema as replacement for Sunday school. For example, Wenn Deramas’ Ang Tanging Ina (The True Mother, 2003), and its sequel and many offshoots, are always derailed by its insistence on teaching a lesson; even Joyce Bernal’s Kimmy Dora (2009), also written by Martinez, is stalled by its apologetic dénouement that went too long and too serious. Never mind the forced logic to explain the illogic, the negligible business about solar eclipses and souls, the history and science behind the soul-swap, as authoritatively explained by television trivia-master Kim Atienza. Here Comes the Bride is deliriously funny nonsense all the way and it thankfully works.

The film’s success is not entirely surprising. After all, Martinez is arguably one of the Philippines’ better screenwriters. His screenplays, from Bridal Shower (Jeffrey Jeturian, 2004), about three friends in search of love, to Caregiver (Chito Roño, 2008), about a mother who follows her husband to London in the hopes of earning enough to live comfortably, reflect his ability to articulate something as minute as the language to something as pertinent as the needs of the rapidly-changing Filipino society for mainstream appeal. 100 (2008), his directorial debut about a woman who is dying from cancer, is salvaged from being a run-of-the-mill melodrama by an abundance of relevant humor. Martinez understands the Filipino soul, that the very best way to tackle something as devastating as death is to treat it with levity, to make it familiar and therefore personal. That said, Martinez may very well be the most current of all actively working screenwriters, actively pursuing entertainment without being dumbed down by the demands of commercial accessibility.

Despite its astounding technical polish, Here Comes the Bride is fundamentally closer to Joey Gosiengfiao’s redeemed Temptation Island (1981), where a bunch of beauty queens and the men surrounding them are stranded in a deserted island, than the mechanically churned comedies Star Cinema has been producing the past recent years. Underneath the caricatures that Martinez connected by the conceit of the convenient soul-swap, underneath the blatant inanity of its carefully conceived proceedings, is a well-pronounced understanding that life, as it is, is unfair, that there are those who are born poor, those who live loveless, and those who inevitably grow old and inutile. In a twist of fate, cruel only to the bride-to-be who suddenly gets a first-hand experience of the inequity of living after a lifetime of being sheltered and protected, inabilities and deficiencies are cured, emphasizing in what essentially is a film created for no other reason than to be an escapist fantasy that the key to a happy life is as unrealistic and as incredible as swapping souls via rare natural phenomena.

Like Temptation Island whose gay pageant director becomes the unwilling sacrificial lamb simply because he presumably has the least to lose among the other loved and loving survivors, the most fully realized character in Here Comes the Bride is the love-starved gay beautician whose fortune of being transported to the body of the beautiful and sexy bride-to-be is the most dramatic out of the five. As expected, it is mostly played for laughs and Panganiban does a brilliant job in emulating the fabulous larger-than-life gestures of Lapuz. After all, the very idea of a gay man suddenly and surprisingly getting everything he ever wanted, from the body parts he can only have in his wildest dreams to the straight men who he can only love and lust for from a safe distance, is in itself a hoot. The hilarity of the absurd situation, at that scene where the bride-to-be in the body of her godmother insists that the gay beautician return her body, unravels into a well-pronounced statement of gay angst and sentiment as he emotionally shouts “Hindi ninyo maiintindihan dahil hindi kayo bakla! (You will never understand because you are not gay!). At that moment, the film, notwithstanding the fact that it never stopped being funny, reflected a current fundamental truth, something that not even a mainstream film as self-promotedly queer as Olivia Lamasan’s In My Life (2009) can have the guts to state as plainly and matter-of-factly as that.

The gay man becomes a girl. The loveless godmother feels how it is to be loved. The amorous yet incapacitated grandfather relives the passion and the romance of his distant youth. The poor nanny turns into a millionaire. The innocent bride-to-be wallows in the realities of life’s misfortune. Martinez fills the screen with realized desires at the expense of the bride-to-be, emphasizing the frailty of the human soul in the face of happiness. In the midst of the film’s invaluable wit and humor that frequently pumps in rhythm with the Latin beats of the apt lively music score, the film’s characters, ideally uncomplicated and stereotypical, are allowed to live their desires realized, concretizing in easy-to-understand cinematic terms the pleasures of escape, of living a fantasy even if it is only momentarily. I am very happy to say that Here Comes the Bride is as current and relevant as it is entertaining and hysterical.

(Cross-published on Twitch. Re-published in Philippine Free Press, 22 May 2010)

100 (2008)

Sabtu, 19 Juli 2008

100 (2008)

100 (Chris Martinez, 2008)

Joyce (Mylene Dizon), weeks before her death, confides to her best friend Ruby (Eugene Domingo) her greatest worry: "What if during the moment I die, I discover that there is nothing after?" Joyce's fear is legitimate. After all, the afterlife is a creation that reinforces humanity's need to exist eternally. After death, identities live on. It eases the difficulty of acknowledging that we'll eventually die, knowing that death is not the end. Ruby, dumbfounded by Joyce's sudden query into existentialism, arrives at and casually and humorously delivers a surprisingly plain yet logical answer: "Think of it this way. When you die and there's nothing after, you wouldn't know that since you're already dead. When you die and there is something after, then be happy. Treat it like a bonus." It's a lovely scene, one that reveals a weakness in Joyce's exterior of assuredness and resolve. Despite Joyce's firm acceptance that death is a mere few weeks away for her, she is still afraid of no longer existing, of being forever forgotten. Outside that scene, Joyce dauntlessly lives life as dictated by the post-its pasted on her bedroom wall.

Director Chris Martinez acknowledges that death is tragic. Joyce acknowledges that too. Thus, she plans her remaining weeks, making her death less painful for her and her loved ones. The casual treatment she gives death is not out of strength or integrity. She is undoubtedly flawed, calling her married lover (TJ Trinidad) at the instance of an amorous itch, or the long delay in her revealing her situation to her mother (Tessie Tomas). However, she knows the feeling of losing a loved one since her father also died of cancer a few years back. She knows how hard it is for her and her mother to move on, after such prolonged agony and a sudden, unexpected mourning.

Her casual treatment of her own death is not motivated by some unrealistic emotion or characteristic but by sheer selflessness. Her initial and least difficult tasks involve taking care of the trite logistics of her death: choosing and paying for her coffin and her wardrobe, even picking the songs that would be playing at her wake. More complicated are the tasks that do not rely on her solely: making sure that the last memories of her best friend with her are happy, making her mother accept her passing as quietly and less painful as possible, and reigniting the failed romance with her ex-boyfriend (Ryan Eigenmann). The film jumps from one task to another in a near-clockwork fashion, until all the post-its stuck on the wall are gone or are replaced. The beautiful thing about it is that Martinez infuses the narrative's mechanical approach with sensitivity and affection for the characters. There is no climax, just occasional crests of heightened emotions, of fear, sorrow, happiness, that are retained up to the end.

Martinez's 100 is not exactly about death or whatever comes after, but about life, or more specifically, about living life. In the film, Joyce's impending and expected death is a mere backdrop. This allows Martinez to play around with the conceit, infusing wit and comedy into the traditionally morose subject matter. There's much value added in the mundane: as when Joyce and Ruby reminisce on their school days in their old classroom, or when they visit Hong Kong and take pictures with Mickey Mouse, Buddha and the wax statue of Brad Pitt, or when Joyce downs gallons and gallons of ice cream, or when she engages a stranger to a passionate kiss. Knowing that the activities are done out of making most of her very limited life, there's a tinge of melancholy, of overt joy, of thrilling desperation to these moments. Martinez manages to harmonize a bevy of emotions into one genuinely amiable package, and for me, that's quite an achievement.

100 opens with Joyce journeying in the wilderness until she arrives at her destination, a serene lake in the middle of the crater of a volcano. It's a striking image, one that might be interpreted as Joyce's afterlife, a prelude to heaven. It's not. We never really see Joyce die and I don't think Martinez would allow her heroine, a symbol of life's preciousness no matter how short it is, to be seen succumbing in death's acknowledged tragedy. The peaceful lake is a metaphor, a poetic rendering of the film's most sublime moment which happens in the end. The sequence is drowned in silence. Joyce wakes up and walks towards her loft's living area. There, she sees the people she will leave behind laughing, interacting, in bliss. She doesn't interrupt and remains unseen. Instead, she reveals a comforted smile; she is sure she can die both in peace and leaving peace to the ones she loves. Death and the afterlife have become mere trivialities. She has lived life.