Sana Dati (2013)

Selasa, 01 Oktober 2013

Sana Dati (2013)

Sana Dati (Jerrold Tarog, 2013)

English Title: If Only

Jerrold Tarog has been exposing the hard truths behind the Philippines’ greatest preoccupations, politics and family. Through characters whose jobs are related to cameras, Tarog destroys myths that have misled Filipinos into a distorted sense of comfort. In Confessional (2007), a documentary filmmaker accidentally stumbles upon a corrupt mayor. The mayor then confesses all his sins on video, lecturing the filmmaker of the fallacy of the Philippines so-called nationhood. In Mangatyanan (The Blood Trail, 2009), an awarded photographer struggles with the nagging influence of her father, who is also an esteemed photographer. In her attempt to take pictures of a rare ritual of a dying tribe, she learns to accept the sins her father has committed against her which effectively ripped their family apart.

Tarog caps his Camera Trilogy with Sana Dati (If Only). Love, probably the most potent diversion for Filipinos, is Tarog’s target. With an appetite for movies that extol the triumph of love and songs that glorify the sacrifices for true love, Filipinos have found the perfect escape for their everyday troubles. Amidst enduring concerns about the state of the nation and the needs of the family, love, corny as it sounds, will keep us alive. However, the love that is celebrated by Filipinos is one that has been defined by winners, by those who have found their happy endings, by those who have lived or died intoxicated by romance’s distinct pleasures. Love, in the form that most the nation appreciates it, is nothing more than a hallucinogenic drug.

The cameraman in Sana Dati is Dennis (Paulo Avelino), a novice wedding videographer serendipitously hired to cover the wedding of Andrea (Lovi Poe), the last love of his older brother Andrew (Benjamin Alves). Andrea wed Robert (TJ Trinidad), a failed politician-turned-businessman she met during an election campaign. Through Andrea, Dennis finally understands the reason behind his brother’s sudden decision to leave their family. Through Dennis, Andrea discovers another way to relive the perfect love that was abruptly terminated by fate’s cruelty.

Love has always been defined by winners. The greatest lovers are those who lived content with it or died inspired by it. Sana Dati is not a film about winners. It is not about the fictional poet, named after Spanish director Julio Medem, who wrote the most beautiful verses about the feeling of being in love prior to dying. It is not about Andrew, who like fictional Medem, died with a heart overflowing with love. The heart of Sana Dati lies with the losers, the ones we tend to forget when the most intense statements about love have already been declared. It is about Andrea, whose life goes on despite the tragedy of her one true love perishing. It is about Dennis, who is about to marry a girl who does not love him. It is about Andrew, who stirs trouble in somebody else’s romantic affairs.

Sana Dati, on its surface, is a very affecting romance. Tarog, who not only directed but also wrote, edited, and scored the film, is obviously in control. Although seemingly unburdened by any need to be relevant, Tarog nevertheless experiments with structure, not for the sake of needlessly complicating his story but to inject into the film a certain rhythm that effortlessly enunciates emotions.

Opening with an ingenious proposal by Andrew to Andrea, the film immediately cuts to the day of a wedding. Dennis is introduced, carrying into the hotel various camera equipment he barely knows how to use. He finally arrives in Andrea’s room, where he proceeds to interview her, throwing questions about her love for Robert. Andrea directly answers the questions, her eyes avoiding the camera. Dennis does the same for Robert. Robert answers the questions, with his eyes directly upon the camera. Tarog peppers Sana Dati with these details that invite interpretation.

The gestures of his characters are never empty. A cigarette butt absentmindedly thrown by Dennis from the hotel’s window lands on Robert’s collar. Andrea’s wedding vows is swept by the wind, creating a shadow for Robert to be signalled of her presence in the rooftop. Fate, the primary cause for lovers to have their happy endings in many unforgettable romances, is also an active participant here. The only difference is that in Sana Dati, fate intervenes for sobriety from what essentially is an unrealistic perspective on love.

Sana Dati ends in consolation. There are no grand tragedies, except perhaps the tragedy of having to spend a lifetime with someone you still have to learn to love. There are no dignified exclamations about the power of love, except perhaps the proclamation that moving on and settling for are also valid love stories. Tarog gently shatters the myth of love with subtle sentiment. With his completed trilogy, he sends us back to Earth, armed not with illusions and aphrodisiacs but with grounding realities, as can only be seen and recorded through the unbiased lens of a camera.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Quick Change (2013)

Selasa, 13 Agustus 2013

Quick Change (2013)

Quick Change (Eduardo Roy, Jr., 2013)

Dorina (Mimi Juareza) is a retired entertainer who now plies the streets offering her cheap, quick cosmetic fixes to other transgendered men. Lacking any medical experience, she is nonetheless "doc" to her grateful patients, whose faces are sculpted to look like the glittering faces of popular local celebrities. Her patients then don extravagant and colorful costumes, sashaying on makeshift stages, pretending to be beauty queens with their plastered smiles and generic retorts. At night, Dorina satisfies her boyfriend (Junjun Quintana), a performer in a pageant show that caters to foreign tourists. She then starts to satisfy herself discretely lest she incur the wrath of a boyfriend who prefers not to be reminded of her persisting masculinity.

Eduardo Roy, Jr.'s Quick Change is all about facades. It obsessively dissects the culture of transsexual women, their infatuation with youth and beauty. Seemingly aimless in its meanderings in between the redundant struggles of its fading protagonist, the film attempts to sensitively shed light on the ills of a specific repressed subculture, those that have been masked excessively with thick make-up and fake collagen.

Roy's challenge is obviously enormous. He has chosen to tackle subjects that have often been marginalized or exoticized. Roy attempts to dodge the traps, freeing himself from focusing on the usual themes of discrimination which gives him the opportunity to observe his subjects' conflicts in identity, how they struggle in between being male and female, being religious and morally compromised.

Although Roy would sometimes indulges in the humor that has been stereotyped as part and parcel of what makes transsexuals so irresistible to Philippine popular media, he would nevertheless depict them not as oppressed individuals, but as individuals who have found a certain niche that they have become comfortable to live in. Roy mostly succeeds in his endeavors, betrayed only by the need to frame his grand intentions within a narrative that only attempts a certain degree of subtlety to its obvious didactics.

Roy missteps when, midway, he shifts his focus from his transsexual muses to the actual crime of conducting clandestine cosmetic operations. Quick Change deflates into something quasi-noir, propelled mostly by Roy's compelling depictions of the horrors of makeshift cosmetic surgery than by its advocacy or its narrative force. Thankfully, the film is consistently visually fascinating, with Roy and cinematographer Dan Villegas creating morbid and ominous images out of the plain and banal.

Much of the film's perceptive style is reminiscent of Bahay Bata (Baby Factory, 2011), Roy's impressive debut about several mothers overcoming the inhumanity of giving birth in a crowded government-run maternity hospital. As in Bahay Bata, Roy, for the most part, fashions himself as a passive observer of Dorina, following her as she flies from one cheap hotel room to another to conduct her dubious cosmetic operations. He then exposes Dorina's cornered morality, constantly being splintered by both an economic necessity and her community's insistence on being defined in terms of outward appearances more than anything else. 

Avoiding labeling Dorina in terms of good or bad, black or white, Roy conceives a society for Dorina where morality has been rendered obsolete by its impracticality. After all, in a world where consumerism is god and those who are incapable of paying make do with what they have, morality can never pay for food or more prominent cheekbones.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Transit (2013)

Rabu, 07 Agustus 2013

Transit (2013)

Transit (Hannah Espia, 2013)

Hannah Espia’s Transit deals with the struggles of an extended Filipino family living and working in Tel Aviv after the Israeli government passed a law forcing children of overseas workers who are below five years old to be deported back to their homelands.

Joshua (Marc Justine Alvarez), who has lived all his life in Israel, is a few months shy of his fifth birthday. Moises (Ping Medina), Joshua’s father, aware of the risk of his son being deported if caught, keeps Joshua indoors. Janet (Irma Adlawan), Moises’ sister, takes care of Joshua while Moises is out to work as a caretaker for a wealthy retiree. She also has to manage Yael (Jasmine Curtis-Smith), her teenage daughter from an Israeli former flame who now has to grapple with neither being Filipino nor Israeli. Tina (Mercedes Cabral), freshly plucked from the Philippines and assisted by Janet to her new life as an overseas worker, witnesses a family that is in fear of being suddenly uprooted from a foreign land that they have decided to call their home.

Transit is a marvel of restraint and control. Embellished sparingly with visuals that are never too extravagant, too opulent to distract, the film is painted with delicate colors, which complements the fragile situations the characters move in.

Opening with an image of Joshua in an airport, his small frame backdropped against giants of airplanes landing from and departing to all corners of the globe, the film seems to mediate expectations, revealing the modesty of its story against a world of bigger problems. In truth, the story that Espia explores is one that seems too removed, too remote to be of moment. However, what Espia manages to do is tremendous. By dissecting the issues arising from a very specific troubled group, she navigates the blurring of cultural and national identities of individuals who are caught trapped between two countries.

The word diaspora was first used in the Bible to refer to the exile of Jews from their homeland by invading conquerors. Espia’s choice to tackle the Filipino diaspora in the land that first experienced renders some poetic effect, enunciating not the irony of the situation but the repetitions that seem to be the fate of all merging cultures. Transit is told from the various perspectives of its many characters, often repeating certain scenes to reveal facets that can only be depicted if seen through the eyes of the various participants. More than just a display of creative storytelling, the technique that Espia utilizes enunciates the necessity of understanding the contrasting motivations and interests, amplifying the emotional investment that pays off in the film’s subtle but moving conclusion.

The differences between the Filipinos and the country they adopt as their own but barely tolerates them are tremendous. Espia covers the extent of the difference, by chronicling a Philippines that seems to dissipate even more every year. Her scope is immense but she laudably concentrates on very palpable and very specific frustrations, heartaches, and triumphs, emotions that are shared by all of humanity.

Tina carries her homeland inside a worn luggage. She offers trinkets from home, packets of sour soup to remind her hosts of the Philippines they have not visited in decades. Janet and Moises speak both Filipino and Hebrew. They insist on their being Filipinos, forcing that dated idea of nationality to their children. Their children however reject the idea with reason. They do not speak Filipino, and have never been to the Philippines. Their only linkage to their parents’ homeland consists of bedtime stories repeatedly told to soothe their curiosity.

Espia paints a scenario where the characters are all confused, all tired from futilely maintaining illusions from a faraway motherland or struggling between two clashing alliances. Transit is a document of fractured identities, an essay that declares the very familiar concepts of citizenship and nationality as shallow facades that are maintained by laws and enforced by borders.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Babagwa (2013)

Jumat, 02 Agustus 2013

Babagwa (2013)

Babagwa (Jason Paul Laxamana, 2013)

English Title: The Spider's Lair

Jason Paul Laxamana's Babagwa (The Spider's Lair), an exploration of the proliferation of deceit in a rapidly virtualizing world, centers on Greg (Alex Medina), who fronts himself online as Bam Bonifacio (Kiko Matos), an affluent and handsome model whose sexual orientation depends on the gender of the target victim. The ruse is the brainchild of Marney (Joey Paras), who gets a sizable portion of the money earned from the swindle. Like all of his previous victims, Daisy (Alma Concepcion), a wealthy and philanthropic middle-aged woman, easily falls for Greg's dashing alter-ego. However, caught in a web of domestic drama, a shallow and stunted romance with his girlfriend (Chanel Latorre), and a slew of unsatisfying paychecks from his illicit gigs, he suddenly finds himself falling for Daisy.

Babagwa is ingenious. Laxamana creates a believable world where fantasy and reality are immediately interchangeable. Set in Laxamana's native Pampanga, the film enunciates the nagging pains of living indolent lives. His characters are scoundrels, products of their own doing and a society that forces them to scrape the very bottom of barrels to experience a semblance of a decent life. Marney needs to uproot his parents from a house that is being threatened to be demolished by the local government. On the other hand, Greg, Marney's former talent who has allowed himself to fade alongside his dreams of fame and glory, has only his afternoon trysts with his girlfriend to remind him of what he has lost. To his annoyance, his girlfriend seems to be more interested in a vacation he cannot provide than stroking his fragile ego. Presumably, their victims certainly live similarly pathetic lives.

Laxamana conceives the world with Darwinian precepts, a bazaar where love is peddled to the loveless, and thieves and cheaters are abound. Facebook has made the marketplace smaller and has made it even more difficult to detect fact from fiction. It has allowed for the commodification of virtual lives, those products of wants and necessities multiplied exponentially by a specific moment's mood. In one's playful mind, depending on one's gullibility and specific need, a swindler sitting alone in a dark and unkempt room is a sensitive prince lying in an expensive condo unit and in need of part-time passion. Trust is a too expensive luxury if the need is desperate.

Laxamana clearly understands the foolishness of it all. Babagwa is after all still a comedy of errors, one whose humor is reliant on the very foolishness of humanity to fall for the obviously illogic all in the name of love, or lust. He doesn't take his observant musings too seriously, and instead concentrates on balancing the tension with moments of delightful levity. His actors share the same responsibility, peppering their convincing performances with playfulness. Babagwa is refreshingly balanced, its heavy themes never outweighing the need to still entertain.

It is therefore unfortunate that Laxamana chooses to give up the balancing act in favor of a neat resolution. The film's parting shot suggests Greg's comeuppance. The politics itself of such comeuppance seems questionable and misshapen. Moreover, it is a misstep that forces Babagwa to be a mere cautionary tale on the dangers of mixing virtual lives and real longing. For sure, the ending perfectly wraps Laxamana's brilliantly conceived concept, but it only does so for the purpose of completing a narrative, to satisfy the demands of tradition. In the end, Laxamana's sophomore feature feels more like an exquisitely filmed urban legend, an urban legend that has been whispered around by those unfortunate enough to be enthralled by the internet's promises of quick love only to be fooled in the end.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Rekorder (2013)

Rabu, 31 Juli 2013

Rekorder (2013)

Rekorder (Mikhail Red, 2013)

Mikhail Red's Rekorder is the story of Maven (Ronnie Quizon), a tragic drifter who with his old camcorder records movies currently showing in theaters to sell the footage to pirates. The parting image shows Ronnie in the movie theater without his camcorder in hand. For the first time, he isn't asleep while the movie is playing. He is just there, sitting alone and motionless, completely engrossed by the movie he is watching. As it turns out, the movie is not the commercial features he has been recording throughout the years for the enterprising pirates, but security camera footage of a robbery that culminates in violence.

The footage plays a key role in the narrative, explaining how Maven turned into the unsettled character that he is now. Yet, viewed against Red's stubborn indulgence in depicting the overextended role of sensational acts caught on video, the image of Maven sitting in a theater, completely enthralled by a video of real and actual violence instills an observation of a society that has become so indifferent to evil that it appreciates as entertainment the recorded sight of it.

Rekorder seems to be a reiteration of themes already explored by Red's father, Raymond, whose films like Kamera Obskura (2012), Himpapawid (Manila Skies, 2009), and Anino (Shadows, 2000) feature a singular character who awakens to the ills of society. The younger Red does not hide his influences, displaying prominently the senior Red's Manila Skies as the movie Maven attempts to record in the theater. Fortunately, the younger Red, unburdened by memories of a glorious era where film was king, is less hesitant to experiment with the digital medium, exploring the varying textures and impulses of high definition video and other formats.

Maven is in fact a fallen filmmaker who has resorted to illicitly recording these movies to earn a living. He talks languidly, walks passively, and relates to other people with more than just a hint of disconnect. It almost seems that he does not belong in the same time and space as the rest of the world. He finds sanctuary only at night when he is at home, being comforted by grainy videos of his wife and daughter; relics of a foregone happier life. When he becomes an unwilling witness to a crime by following a compulsion to capture a violent rumble with his camcorder, his drab routine is disturbed, forcing him to finally participate in the same society that has betrayed him, the same society that grows noisier whenever a recorded video goes viral for the simple reason of brazen sensationalism.

The proliferation of media into the routine lives of a consistently bored and hungry populace, jolted into a mad rush by rapid advancements of technology the past few years, has quickly changed moral perceptions. What would have caused reactions of shock and disgust decades ago is now commonplace and welcomed with undivided attention. With the public's conscience being consistently pounded by random acts of depravity and violence that are captured and spread by anonymous recorders for various reasons, society has been rendered utterly callous to wrongdoings of whatever extent. Guilt has been rendered obsolete. It has been replaced by pleasure and escapism, by-products of those depraved acts whose sensationalism has turned them into convenient pieces of entertainment.

Maven, in all his exaggerated expressions of self-inflicted alienation, represents the extent of such modern apathy. It is only when the noise has become too close and near for peace and comfort that he acts, breaking down into a frenzy of self-preservation. Rekorder, even with all its fundamental excesses and obvious faults, succeeds in painting an alarming portrait of a man hesitantly living in a world that is much like ours, a world that gladly suffocates on its own filthy crap, perpetuated by our little recording gadgets for all eternity.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Debosyon (2013)

Selasa, 30 Juli 2013

Debosyon (2013)

Debosyon (Alvin Yapan, 2013)

English Title: Devotion

Alvin Yapan’s films have always been influenced by his being both a literature professor and a writer of short stories. They are never empty vessels of creatively plotted stories that are heavily embellished by cinematic techniques and visuals. His films’ charm relies heavily on the fact that the stories are never just stories. They are intelligent observations on gender politics, as in Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa (Dance of Two Left Feet, 2011), where a gay love story houses feminist intentions, or in Gayuma (Pilgrim Lovers, 2010), a romance whose two halves articulate love and longing from the perspectives of both genders, and on economic history and Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe (The Rapture of Fe, 2009), a supernatural tale where the various inadequacies of the Philippines’ economic growth are represented by various inadequate male characters.

Debosyon (Devotion) is Yapan’s visually sumptuous observation on cultural and religious phenomena. In the film, he frames his explorations within the strangest of romance, one between a young man and a creature of mythology. Mando (Paulo Avelino) is a fervent devotee of the Lady of Penafrancia, a wooden Marian statue that is famed for the miracles it grants to its devotees. While searching the forest for orchids, he chances upon a solitary flower on top of a tree. He falls while attempting to get the flower. He wakes up to Salome (Mara Lopez), a mysterious woman who lives alone inside a hut in the middle of the forest, who nurses him back to health. They fall in love, only to be hindered by Salome’s revelation, one that shakes Mando’s religious devotion to its core.

Yapan tells the story with admirable patience, allowing his story to really take root in the landscape that features very heavily in his elegant visuals. The forest where Mando meets Salome is a character itself. Its trees bleed when axed. Deep in its heart is a pond pristine enough to wash the gravest of doubts. From its hills, one can see the perfect but solitary Mayon volcano, an image of absolute beauty and loneliness amidst plains and farmlands. Yapan understands the topography of Bicol. His narrative makes use of it in a way that it is intertwined with the romance and the mysticism. The beauty of the film is not intended to simply be pleasurable to tired eyes. It is meant to enamour, to give a semblance of the irresistible allure of the land. It is meant to make one fall desperately in love.

From the geography comes the native songs, the lyrics of which speak of loving desperation or pained longing. Mando sings one of the love songs Salome learns from a previous love as an act of courtship. Struggling to learn the song with only a guitar at hand and Salome’s memory for guidance, the song may very well be an expression of devotion, a pleasant tribute from a mortal to a woman whose beauty is venerated. At another point, Mando is warned by roving rebels of the forest witch that eats the souls of the men who are beholden by her charms. He desperately races to find Salome, presumably to see if the rebels’ warnings are true. In the background, another song is heard, lamenting of the hurts one bears for love. Yapan intelligently places the various songs in the vital points of courtship, directing the viewer to understand and digest the familiar lyrics along and melody within very specific contexts ranging from absolute adoration to enduring doubt.

More than just a love story, Debosyon seems to be an ode to Yapan’s native Bicol. It dissects a psyche that has been cultivated by a distinct landscape and the history that has taken place in it. Its mythologies, its songs, its undying devotion to the image of the Penafrancia idol, are to Yapan’s mind, products of a love affair between its people and the mystical land they live in. Religion hardly matters in the film. It is simply not its point, but just a starting to point to uncover a cultural feature. Yapan seems to be more interested in the psyche that resulted in the religiosity that is as intense and involving as romantic passion. Debosyon is profound allegory, a story that puts in a clear perspective a culture of devotion that is more rooted in a people’s pre-colonial conscience than the actual charms of Catholicism.

Yapan ends Debosyon with a summation of both the love story and the allegory. The lovers make passionate love, Mando heavily caressing the serpentine figure of his unlikely partner. People express their love to the Marian image, their little candlelit boats floating along the banks of a serpentine river. Despite the differences, the two images sit comfortably alongside each other. The country’s unique Catholic practices are but reiterations of a cultural devotion that has been shaped by the forests, the mountains, the rivers. “I saw your eyes in the eyes of the Virgin of Penafrancia,” whispers Mando when asked by Salome about his desire that seems defiant of reason and logic. In a few words, Yapan commits the impossible and marries religious fervor with the most primal of human urges.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Mga Mumunting Lihim (2012)

Jumat, 17 Agustus 2012

Mga Mumunting Lihim (2012)

Those Glaring Inconsistencies in Jose Javier Reyes' Mga Mumunting Lihim (Those Little Secrets)

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Tragedy is the inspiration for Jose Javier Reyes’ Mga Mumunting Lihim (Those Little Secrets). A death of a dear friend, whose wake and eulogy revealed to Reyes certain circumstances in their friendship he may have overlooked, would urge Reyes to craft a story out of newly discovered questions and insecurities pertaining to long-term platonic relationships. The most interesting thing about Reyes’ story is that it is more reliant on witty humor than weepy dramatics, suggesting that Reyes is more fascinated in the comedic urges of social humans than he is with teary narrative contrivances. That suggestion, as it turns out, never ripens into reality.

The plot is driven primarily by the estrogen-powered histrionics of a bunch of middle-class friends who’ve gone through a lot only to have their friendship dissolved by a devious plan of the deceased to leak well-kept secrets into the consciousness of her still-living long-time pals. It starts with ad executive Carla (Iza Calzado), poised, eloquent and all too ready to show-off her mannered intellect, who surprisingly did not get the honor of giving the eulogy for her best friend and cancer victim Mariel (Judy Ann Santos). That honor went to Sandra (Agot Isidro), the crew’s infamous gold digger whose sudden rise in status saw a decline in her reputation among her very subtle friends.

However, Mariel bequeathed to Carla her private journals, which at first revealed innocuous details about her childhood insecurities. However, the more she reads through the entries, the more she discovers how little she knows about her friends and how much has been hidden from her. As she relates these new found bits of information to Sandra and Olive (Janice de Belen), she starts to weigh whether the truth is worth the eventual deterioration of their bond with each other.

Reyes takes full advantage of the opportunity to direct a film without the shackles paid for by a commercial studio. True enough, Mga Mumumunting Lihim is a confusing parade of styles. At one point, he indulges in close-ups, parading the immaculate beauty of the faces he has assembled for his film. Then, he attempts to adopt a more freewheeling aesthetic style, with the camera wafting around, capturing whatever action or dialogue. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the flipflopping between gloss and grit, except that it is fashionably free. The film’s editing is more infuriating than functional, divulging the inconsistencies with outrageous shifts in plotting instead of conveniently hiding them with brisk and clean cuts.

Reyes is not let down by his actresses, who in varying degrees give satisfyingly assured performances. Sadly, the trite portrayals of the male cast become more apparent, further exposing the film’s frustratingly rough edges.

It seems that Reyes cannot rid himself of the conventional and formulaic filmmaking which became his bread and butter for decades, remaining beholden to the melodramatic artifices in storytelling of the so-called mainstream which instantaneously tug the heartstrings of the unsuspecting audience. Mga Mumunting Lihim is more than ready to abandon the zesty irreverence the film seamlessly developed for an unsatisfying conclusion that is bludgeoned to death by conventional good taste and safe sentimentality. More than the confusing aesthetics or the very wide gap between the performances of the leads and the support, the film’s sudden movement towards sap and predictability is its most glaring undoing.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Mga Dayo (2012)

Kamis, 02 Agustus 2012

Mga Dayo (2012)

A Quiet Diaspora in Julius Sotamayor Cena's Mga Dayo (Resident Aliens)

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Julius Sotomayor Cena’s Mga Dayo (Resident Aliens) examines the life of three Filipinos living with various statuses in Guam. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the film is that it situates its three stories involving the Philippine diaspora in Guam. Guam is a tiny island that is closer to the Philippines than it is to the United States. In fact, the history of the island is deeply intertwined with that of the Philippines. Filipinos comprise one fourth of the population of the island. Although English is widely spoken, the Filipinos living there converse among themselves using their native languages. The culture and location of the island is conducive to Filipinos seeking a better future. It has almost all of the benefits of America like the dollars, the abundance of employment, and the predictable living conditions, but with less of the cultural displacement.

The America of Cena’s film is therefore oddly familiar, in a sense that the already stereotypical issues of immigration, whether it is the quiet or more pronounced manifestations of racial discomfort or the sudden absence of cultural integrity in a setting that feels so foreign, are avoided. Instead, the characters cope up with carious and issues, dilemmas involving the particular processes and setups that allow or disallow certain freedoms that dictate identity, employment, and stability. Cena, without insisting on the details, creates drama out of these processes, out of the much-wanted acquisition of the titular political status and the economic stability that comes along with it.

Alex (Sue Prado) has just been laid off from work and is now due to go home because of the expiration of her working visa. To prevent her deportation, she hesitantly agrees to marry her best friend. Ella (Olga Natividad), a supervisor in a local hotel, has been living in the island for several years already. Through her determination, she was able to raise a family and bring her 88-year old mother to Guam to live with her. However, her mother has fallen ill and needs fly back to the Philippines to recuperate. She then struggles to amass enough money to cover her mother’s trip home and back. Miriam (Janela Buhain), a journalist who was also recently laid off, spends her day carousing with her friends, flirting with several men, and drowning her sorrows and insecurities with alcohol. She eventually ends her day with a bittersweet surprise from her husband.

The conflicts are very subtly played. They are barely there, manifesting only in telling trickles and occasional bursts, in moments where feelings and issues that are repressed by the routine comforts provided by the island have to be let out. That is the beauty of the film. Almost nothing happens. It simply breezes along, allowing the piled up seemingly inconsequential events of the day to erupt into an emotional climax.

The problems of diaspora Cena is interested in are more personal. It is less about the social malaise that migration provokes and more about the despair and frustration of those composing the diaspora. In the end, Guam will not stop because of the problems of a certain demographic. It will chugs along, whether or not these residents chug along with it. The hotels will fill up, its transient residents unaware of what ails the dutiful cleaners that are but phantoms in their presence. The city light up to prepare for the night. Behind closed doors, the displaced can only cry, away from the eyes and ears of those who are better off being born privileged within man-made borders.

(Cross-published in Twitch and ABS-CBNnews.)

Aparisyon (2012)

Rabu, 01 Agustus 2012

Aparisyon (2012)

The Sins of Silence in Vincent Sandoval's Aparisyon (Apparition)

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Prior to Marcos’ declaration of Martial Law, the country was in complete disarray. The regime, dictated by a culture of corruption and violence, would have students and other activists disappear, only to be discovered as victims of torture or worse, as dispatched bodies. However, in the Adorasyon convent, nestled deep within the forests of Rizal, news of these abuses are only heard from the occasional visits of family members or smuggled newspapers and transistor radios.

Kept away and protected from the harshness and temptations of the outside world by their dutiful mother superior (Fides Cuyugan-Asesnsio), the nuns enjoy the simple pleasures of a life lead by the daily routine of work and prayer. One night, newcomer Lourdes (Jodi Sta. Maria) gets raped by bandits on her way home with other external nun, Remy (Mylene Dizon), who makes use of the time outside the convent to join activists’ meetings in town.

Vincent Sandoval, in Aparisyon (Apparition), tackles both sin and guilt in a setting that is supposed to be immune from them. The plot he conceives is simple and succinct, concerning a tragedy that would cause the secluded nuns to suffer contrition in the midst of their supposedly immaculate faith. Despite the sparseness of the narrative, Sandoval manages to examine the various sins that manifested because of the single violent act, purposely pitting the gravity of the sin’s various proponents with the perdition they respectively seek.

Remy, for example, runs for her life while the bandits succeed in capturing Lourdes. On top of that, she introduced Lourdes to the activists’ meetings which eventually led to their being unable to return to the convent before dark. Perdition for her is through Lourdes’ forgiveness. In one extremely effective scene, Sandoval quietly captures Lourdes slapping Remy, pouring whatever anger she has for both Remy’s carelessness and abandonment. Remy, aware of the extent of her sin, forces Lourdes to slap her more. The anger finally gives way to forgiveness, and the two nuns exchange a wordless but tearful embrace.

The other nuns’ trespasses are more complicated. Their acts for redemption are more desperate. As it turns out, Sandoval’s story is more complicated. The details he weaved into the plot give way to an examination of sin and guilt that exist within a grey area. There are sins of omission, of the mind. There are also sins shared by a community. Sandoval sprinkles his film with sinners suffering not from obvious guilt but questions whether decisions made for the supposed safety of all have made them co-perpetrators to a perpetually continuing wrong. Sandoval also maps the contagious quality of violence, how that one random act has caused an epidemic of wrongs. Sandoval breaks the myth by raising the humanity of those who exhibit divinity in our most imperfect world.

Fortunately, Sandoval does not gravitate mainly towards the cerebral aspect of his thesis. He adeptly communicates the consuming anguish of having fallen from grace. Sta. Maria, Dizon, and Raquel Villavicencio, who plays Sr. Vera, the mother superior’s assistant, aptly inhabit their respective roles. Cuyugan-Asensio however is particularly impressive. She portrays the sudden mastermind of the film’s biggest sin of omission with masterful clarity and expert care. In one scene, she retreats with impassioned shame when an elderly nun (Rustica Carpio) who has lost all memory mistakes her for the devil. Yet she never appears to be wholly deserving of the despair. She comes off as a hapless and pitiful victim, stripped of the pride and stature of morality her position and responsibility initially provided her.

Jay Abello’s cinematography is sublime. He pits shadows with light, creating visuals that evoke the mental and moral conflicts surrounding the characters and the suffocation they suffer from being snatched of their prized innocence. Teresa Barrozo’s music is never interruptive. It beckons only when needed, enunciating the already uneasy atmosphere dealt by Abello’s arrestingly fractured images.

Sandoval’s direction is undeniably sophisticated. He forgoes safety and ease for risks that pay off, creating a film that is also a devastating mood piece, a product of the cross between the immense possibilities of the imagination and experiences dealt by inherited history. At one point, he projects curated videos of Marcos regime strife over Sta. Maria’s face as her character confesses her abandoning her vows to take part in an activists’ meeting in town, allowing the audience to immediately understand the plight of her troubled conscience, which is now being divided between her religious vows and her responsibility for nation.

He constantly reminds the reality of the historic and political milieu, through real videos and photographs of real activists and their family that momentarily puncture the film’s well-crafted illusion. In a way, without having to rely on cheap didactics, Sandoval warns his audience of the sins of apathy, that beyond the secluded convent that is cinema and its intoxicating pleasures and erstwhile depictions of truth filtered through a filmmaker’s art is a world where people really have suffered and continue to suffer.

(Cross-published in Twitch and ABS-CBNnews.)

Bwakaw (2012)

Senin, 30 Juli 2012

Bwakaw (2012)

Coming Out Late in Jun Lana's Bwakaw

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Jun Lana started his career in film writing screenplays for directors Marilou Diaz-Abaya and Maryo J. de los Reyes, among others. In the several years where the country was starving for quality films, he penned films like Diaz-Abaya’s Sa Pusod ng Dagat (In the Navel of the Sea, 1998), Jose Rizal (1998), and Muro-ami (1999), tasteful alternatives to the crass titillating films that were being produced by the dozens.

Interestingly, Gigil (2006), Lana’s directorial debut, capitalized largely on babes clad in bikinis, parading both their bodies and loose morals in the beach. He then dabbled in various other genres, directing disposable horrors like Mag-ingat ka sa… Kulam (2008) and Tarot (2009) and sleazy dramas like Roxxxanne (2007) and My Neighbor’s Wife (2011) for various studios and producers. The career of Lana became a prime example of initial promise gone wrong. His latest, Bwakaw, seems to be his belated apology for the misdirection of his career.

Bwakaw is about Rene, a gay old man (Eddie Garcia) who only came out of the closet when he’s already very old and is now coping with the loneliness dealt by his delayed decision. The film is movingly sincere. Lana molds Rene not from stereotype but from accurate perceptions of how a man would be had he lived his life as a lie and decided only to admit his reality when he barely has any years left to enjoy it. Garcia understands the specific nuances of the character he’s portraying. He does not pepper his portrayal with gags and cheap imitations. Instead, he allows his performance to be subtle and low-key, resulting in what essentially is a quiet triumph in acting.

Lana smartly plays Rene’s repulsion towards his friends and acquaintances as the core of the film’s humor. He also purposefully manifests Rene’s repressed guilt with a beautiful sideplot involving a failed romance. While the film’s depiction of an old man’s loneliness is already astute and affecting, it still forces more storylines than the film’s elegant pacing can manage. The result is a screenplay that is a bit too busy and a bit too lenient to the many contrivances in plotting.

The screenplay’s excesses are thankfully grounded by Lana’s surprisingly restrained direction. Set in San Pablo, the film remarkably incorporates a very provincial laidback appreciation of time, perhaps the only thing that both tortures and gives hope to the film’s impossible protagonist. A less sensitive director would rush to forward the story, relish in the big dramatic moments, and exploit the storyline of the titular dog. Lana, on the other hand, allows the story to crawl, to stagger and earn the emotions that have been repressed by the abundance of silence and the occasional jokes.

Delightfully unhurried, Bwakaw manages to make stretches of quietude and nothingness both entertaining and meaningful. It also helps that the film’s images are composed, lighted, and framed exquisitely. The music is sparse but elaborate, starting with light strumming of a native instrument before evolving into something more hopeful, following the eventual restoration of Rene’s faith in life.

The film’s final frame, a long shot of a street where Rene is walking as a former flame drives his tricycle by totally ignoring the old man, is painfully lovely. It depicts a life where fairy tale endings do not exist especially for people who are most susceptible to melancholy yet notwithstanding that, living it still seems to be the most gratifying choice.

(Cross-published in Twitch and ABS-CBNnews.)

Ang Nawawala (2012)

Jumat, 27 Juli 2012

Ang Nawawala (2012)

Mapping a Hipster's Heartbreak in Marie Jamora's Ang Nawawala (What Isn't There) 

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Gibson (Dominic Roco), after ten years abroad, returns to Manila for the holidays. He still opts to not talk, a decision he made after seeing his twin brother die. He arrives to a house and a family that barely changed. His mom (Dawn Zulueta) still plays stern mother hen to Promise (Sabrina Man), his youngest sister. His father (Buboy Garovillo) still dons a mask of contentment. Corey (Jenny Jamora), his elder sister, is now in a relationship with a clueless blockhead (Marc Abaya) but remains to be the overstressed overseer of the seemingly normal family.

Teddy (Alchris Galura), Gibson’s childhood friend, rescues him, introducing him to new friends, a possible romance, and a lifestyle that serves as respite from his family’s torturous tedium. Along the way, Gibson finds his greatest diversion in Enid (Annicka Dolonius) and shares with her the stories of his life, his music, his inexperience in bed.

Marie Jamora and co-writer Ramon de Veyra has carefully conjured a coming-of-age tale that withdraws from the traditions of the genre. Instead of the raging hormones of burgeoning maturity or the delightful impulses of first love, Ang Nawawala (What Isn’t There) maps the redemption of lost years spent making sense of a childhood trauma that resulted in the most enduring of heartaches.

The conceit of Gibson’s decision to be quiet is admittedly farfetched but placed in a plot where the functions of communication are confused leading to a situation where people talk but nothing is truly understood, it transforms into an apt metaphor of the pervading theme that champions the universality of music, which plays a major role in the film, how music breaks barriers of language and location in transmitting messages that matter, and how it becomes the most potent drug for forgetting such scars from the past.

A part of the film is spent exploring the more meaningful margins of the current Philippine music scene. It features songs that are kept hidden and protected from the attention of the moneyed and usually empty mainstream. The film maneuvers the story of Gibson’s eventual falling for Enid’s unique charms along a myriad of melodies that explore the complexities of affairs of the heart, providing a distinct backdrop to the initial stirrings of a possible ecstasy.

Ang Nawawala is a love letter to a Manila that barely gets featured in film. It is specific on a certain demographic, the small percentage of the youth that gets high on a peculiar new music, also on everything pop and old, on infatuations that dangerously border on love. It locates itself in the various spots in the metro that attract the demographic, like the bars and concert venues that feature indie bands in their nightly gigs, or the rare vinyl stores, or the convenience stops and their cheap treats and time-wasters, or the all-night spas and their peculiar features. The film details these various diversions, from the hipster scene to the drugs and the various methodologies of taking, which shrouds the conflicts of the youth that feed on them.

Jamora’s first feature is obviously crafted to incorporate the attributes that define the lifestyle it portrays. It is paced like a rock star, relaxed when it needs to be but quick at the edges. The visuals are absolutely lovely, revealing an angle of the city that is patterned, orderly, the absolute opposite of the maniacal chaos of the various slums and squatters’ colonies that have been featured tirelessly in other films about Manila. The acting is mostly superb, with the performers tackling the entire spectrum of the multi-faceted demographic, from the overactive jerks that stalk the concert venues for a quick lay down to those authentically serious about the music with their eyelids shut to further increase the effect of the notes and lyrics.

In the end of it all, the film’s detour to the world populated by hipsters and wannabes only exemplifies the fleeting nature of the somewhat effective departure that world provides. Everything begins at home. Naturally, everything should end there. The problems and dilemmas sparked by the lack of understanding and communication at home cannot be solved by escaping them. In the film’s sublime final few moments, Gibson literally comes of age. He does what he’s supposed to have done when his youth, adolescence and everything good and bad that came along with it were suspended over a debilitating heartbreak. He did not need the drugs, the fireworks, the first kisses, and other spectacles. All Gibson needed was to talk.

(Cross-published in Twitch and ABS-CBNnews.)

Sta. Niña (2012)

Kamis, 26 Juli 2012

Sta. Niña (2012)

The Price of Redemption in Emmanuel Palo's Sta. Niña 

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Set in the bleak plains of Pampanga, Emmanuel Palo’s Sta. Niña tells the story of Paulino (Coco Martin) who suddenly unearths the coffin of his daughter ten years after her death. Despite the length of time the coffin has been buried, her daughter remains uncorrupted, seemingly miraculously unchanged. Rumors of the marvel start to spread, causing several townspeople, including the province’s sickly governor, to flock Paulino’s house to be cured of their afflictions. More than that, the return of Paulino’s daughter again unravels his sins from the past and his unfinished efforts for redemption.

Palo’s crafting is exquisite. The film is beautifully photographed. The greys of the lahar-covered landscape evoke the very emptiness that confounds the people that manage to make a living despite the sudden desolation brought about by Mt. Pinatubo’s eruption. When the film finally adopts colors, they are quiet and muted, very telling of the despair and the secrets that are supressed by circumstance.

The music is aptly spare and haunting. The film’s pace is unhurried, allowing stretched moments of silence that allow for a clearer communication of many of the film’s more nuanced emotions. The performances of the actors, more specifically Martin, Anita Linda as Paulino’s dementia-afflicted grandmother, and Irma Adlawan as the unforgiving mother of Paulino’s former lover, are especially fine.

However, the biggest triumph of the film is how it clearly portrayed a land and a people wanting of salvation despite the abundance of religion. Palo paints the Pampanga of his film as ridden with fake prophets and empty symbols, where statues and icons are peddled to the ignorantly faithful and every instance of the supernatural would be considered an act of God. He portrays his characters as especially burdened by the weight of religious zeal, more than willing to ride the wave of popular faith to be salvaged from the gravity of errors of the past.

There is actually more to the film than to pinpoint the blatant hypocrisies of the self-proclaimed religious. There is more to it than the overused dynamics of act and practice as displayed in various other films that criticize traditional Catholic rituals because they do not reflect the real religiosity of the people practicing them. The film is made from a perspective that does not hold judgment towards these beliefs and practices. It finds humanity in the very reason why these beliefs and practices exist and persist. Instead, it connects the outward and perhaps sham religiosity of these people with their inward insecurities because of their very own acknowledgment of their own sinful ways.

Sta. Niña depicts sinners suffering so much in such a judgmental world that the sudden appearance of the titular incorruptible saint becomes the only viable escape, and the price they would have to pay for a much-ambitioned redemption. Nothing is more human than survival in a society that is quick to pass guilt and slow to forgive and forget.

(Cross-published in Twitch and ABS-CBNnews.)

Kamera Obskura (2012)

Senin, 23 Juli 2012

Kamera Obskura (2012)

Out of the Camera, into the World in Raymond Red's Kamera Obskura 

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

There are a lot of great ideas swimming in a pool of confusion in Raymond Red’s Kamera Obskura. The film is conceptually sophisticated, more so than the bunch of films like Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist that merely borrowed stereotypical silent film aesthetics for trite nostalgia. Red, in recreating a silent film and dressing that recreated silent film within a storyline of a celebrated discovery of an obscure lost film in an abandoned warehouse, already tackles several very current issues that deserve to be put in the forefront of cultural discourse.

In the first few minutes of the film, Red has legendary archivists Teddy Co, Cesar Hernando and Ricky Orellana debating on the import of their discovery in front of the media. In their excited discussions, they traverse a gamut of intelligent topics from Philippine film history to the dilemmas of film preservation, preserving in the film what would have been limited in private conversations over beer or coffee.

The film concludes with the same kind of discussion by the same people, although this time, their discussions are shielded from the eyes and ears of media. The three scholars, in a darkened screening room where their discovery just finished screening without the missing final reel, begin debating the merits of what they saw and the repercussions of the missing final reel. Hypotheses, educated guesses and opinions are thrown around. Despite that, everything deliciously ends in more confusion than when they began, cinephiles lost in cinematographic concerns. The film’s lack of resolution is remarkable. It expresses the very state of discourse in Philippine cinema, how it is honestly just a lot of babble and issues discussed and re-discussed ad infinitum.

The most painful part of this is that Red’s film is utterly brilliant, at least in concept. It is just that the middle and most important part --- the silent film that urged those three wise men of Philippine cinema to debate endlessly --- is wanting.

The film is tainted by Diwa de Leon’s ludicrous and tyrannical score that both limits and betrays the possibilities of emotions of Red’s undeniably dynamic visuals. The very existence of the musical score betrays the nature of the silent film where music is played live during screenings. The film’s bookends, where the projection of the so-called rediscovered lost film is featured as the framing device for the silent middle part, further negates the need for the scoring. The logical guffaw could just be ignored had De Leon’s score been a mere background, an ornament. However, the score is more damaging than that as it supplants interpretation and emotions with its inherent lack of imagination and subtlety.

Absent the score, the very silent film part itself, shot in digital and made to look like it was shot in film during post, is a mixed bag. The filmmaking process seems to be a brash betrayal of the core concept, but arguments can be raised supporting Red’s choice of filmmaking, especially in this age where film is quickly entering obsolescence.

There are arresting moments, particularly in the opening where Juan (Pen Medina) finds himself trapped in a cell where a single ray of light reveals the world outside, with an imposing building and flying machines all over, upside down, like inside the titular camera obscura. The very idea of that silent film within the film is astounding. By telling the story of Juan who upon his escape from the cell becomes some sort of political hero when a movie camera assimilates with his arm, Red expresses the power of cinema, how it can be used and abused, in the name of money, advocacy or, as the post-credit sequence reveals, the filmmaker himself. Unfortunately, most of the message gets lost in the spectacle and the noise.

Perhaps Red could have spent several more months or years perfecting the crafting of the film. The final product reveals the many compromises Red had to make in order to reach the wide audience that Cinemalaya has earned for itself. These compromises may very well be the culprit of all the disappointments and frustrations with the film. These compromises Red had to make expose the deficiencies of the film festival’s rules and mechanics that surround its film’s production, how its obsolete grants and inhumane deadlines create a culture of hurried filmmaking, turning filmmakers like Red and his compatriots into factories for the admittedly lofty goal of reaching to the festival’s captive market that promises the possibility of an audience for the their films once freed from the constrictions of a film festival.

A question appears. “Is that lofty goal really worth all the compromises?” Well, only the filmmakers can sincerely answer that.

(Cross-published in Twitch and ABS-CBNnews.)

The Animals (2012)

Minggu, 22 Juli 2012

The Animals (2012)

Sex, Lies and DSLR in Gino Santos' The Animals 

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

The Animals is a film of many influences, from Boyle to Brillante. Its director, Gino Santos, is after all a fresh film grad who interned for Captive (2012). His eagerness shows. Every trick is bared like there is no tomorrow, or in this particular case, like he has so much to prove. The film risks being stereotypically style over substance. Fortunately, it’s not. While the needless abundance of style turns out to be more of a liability, there’s more to the film than the spectacles that fail to hide the undisciplined editing and incongruent cinematography. With the film, Santos reveals himself to be a filmmaker with a lot of both promise and room to improve on.

Santos opens the film with an awkward aerial view of a posh gated subdivision. He then introduces his crew of upper class brats: enterprising but emotionally inert Jake (Albie Casino, who gives a surprisingly believable performance), his kleptomaniac girlfriend Trina (Dawn Balagot), and her angsty brother Alex (Patrick Sugui). In the midst of excitement over college entrance results, random issues bubble to the surface. Lovers’ quarrels erupt when Jake forgets to inform Trina his admission to all the top universities, causing the confused girl to raise questions about their future when they both graduate from their private high school. For Jake however, the future he’s concerned about is more immediate. He is throwing a party tonight.

The beauty of The Animals lies in the accuracy it depicts a generation. Santos and co-writer Jeff Stelton sprinkle the film with the usual suspects of the troubled youth: the inexplicable consumption of alcohol, the drug use, the violence, the sex, and the betrayals. Then, they lace it with what makes this generation’s conflicts unique: the impatience brought about by the convenience technology offers, the insensitivity to promise brought about by the unabashed display of the adults’ propensity to corruption the growing immensity of the class divide. A click of the mouse fulfils the duties of advertisement. A father casually and jokingly talks of his political dealings over family breakfast. A group of household drivers gang up to gossip about their employers’ embarrassing hedonism.

The most harrowing part of it is that these ills fit within the film’s timeline of just a day without being put-on or too coincidental. It only expresses the extent of how rotten society has gotten, and how the future seems to be hopeless as well.

The Animals is hardly unique in world cinema. Several filmmakers have expressed their concern for the future with works that detail generational divide. Fellini has I Vitelloni. Truffaut has The400 Blows. Kiyoshi Kurosawa has Bright Future. It seems to be a staple for every national cinema to have film that expresses society’s worries about the next generation. What sets Santos’ film apart is that it is not made from the standpoint of the previous generation but from the perspective of somebody who was or is still there.

The Animals is more a confessional than a cautionary tale from an artist who is removed from the milieu he tackles. It was made from both the pleasures and sins of recent memory. That probably fuels the film’s familiarity and energy. The shallowness of the youth masks the very insecurity they naturally possess. Santos bravely expresses the carpe diem John Keating had no guts to warn his students of. Its parting shot, an overburdened glance of the possible repercussions of this youth’s wild abandon, could perhaps be Santos’ harsh farewell to an evolving lifestyle that welcomes ninja parties, drunken nipples over DSLR-improved pixels, and careless ecstasy. In that case, the film is that fitting graduation.

(Cross-published in Twitch and ABS-CBNnews.)

Posas (2012)

Jumat, 20 Juli 2012

Posas (2012)

Irony-Crafted Shackles in Lawrence Fajardo's Posas (Shackled)

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Lawrence Fajardo’s Posas (Shackled) opens with shots of slogan-bearing stickers tackily pasted on a police van. “To serve and protect,” the weathered sticker boldly declares. A cop, finished from cleaning the van, cheerfully walks into the station to do his rounds, randomly throwing jokes to his fellow cops, readying himself for another day of crime-fighting. The station’s jail is filled to the brim with criminals and other lowlifes, all of whom casually greet their erstwhile nemesis either a good morning or witty retort. It certainly appears the police are doing their job very well.

However, Fajardo’s film does not seek to revere the police. It does the opposite. It attempts to break the propagated myth of the police. It makes use of the most obvious of ironies, juxtaposing slogans and symbols with acts that blatantly betray those symbols’ meanings. In a way, Posas can be considered a brave film. By tackling issues that are normally and traditionally shared through whispered blind items and urban legends, it exposes corruption in the very center of the institution that seeks to eradicate it.

Fajardo manages to craft truly engaging moments in the film. The chase scene between the cops and the pickpocket that has Fajardo’s camera rushing along busy alleyways and tight corridors of rundown buildings is a showcase of formidable directing and editing. In the film’s climax, Fajardo drowns his visuals with a cacophony of sighs, pleas, and other animal sounds, heightening the suspense and terror, and more importantly, breaking the tyranny of real time with something both imaginative and cinematic.

Unfortunately, the film is wanting of the very ingredient that could have rendered its intentions effective. Despite its efforts to viscerally depict the harrowing experiences of petty crooks under the unforgiving hands of their uniformed captors, it still lacks the requisite emotions to complete the circle and to deliver the message fully. While there is anger and frustration, it is only perfunctory to what is happening onscreen. The emotions are limited to the drama that is depicted, reserved only for the characters that get victimized. As a fictionalized exposé, it gets shackled by its narrative method, trapped within the term of the story, unable to break-out, to scream, to raise fists in fury. There is only so much one can witness and experience within a day in the life, no matter how conveniently plotted that day is.

That particular day Posas is set in would have a pickpocket (Nico Antonio), uncharacteristically naïve in the police system despite being very crafty in his thievery, steal an expensive cellular phone, get chased in the crowd, suffer police brutality, tearfully plead with his mother, get dragged through the initial stages of criminal prosecution, get educated about the loopholes of the country’s criminal laws that would allow him to be released but with particularly terrifying repercussions. The story is designed specifically to pinpoint the wrongs of the system. There is simply no room for subtlety. Yet, with all its intentions to shock and alarm, the film still feels timid, inert and benign. There is just that inexplicable disconnect that prevents the material from transcending the boundaries set by its chosen form and framework.

(Cross-published in Twitch and ABS-CBNnews.)

Cinemalaya Resignation Letter

Kamis, 01 Maret 2012

Cinemalaya Resignation Letter

Cinemalaya Resignation Letter

Last February 28, 2012, I was greeted with the news that Emerson Reyes' MNL 143 was disqualified from Cinemalaya because of casting, a process in filmmaking which I believe is within the ambit of the creative freedom provided to a filmmaker who is making as an independent artist and not as a hired craftsman. Enraged by the disqualification which was followed by discussions with other filmmakers who are deeply worried of having to compromise for the sake of making their filmmaking dreams coms true, I instantly posted a status message in my Facebook page, reminding Cinemalaya of what I believe are its legal obligations towards its filmmakers and its raison d'etre.

These opinions and the opinions that I have shared in my Facebook page are solely my own, erupting not from my position as a member of the Selection Committee of Cinemalaya but from my conscience and my passion for true independent filmmaking in the Philippines. Because of that, I have decided to tender my resignation as member of the Selection Committee by e-mailing the letter below to Cinemalaya's Competition Chairperson and Festival Director the following day. Simply put, "I simply can no longer be part of a system which I no longer believe in."

Perhaps this is the opportune time for these issues to be discussed in the open. Let not this issue be determined solely by the people who have found themselves directly involved but by everybody. For this reason, I am providing the links to the online articles that would provide readers ample knowledge to join the discourse. Join in. 

- Alexis Tioseco: Wishful Thinking for Philippine Cinema 

-PEP.ph: Robbie Tan explains why MNL 143 was disqualified from Cinemalaya 2012 

-Inquirer.net: Banned filmmaker questions 'freedom' in indie film fests

-Lagarista.com: MNL 143 Disqualified from Cinemalaya, Director Emerson Reyes Releases Official Statement

-Lagarista.com: DQ'ED!: An Interview with MNL 143 Director Emerson Reyes

-Inquirer.net: Cinemalaya row heats up

-Businessmirror.com.ph: A storm gathers over Cinemalaya

-ABSCBNNew.com: Online petition launched over Cinemalaya controversy

Now for the online petition, click here:

Reform Cinemalaya

Ligo na Ü, Lapit na Me (2011)

Sabtu, 01 Oktober 2011

Ligo na Ü, Lapit na Me (2011)

Ligo na Ü, Lapit na Me (Erick Salud, 2011)

English Title: Star-Crossed Love

Philippine cinema has never been one that is deeply related with literature. Except for adaptations of Jose Rizal’s Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, Francisco Baltazar’s Florante at Laura, and other revered texts of national importance, adaptations are mostly limited to popular comics and romance novels. Perhaps the reason why there is that gaping separation between cinema and literature in the country is because literature, except for the texts that are used for school and the comics and romance novels that are used for escapism, is unprofitable. Consequently, cinema based on literature is also unprofitable, catering only to the sophisticated and the learned elite and not to the general movie-going populace.

Ligo na Ü, Lapit na Me (Star-Crossed Love), based on Eros Atalia’s bestselling short novel of the same title, attempts to close the gap between literature and cinema. Atalia’s novel is by no means the type of literature that would incite deep thinking or debates. It is populist in both style and intention making it the perfect text for a film adaptation that would have a semblance of commercial appeal without being just purely escapist.

Ligo na Ü, Lapit na Me was obviously written to appeal to the younger generation, with Intoy (played charmingly in the film by Edgar Allan Guzman), an ordinary student who enters into a secret sexual relationship with Jenny (played in the film by Mercedes Cabral), a transferee from a private school who instantly becomes the school’s resident bombshell, representing the typical Filipino youth who is has become more open to loose sexual attitudes without losing appreciation for the necessities of a fulfilling romance.

Jerry Gracio’s screenplay is very faithful to Atalia’s novel, appropriating even the mental monologues of the main character in the novel as voice-overs. Director Erick Salud is very faithful to Gracio’s screenplay, keeping the voice-overs and the other playful excesses while managing to ably tell the story in the simplest way possible. In a sense, both Gracio and Salud become victims of undue reverence to a source material that would probably work film-wise with modifications in both storytelling and style.

It is all cute at first. Sex has never been a serious proposition for Filipinos. Sex has been quite the favorite punchline for skits and jokes. There is therefore a very wicked sense of accuracy as to how Intoy’s sexual awakening is depicted with cartoonish humor and irreverence. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t know how to grow up. It never graduates from being just an effective sitcom. In fact, aside from the flourishes that infrequently adorn certain scenes, the film is mostly visually drab and almost always aurally annoying, like a hurried locally-produced television show.

When Intoy and Jenny’s relationship evolve from being simply limited within the confines of their afternoon’s motel room into something that is supposedly painfully complicated, humor gets in the way of communicating the turmoil. Their romance, the intricacies of their relationship, and the eventual ache of their inevitable separation and the hopeful reunion are drowned amidst all the needless noise and clutter, betraying the film’s attempts to convince its audience that there is something more to the seductive sex talk, to the lousily staged sex scenes, to the humorous stabs at the suddenly lopsided roles of young Filipino men and women when it comes to sex, to the never-ending supply of colloquial wit, to the endless and tedious monologues. There’s really enough to love in Ligo na Ü, Lapit na Me. Unfortunately, there’s also enough to dislike.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Cuchera (2011)

Minggu, 28 Agustus 2011

Cuchera (2011)

Cuchera (Joseph Israel Laban, 2011)

Joseph Israel Laban’s Cuchera, a rightfully shocking exposé of the lives of low-rent drug mules, one of the drug mules, opens with the obligatory and totally unnecessary factoid on how there are so many Filipino drug mules who are still rotting in jail in various countries. From the seemingly lofty implications of his advocacy-heavy introduction, Laban jumps into the middle of one of Manila’s slums. His camera is attentive to the most damning of details, like a torn and discolored Philippine flag, the grime, the mud, the heaps and heaps of garbage and the shanties that dot the dump’s perimeter. From the film’s first few images, it becomes clear that Laban is not interested in subtlety, and probably rightly so. The intentions of the film seem better communicated through shock and noise than lyricism and nuance.



Laban continues by following Rosa (Isadora), a matronly woman we later find out is in charge of making the falsified passports for the drug mules, and Isabel (Maria Isabel Lopez), a retired prostitute who now masterminds the recruitment of drug mules, as they spend the day preparing for the night’s operation. He fortifies the story’s progression with various details like Rosa and Isabel’s detour to a shady faith healer, or the comedic infidelity of Isabel’s husband (Simon Ibarra), or the crazed sexual appetite of Isabel’s nephew (CJ Ramos). From there, Laban introduces the drug mules one by one, giving enough background to rationalize their decision to become literal victims of the very real horrors of international drug trade.



Cuchera is best seen as a horror film without the entertainment goals of the popular genre. While Laban sympathizes with the drug mules who find themselves transformed into receptacles for bags of cocaine, he does not shy away from depicting the violence, depravity, and atrocities of the carefully mapped out process. Through the succeeding sequences of rape, drug use, and of the drugs being hastily and carelessly inserted into the victims, Laban fervently manufactures offense, disgust, and revulsion from the images and sounds he creates, emphasizing very well the indisputable perversity of the market for drug mules and the pervading poverty that forces men and women to become drug mules.



Near the end of the film, one of the drug mules, while aboard a pick-up van en route to the airport, suddenly tells the story of a white lady that is rumored to haunt a hospital. One by one, the drug mules recite their known version of the ghost story. The drug mules’ versions of the story are alarming, all involving rape and abortion as reasons for the lady’s death and her horrid afterlife. However, the dazed storytellers recount the stories without emotions, strangely without even a tinge of fear the stories normally deserve. It is as if their collective recent experiences have desensitized them to fictional horror, rendering them unfettered and unfeeling. It is as if humanity was but a distant memory. To Laban’s credit, watching his powerful debut film produced the same results within me, even if just momentarily.



(Cross-published in Twitch.)

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.)