Son of God (2010)

Jumat, 31 Desember 2010

Son of God (2010)

The Gospel According to a Weng Weng-Wannabe

A Confession as to How Son of God Restored My Faith on Faith

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

An aerial view of Manila, dull and dreary with its sea of tin roofs and tangled electric lines, opens Khavn dela Cruz and Michael Noer’s Son of God. This is not Mondomanila, a garbage-filled metropolis populated with overjoyed nobodies living in the most depressed of situations as can only be composed by Khavn. This is Manila, the same city where the stories of fatedly sorrowful migrants of Lino Brocka’s films are set, the same city where the stories of the corrupted and corruptible men of Brillante Mendoza’s cinema verite are situated.

However, Khavn and Noer, a Danish filmmaker, instead of similarly dwelling in the hopelessness of the severely impoverished, focuses on their crazed hopefulness. From the high heavens, they bring down their vision to an annual event, the Feast of the Black Nazarene, where the most faithful, who are also arguably the poorest, in Manila converge in the grounds of the Quiapo Church to relay their innermost desires and needs to a supposedly ancient replica of Jesus Christ, darkened by time and circumstance.

To call this disorganized gathering of the cluelessly good, the predatory bad, and the inexplicably ugly carnivalesque is an understatement. Son of God, carried in an ornate throne, is paraded into the Feast grounds by two bulky men wearing ceremonial masks. The image is too ridiculous to be believed, but in a buffet table of Jesus-wannabes presented to desperate men and women whose hunger for miracles can only be matched by their hunger for actual food, he fits right in, gaining for himself a bevy of followers.

He has also gained a critic, a documentary filmmaker (superbly played by Noer) whose disbelief prompts him to follow the self-proclaimed miracle worker to ultimately reveal the fraud he thinks is happening. He asks Son of God questions; all leading to the answer he is looking for, that Son of God is doing his act for money. Yet Son of God answers them with creepy reverence, dodging any implication of ill motive. He documents the miracles that occur too. A mother presents her unconscious sick baby. The moment Son of God touches the baby, the baby bursts in motion. The lines are blurred. Faith on faithlessness is tested. Is Son of God the son of God?

That question is of course only a dilemma to the faithless filmmaker. Khavn and Noer’s viewers are saved from deliberating on the merits of Son of God. He is fake, an actor plucked from somewhere in the city to be part of one of the biggest pranks in Philippine Cinema. Khavn and Noer emphasizes the word “mock” in mock-umentary, and colors the film, from start to finish, with an impish attitude, a discernible notion that the entire film is fueled not by a desire to be seriously sacrilegious but by a desire to have fun in poking holes at both the faithful and the faithless.

The film is actually favored by the overt bad taste that functions as its cornerstones. The film’s most hilarious moments occur when all pretenses of approximating truth and reality are thrown out the window, such as when an actual heart a glass jar inside is brought to Son of God’s attention to have him question his own faith, leading him on a quest, where he dons robes that could have been a costume in George Lucas’ Star Wars, to climb a mountain to regain both his faith and his healing powers. Shot in the same style as Brillante Mendoza’s real-time dramas, the images gain further comedic prominence, the same way Terry Gilliam’s Life of Brian was utterly funny not just because of the jokes played but also because it was shot and executed like an extravagant Zifferelli Christ-pageant.

Son of God, more than just functioning as a humorous yet shallow satire on the ludicrousness of being overly faithful, proposes the mechanics why poor Filipinos and faith are not strange bedfellows. Faith exists here because there is a need for it in the absence of everything else. Faith equates to hope and hope equates to happiness despite having nothing. In the eyes of a foreigner filmmaker who has everything, this immense faith is strange especially when there is no showing for its presence. What else is faith for then when the world provides in abundance? The miracle of the film is that in their exercise of mockery of the faith, Khavn and Noer, whether intentionally or not, has preached truth.

(Cross-published in Twitch. First published in Philippine Free Press.)

My Amnesia Girl (2010)

Minggu, 19 Desember 2010

My Amnesia Girl (2010)

The Art of Exquisite Fluff

A Review of Cathy Garcia-Molina's My Amnesia Girl

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Cathy Garcia-Molina’s My Amnesia Girl has all the trappings of detestable formula. Like all of the romantic comedies that preceded it, the ones that have given Star Cinema the ill-repute of dumbing down its followers with rehashes of the same story, the film seems to be relying solely on kitsch, on star power, on everything artificial. There is no denying the film’s use of kitsch. In fact, the film is quite unabashed with it, with characters strangely enveloped by a culture of love reigning supreme over everything else. It is adamantly unpretentious, relishing on the obvious fact that it has in its service of fun an abundance of cute and hip. It does not aspire anything more than to recharge its audience’s thirst for spritely romance, the one that is less attached to reality, the one that mines on the mysteries of fate to add magic to it. In other words, My Amnesia Girl is Grade-A fluff. It fulfills everything that a mainstream romantic comedy should do. Much more, it skirts away from genre revision or experimentation, to delight of the studio that bankrolled its existence.

Miraculously though, the film, with its refreshing lack of pretenses of achieving more than momentary delights that is expected of a romantic comedy of mainstream sensibilities, does actually more than fulfilling the basic goals of the films of its genre. Somewhere along the way, amid the near redundant exchanges of witty pick-up lines, against its need to only delight, against its fate as a tool for escape that is to be solely for enjoyment, the film develops a beautiful heart that thankfully aches, although quite subtly, more than it delights.

Apollo (John Lloyd Cruz), pick-up artist extraordinaire, met Irene (Toni Gonzaga), a photographer, in a speed-dating event. While Irene attended the event only to document it, she ended up enamored by Apollo’s undeniable charms and wit. The seemingly perfect relationship suddenly and unexpectedly ended when on their wedding day, Apollo did not show up, leaving Irene irreparably heartbroken. When the two serendipitously meet in a grocery, Irene concocts a lie and pretends to be suffering from amnesia, therefore, removing all memories of Apollo and his failure to marry her. Apollo, believing Irene’s lie, takes the supposed clean slate to undo everything he has done to her and make her fall for him like the first time. The two become inseparable again, but are now faced with the impending repercussions of their second chance at love be revealed as by-products of Irene’s vengeful grand lie.

The story, written by Jade Castro whose masterful Endo (2007) situated a poignant love story in the middle of temporary contractual employment, hinges on a ludicrous proposal that men can be so drowned in love and guilt that amnesia, which only happens in unimaginative telenovelas and is highly unlikely in reality, has become instantly believable. Garcia-Molina, however, manages to distract from the implausibility of the premise by creating a film that is as self-aware of its contrivances as the characters are self-aware of their love-addicted attitude in life. The performances by Cruz and Gonzaga are expectedly charming, especially during the film’s lighter moments. However, during the moments where the film bleeds with emotions, Cruz and Gonzaga communicate those emotions with convincing conviction that is impossible not to get swayed into their dilemma and be affected with much more than just the cheap thrills that is usually associated with Star Cinema’s star-studded romances.

The film’s last scene, made funny by the trademark exchanges of witty one-liners that extend up to the end of the end credits, is actually quite bittersweet. Sure, the lovers end up together, as expected in any romantic comedy produced by Star Cinema. However, there is no assurance, no previous revelation, that fate’s cruel retort to Irene’s crueler lie, a lie that has produced so many beautiful things that it seems more alluring than the truth, has been resolved. We only see the lovers in satisfied bliss of being together, not knowing exactly whether the memories, good and bad, are there with them in their modest celebration. Whether Garcia-Molina knows it or not, with My Amnesia Girl, she has made a film that transcended the limiting bounds of formula filmmaking without breaking them. I’m crossing my fingers, but there might be hope yet for the mainstream.

(Cross-published in Twitch. First published in Philippine Free Press.)

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)

Palito (1934-2010)

Sabtu, 17 April 2010

Palito (1934-2010)

The Lovely Bones

(With his brittle, scaffold-like frame and that hilariously horrified smile, Reynaldo “Palito” Hipolito, 75, was like a phantom from vaudeville spooking a delightful, garish milieu.)

by Francis Joseph Cruz

TWENTY years ago, Palito made me cry. I was an underweight kid and was donning a hairdo that resembled the contour of an apple. Because of that unfortunate circumstance of my distant childhood, I was frequently given names, mostly unimaginative insults such as payatot, skeleton, lampa. Having three elder brothers who have mastered the art of bullying did not help either. If anything, they enhanced the playing field, appropriating pop culture references, from Skeletor of He-Man fame to Fido Dido, into the teasing game. However, the name that I resented the most was Palito, as his very appearance, with his deathly thin face and atrophied frame, made everyone laugh. Given that I had the neurotic notion that I have become synonymous with the comedian after hearing myself being called so many times by his name, I felt that each time anybody laughed at Palito while doing his antics in his movies, they were laughing at me. I hate being made fun of and laughed at, so every time they laughed at Palito, I cannot help but cry. I imagine I was not alone in this ordeal, given the popularity of the comedian and prevalence of malnutrition in the Philippines.

As I outgrew my skeleton of a body and gained a lot of weight, I also eventually outgrew that hate relationship with Palito. Without the stigma of feeling laughed at and ridiculed while watching his comedies, I immediately found the humor of Palito a welcome alternative to some of our younger comedians whose good looks obscured their attempts at comedy. However, Palito has turned into a rare treat. He was already a fixture in moviedom since the Sixties (with a considerable filmography to boot) but it wasn’t until the post-Marcos material world that he hit his stride, as a sort-of updated Bayani Casimiro (who himself was still active by this time).

The best of Palito’s kitsch works, including his take on James Bond and the Rambo­-parodies No Blood, No Surrender and Rambuto, have since become urban legends because of their shameless unavailability in any of the metropolis’ video shops or television channels’ listings.

It is unfortunate that Palito is being treated as if he belongs to another era when we were a happier people. While his comedy is a million miles away from the venerated wit that we have become accustomed to, it nonetheless was effective without even resorting to excessive brain usage or verging into lewdness. His brand of comedy is inherently simple, perhaps a little bit mean-spirited because its very meat is the fact that he is obscenely meatless, and that made all the difference. He surely belongs to that era where entertainers whose self-deprecation becomes the bulk of their onscreen identities like Babalu, with his extensive chin, Zorayda Sanchez, with her distinctive facial qualities, and Mahal, with her more-than-petite body, were sellable commodities in cinema that I wish would be appreciated more today. Palito, along with those unpretentious performers, who not only gave their talents and intellect but also their very physical self just to make us laugh, deserved more from this world.

Perhaps the most popular image of Palito is of him dressed in a clean barong tagalog with cotton balls inside his nostrils laying suspiciously serene inside a coffin. His many portrayals of the dead that suddenly spring back to life, either as a zombie or as someone who was mistakenly thought of as dead, always produced the desired hilarious effect, and this, I believe, have left an indelible mark on this nation’s collective ids. The funny reaction shots of Dolphy and the many other actors who repeatedly fell for this redundant yet enchantingly enjoyable prank notwithstanding, there is simply some quiet genius in how Palito has made use of his deathly thin frame to comedic effect. Moreover, Palito, without probably even knowing it, has achieved the near-impossible. He has inflicted kneejerk humor in the very thing that all of us dread, which is death.

While he has cheated death several times in the movies, real life is something different altogether. The news broke out. Palito has died.

This time, the image of him and his fragile body lying serenely in a hospital bed did not cause endless chuckles but sincere sighs. He will be missed.

The last time I saw Palito was late last year, during the awarding ceremonies of a short film competition sponsored by an alcoholic beverage. The veritable funny man was supposedly plucked from obscurity by filmmaker Khavn De La Cruz and his gang, who aptly call themselves The Brockas, to have him play the drums in this gig. Lovingly referred to by Khavn as “No Blood Brocka”—after the Rambo variation that the comedian himself had titled—Palito introduced himself with a humility that was poignant (yet, he had never lost his exquisite timing nor that comedic value of being self-deprecating), and still, he had the crowd laughing. That night, Palito was the star. He sat behind the drums set, and with gusto that seemed unlikely with his age and frail-looking body, started beating the drums with all his heart, while the Brockas shouted and screamed expletives to the amazement of everyone. He was not only truly talented, he was legendary.

To Reynaldo “Palito” Hipolito, you made me cry, you made me laugh, and you made me cry again. For that, I shall forever be grateful.


(First published in Philippine Free Press, 17 April 2010)

Miss You Like Crazy (2010)

Rabu, 10 Maret 2010

Miss You Like Crazy (2010)

High-Cholesterol Romance
A Review of Cathy Garcia-Molina's Miss You Like Crazy
By Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Watching a Star Cinema-produced romance is comparable to eating a McDonald's hamburger. The two activities, depending on one's tolerance for junk food, elicit one predictable response: momentary elation. Morgan Spurlock, in his hilarious yet disturbing documentary Super Size Me (2004), has taught us that the McDonald's burger is specifically engineered to be elating enough to be addictive. Star Cinema makes romances like McDonalds makes burgers. The film studio follows a strict formula, putting together the most ideal of love teams in the most un-ideal of romantic relationships with the most magically conceived of happy endings. The result is assured box-office success. The result of that result is a stubborn and artistically-numbing adherence to the formula.

If Star Cinema romances are McDonald's burgers, then director Cathy Garcia-Molina is arguably the most effective fry cook in the studio's roster of fry cooks which includes Laurenti Dyogi (And I Love You So (2009), tepid and underwhelming), Rory Quintos (Love Me Again (2009), overindulgent yet inconsequential), Jose Javier Reyes (When Love Begins (2008), frustratingly cluttered), and Jade Castro (My Big Love (2008), disappointing and uneven), among many others. Her effectivity, I guess, stems from the absolute lack of resistance to the mechanicality of her role in these productions. She understands the studio’s goal of profit, accedes to the studio’s restrictive processes, and proceeds to create delightful farces that only reinforce a cultural need for escape. In other words, she does what a fry cook does best: flip burger patties, toast burger buns, and prepare a hamburger that comes closest to perfection.

Her films, from the portion she directed in Bcuz of U (2004), a triptych of bubbly but inconsequential love stories, to A Very Special Love (2008), a fluffy and admittedly enjoyable unlikely romance between an ordinary employee and her rich, handsome yet difficult boss, are all charming confections, delicious enough to make you forget, even for just about an hour, that outside the darkness of the theaters, there are outstanding bills to pay, nagging wives to please, and other pressing problems to face. Perhaps Garcia-Molina’s most charming film is still You Are The One (2006), an undemanding but colorful story about a U.S. embassy official who is looking for his real parents and a government employee who is wrestling with self-confidence who become entangled in a whirlwind love affair that ends in an expectedly happy note. One More Chance (2008), Star Cinema’s attempt to expand its notion of romantic relationships to include something as banally realistic as break-ups, the emotional pain it induces to ex-lovers, and the sacred three-month rule, signaled Garcia-Molina as a director who aside from visualizing the occasional joyful tingles of falling in love, can also communicate the pangs of a recent heartache.

Miss You Like Crazy, Garcia-Molina’s latest, is just another addition to the director’s list of near-perfect burgers. While it is entertaining and at times, intriguing, it remains unremarkable probably because nothing, with the exceptions of the little tweaks in the formula-formed narrative and the out-of-the-country setting, differentiates it from any of the director’s previous works.

Alan (John Lloyd Cruz), who is falling out of love with his controlling girlfriend (Maricar Reyes), initiates a love affair with Mia (Bea Alonzo), a not-so-sassy girl he meets during his daily commutes aboard the Pasig River ferry. As it turns out, Alan and Mia’s irrefutable connection (which apparently erupts into an impromptu lovemaking session inside Alan’s rustic unfurnished riverside abode) is no match to fate. A few years later, the two ill-fated lovebirds meet again, this time, in Kuala Lumpur. Alan remains hopeful that he will be able to find Mia, fix the mistakes of the past, and win her back into his arms. Mia, on the other hand, has a loving boyfriend (Gerald Hans Isaac). Despite the flurry of lovely emotions (as cinematically represented by Erik Santos’ baritone suddenly bursting to the tune of I Miss You Like Crazy to accompany the two leads’ reunion beneath the metaphoric Petronas Towers) that immediately come into play with the acknowledgment that a fragment of that complicated love affair still survives, it seems that human effort (we later learn that Alan has been visiting and revisiting Kuala Lumpur just to search for Mia) is still powerless to fate. In fact, all that Alan had to do was to wait, and save himself from the aches, stress, and frustrations of doing everything for nothing.

Fate does not leave a lot of room for shocks and surprises. With fate as the primary motivator of all its love stories, Star Cinema is unabashed about the predictability of its film offerings. After all, there is comfort in predictability. In a country where the norm is discomfort, comfort sells. Thus, McDonald’s, Star Cinema and other similar peddlers of shallow comforts do well in this country. They offer what reality can’t, a release, no matter how temporary, from the unpredictability of life. Having tried my best to rationalize why Star Cinema films do so well and accept the fact that there is absolutely nothing I can write or do to force a corporation to steer away from what gives it the most profit, I still hope to see a Star Cinema romance that would tackle unfated love. Truth be told, burgers, no matter how masterful the fry cook cooks them, are still junk food. I believe the same goes for movies.

(First published in Philippine Free Press, 20 March 2010)

Mano Po 6: A Mother's Love (2009)

Kamis, 24 Desember 2009

Mano Po 6: A Mother's Love (2009)

The Mano Po Story: God Have Mercy On Us
A Review of Joel Lamangan's Mano Po 6: A Mother's Story
by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

FLASHBACK: The year was 2002. Besieged by film pirates and imperialist Hollywood, film studios like Regal Entertainment look forward to the annual Metro Manila Film Festival, a two-week period during the moneyed Christmas season where all of the metropolis’ theaters are only allowed to screen festival entries, to field what supposedly are their best films. A movie, conceptualized as a film matriarch’s ode to her Chinese-Filipino roots, opened successfully. Directed by Joel Lamangan with as much opulence he can imagine and Regal can provide money for, the film received critical attention only because it feels like the best film in a year of duds.

Melinda (Sharon Cuneta, in a role that fits her like Arnold Schwarzenegger fitting into a ballerina’s tutu) is alone in her office room, deep in contemplation. Olive (ZsaZsa Padilla, in a role that has all the stereotypical traits of a villainous in-law) storms inside, shouting invectives at calm Melinda in Filipino, bastardized by a lousily obvious Chinese accent. Melinda asks Olive to leave, threatening her that if she does not do so within the five counts she generously grants her, she will wreak havoc. Olive shouts and shouts and before you know it, a catfight ensues, with Melinda slapping Olive’s face left and right, before releasing a close-fisted blow on Olive’s surprised mug. This is supposed to be the film’s crowning glory: the triumph of the underdog, the oppressed character’s sweet revenge against her frustrating oppressor. Sloppily conceived, directed with the bluntness of a troll, and terribly acted, the scene feels like it belongs in an afternoon comedy sketch than the big screen.

FLASHBACK: The year was 2003. Enthused by the buckets of cash earned by Mano Po, the matriarch decides to do a sequel. She hires Erik Matti, a maverick of a director who usually churns out handsome films for very little, and comes up with a story about a presidential daughter who ages to look like a cheated presidentiable’s wife. The film, since it was also released as an entry to the Metro Manila Film Fest, made money. While it was infinitely better than Lamangan’s film, it was essentially more of the same: convoluted plots, unnecessary characters, faked chinky eyes and bastardized Chinese.

Carol (Ciara Sotto, who looks, feels, and acts like a tree stump during the entire film), the eldest daughter of Melinda, and Stephanie (Heart Evangelista, who is so pretty I can forgive the slightness of her acting), the other daughter of Melinda who was brainwashed by evil Olive to spite her mother, are talking in a meeting room. Melinda enters and a confrontation with Stephanie ensues. Melinda pleads that Stephanie believe her, but the latter refuses. Carol, on the background, is silently crying. I feel nothing. Joel Lamangan, who industriously directs this Mano Po film notwithstanding the fact that for these kinds of stories that have innate visual potential, his films are drab, flat and plain soulless, is relentless in his mediocrity and relies primarily on a considerably witty interplay of dialogue to bring life to a scene that is otherwise as dull as an unused hollow block.

FLASHBACK: The year was 2004. Lamangan returns to helm the third installment to the series. It’s a love story between two middle-aged Chinese-Filipinos. The woman’s married and with children. The man is a widower. It’s nice to see Vilma Santos fall in love again, and that is basically the strength of the film. It’s the only Mano Po where it didn’t matter that the characters were Chinese.

Melinda is the daughter of a Chinese woman and a Filipino man and because of that, she is unlucky. She marries into a wealthy Chinese family, but since she’s only half-Chinese, the family disowns her husband (played with such unsurprising inconsequence by Christopher de Leon). Melinda, her husband, all of their children, and even Olive, who spites Melinda because of her not being a pure Chinese, all speak in broken Chinese. Daniel (Dennis Trillo), Stephanie’s fiancé who also speaks in broken Chinese despite being a pure Chinese, is an active participant in a human smuggling ring and becomes the impetus for much of the film’s blatant attempts to be current and pertinent. Lamangan doesn’t achieve pertinence but downright annoyance.

FLASHBACK: The fourth and fifth Mano Po films were blurs. Directed again by Lamangan with a lot less excitement than the first Mano Po and more of the “this is just a job” attitude of a corporate ant, the films resembled television productions because of how haphazardly they were conceived and executed. Banking primarily on star-power and the inevitable pull of the Metro Manila Film Festival, the films were moderate box-office successes, evidencing that the Filipino people have grown weary and wary of these incessant mechanisms of translating the richness of Filipino-Chinese culture as a mere fetish, a fad, an entertaining curiosity.

Mano Po 6: A Mother’s Love is such a bland film. While most people would consider it a harmless piece of entertainment, its effects are actually more devastating than the unhindered spreading of a disjointed contentment for substandard filmmaking in the country. It is first and foremost advertised as a mirror of the Chinese culture. Its gorgeous poster, backgrounded by what looks like a Chinese painting, with its posing actors and actresses draped in traditional chiong sam in the center, and Chinese characters adorned everywhere, can be considered as an invitation for an immersion on the culture and history of the Filipino-Chinese community. Unfortunately, the film, or for that matter, the entire film series, is simply a parade of stereotypes that only furthers alienation instead of planting an accurate understanding of the Filipino-Chinese culture. Bad and careless populist filmmaking coupled with ruthless advertising has proven to be very dangerous. Whether or not the intentions are pure is immaterial because subversion may be unintended, and history has proven that even the most innocuous of media can be converted as harsh propaganda.

I digress. As previously stated, Mano Po 6: A Mother’s Love is a bland film. It could have been more than bland but it is what it is. It is a display of Lamangan’s indubitable incapacity to tell a story since the movie’s plot, as simple as it is, is made unbearably convoluted by a stubborn reliance on flashbacks, narration, and other frustrating clichés. While Mo Zee’s cinematography had promise, it was rendered inutile by a lack of any aesthetic integrity (Lamangan is unsure whether he wants to be stately, or hip; and in one scene where Lamangan nearly succeeds in creating authentic tension with a long take that follows characters into an abandoned warehouse for an illegal deal that mutates into a shoot-out, he proves himself to be incompetent with one incoherent cut). Von De Guzman’s music sticks out as the best thing that ever came out of the film or the series (his theme to the Mano Po series, a thunderous melody of clear Chinese influence, is probably the most recognizable Filipino movie theme; it is that music that plays the string that connects the films together: grandiose, well thought-of, and rich).

Where then does the failure lie, in the film’s overworking director, because of his failure to create something fantastic out of individually potent elements; in the film’s producers, for being nothing more than a factory of subpar movie while they have all the resources to be cultural powerhouses; in the present Metro Manila Film Festival, for being a festival that caters only to capitalist sensibilities instead of actual artistic merits; in the mainstream audience, because they couldn’t care less of what’s being produced outside thus, reinforcing the notion of all these directors and producers that mediocrity is lucrative; in the so-called movie press, for either being totally dishonest and parasitic in how they promote these movies, arrogantly displaying their utter lack of taste and in turn, infecting the country with their ignominious brand of idiocy?

FLASHBACK: The date was December 20, 2009. I watched a film entitled Mano Po 6: A Mother’s Love. It’s utterly miserable. It made me miserable. Nonetheless, almost everybody enjoyed it, enjoyed seeing their idols act in the big screen, enjoyed being in the same theaters as the idols who are acting in the big screen. We remain unaware of this cultural bamboozlement.

(Cross-published in ClickTheCity, 25 December 2009 and Philippine Free Press, 9 January 2010)

The Arrival (2009)

Selasa, 22 Desember 2009

The Arrival (2009)

A Departure
A Review of Erik Matti’s The Arrival
By Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Erik Matti has an awkward position in Philippine cinema. Unlike Joel Lamangan, Jose Javier Reyes, Mark Reyes, and the many other so-called directors who have found a niche within the artless mainstream studio system by efficiently crafting movie after movie, raking in millions of hard-earned pesos by sheer star-power and stubborn adherence to stubborn formula, satisfying themselves with utter mediocrity, Matti has always been an oddball, a description I would normally detest if suddenly hurled at me but in this case, I would consider a subtle praise. His sensibilities are so unlike his contemporaries that his movies, no matter how innately inane they are, would always have a certain quirkiness, a palatable edge that would keep you glued to your seats. More than that, Matti is a reliable craftsman. His movies would always look, sound, and feel right even if the narrative is starting to crumble and fall apart. Jumping from one genre to another, Matti has made good films (Mano Po 2: My Home (2003) is undoubtedly the best of the series; Gagamboy (2004) is a delightfully self-aware rip-off of Sam Raimi’s famous Spider-Man films; Exodus: Tales From the Enchanted Kingdom (2005) had a few grand moments; and Pa-Siyam (2004) is arguably the best mainstream horror film made the past five years) but has never really exposed himself through his films.

Thus, The Arrival, a project that kept Matti busy the past few years, is valuable despite its blatant flaws. Matti considers the film as his most personal to date, and it shows. Unchained from studio interference, The Arrival is a free-flowing rollercoaster ride from proletariat desolation to sweet freedom. Leo, the film’s protagonist, played with considerable pathos by Dwight Gaston, is a lowly bookkeeper in Manila. Unmarried, curiously content of his lonesome and anonymous existence, and consistently visited by nightly dreams of a gorgeous woman running in slow motion from her lovely little bungalow to deliver to him an abruptly terminated kiss, he, after discovering a photograph of the same lovely little bungalow pinned in the mirror of his new barber, suddenly gets a tardy urge to be curious of what’s out there. Armed with the photograph that points to the town of Murcia as his destination, some money saved from several years of not having anyone to spend it on, and a foolhardy reliance on his nightly dream, he leaves his job, his apartment, his entire life in Manila to pursue the promise of the pictured house and the girl of his dreams who resides therein.

Matti’s stylized depiction of urban working class ennui, from the forlornness of his shared office space to the stark ordinariness of his bachelor’s hovel, turns the first half of the film into an unexpected comedy of sorts. His camera is unusually reserved, settling at showcasing Gaston’s distinctly characterless mug as the center of the action, or in this film’s case, inaction. His editing here is particularly patient, allowing the humor to seep through the cracks opened by the depicted idleness and boredom. It is probably the closest thing a Filipino director has come to emulating the cold and comfortless comedies of Norwegian auteur Aki Kaurismaki, whose most popular works involve people so desolate, they barely exist. Gaston complements Matti’s careful and precise direction with a performance that is so subtle, so slight, that it feels like he’d disappear from the picture and blend into the background. That actually happens; as when he’s invited to his neighbors’ nightly drinking sprees, he becomes a silent observer while his drinking buddies converse about life and women, and Matti’s camera jumps from one intoxicated face to another, to one bottle of beer to another, to one side dish to another, before settling on his morose face. Gaston’s is selflessly un-flashy performance of a role that would have any other actor diminish with overacting.

Murcia, a town not unlike any other provincial town in the country, becomes the setting of Leo’s titular metaphoric arrival. A sequence of events, starting with his expected encounter with the house of his recurring dreams and continuing with a momentary disappointment by the fact that the house’s female resident does not look like the vixen in his dream and later on, a realization that he has fallen deeply in love, pushes him to discard decades’ worth of insecurities and reprehensions. Leo’s delayed coming-of-age could have been utterly lovely. The fact that Leo is more than your traditional late bloomer, having only fully experienced the simple charms of living only in midlife, should have turned this tale into something more than charming, something more humorous, something more than clever. This is because Leo’s story is basically my story and the story of almost everyone I know who have delayed personal passions just to be in the middle of the rat race. The Arrival should not have been personal only to Matti but also to his intended audience. It had the opportunity to break hearts and change lives but it settled with displaying pretty pictures in cadence with pretty songs and melodies and earning a few chuckles out of vapid display of Filipino machismo in the midst of an abundant supply of alcohol.

Perhaps that is exactly the problem. The film is too organic, with Matti generously indulging his actors’ every impromptu conversation, every cracked joke, and every whimsical thought, resulting in a picture that takes too long to say what it wants to say. At best, The Arrival is an intriguing patchwork. It is fun. It is hip. It is melodic and at times, touching. It is just not as tightly weaved together that it is inevitable to appreciate it better in parts than as a whole. That said, The Arrival, while a welcome departure for a director who has told too many stories under the forced guidance of moneyed producers, is hardly the masterwork one expects from an expert craftsman who has now the opportunity to stretch his creativity beyond the borders of what will sell in the market. Notwithstanding my problems with the film, I sincerely wish this one sells and proves a point. There’s a lot more to Matti and this imperfect departure is just the beginning of something I hope is wonderful.

(First published in Philippine Free Press, 26 December 2009)

To Kill a Myna Bird

Minggu, 01 November 2009

To Kill a Myna Bird

To Kill a Myna Bird

Musings and Realizations Triggered by a Lackluster Staging of Spring Awakening

by Francis Joseph Cruz

My not so spring awakening happened when the screeches of a bird pushed me out of a dream I can no longer remember today. My mother was very proud of her new purchase: a black and awkward-looking fowl looking deeply miserable inside its cheap cage. Later, I would learn that the bird is the mythical myna bird; the bird that my mother used to tell me about, the bird with the ability to talk, even better than the common parrot. It never talked despite the several hours my mother spent persistently teaching it, carefully pronouncing each syllable of “magandang umaga” while the clueless bird stared at her blankly before proceeding to chirp its horrendously ugly chirp. After a few weeks, the bird mysteriously died, probably strangled by my mother out of frustration for denying her the pleasure of proving the mythical qualities of the myna bird.

Ever so persistent in proving her point, my mother brought us to a zoo that housed these myna birds. I admit, my interest for the bird, while dwindling because of the disappointment our erstwhile pet inflicted on me, was rekindled. There was a crowd outside the bird’s cage and several children were happily laughing as a strange screechy voice shouted insult after insult. I joined the mob, elated at first by the proficiency of this bird to mimic human speech. After a few minutes, my elation transformed into utter boredom, realizing that all the bird can say is “pangit ka,” and no matter how hard I try to hurl an insult back, no matter how emotionally charged my playful insults were or how teary-eyed I was while shouting the insults to the black bird, it can never ever throw me back a witty retort. In that little space in the zoo, I knew that I am still the master of human speech and no bird, not even that myna bird with its legendary speech skills, can take that place away from me.

I was ten then. Lea Salonga has just won the coveted Tony Award for her turn as Kim in Miss Saigon. The national attention to Salonga’s win, reminiscent of the many successes our musical artists have been reaping in the international scene, turned me into a Broadway freak, devouring every thing that came out of Broadway that reached my cassette player, from the semi-sacrilegious rock anthems of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar to the melodramatic reworking of La Pucini, Jonathan Larson’s Rent. Thankfully, I had outgrown my craving for these musicals. Sure, I still have the melodies and lyrics of Not While I’m Around from Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd in my mind, but they’re safely hidden there, only awaken when it’s time to show off in the confines of a rented room in one of Makati’s KTV bars. Inevitably, I neglected everything that was created post-Rent and I turned out to be okay, with no ludicrous ambitions of making it in Broadway.

I did make it to Broadway, nearly a decade after I ended my love affair with musical theater. I was there not as a dreamer but as a tourist, and as any tourist would do, I scavenged for the cheapest tickets to any Broadway show that was performing. Aside from the restagings of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera and the stagings of Disney’s popular cartoons The Lion King and The Little Mermaid, Broadway felt different, with titles I haven’t heard of. One of the titles I took a gamble on is Spring Awakening, which was proudly advertising its success at the Tony Awards. So there I was, with a New Yorker friend who was treating me to a show, entering the great unknown, revisiting the past I have completely forgotten, and admittedly, enjoying it.

Spring Awakening tackles an issue that might have been taboo in 1891, when Frank Wedekind wrote the play from which the musical would be based on, but is cliché during these modern times, when teenagers would have been sexually awakened at a very early age through the miraculous doings of modern media. The musical, like almost every other piece of literature or cinema that tackled the theme of sexual awakening against the backdrop of adult-caused repression, is unbearably angst-ridden, with its characters singing or declaiming invectives against the authorities they deem unfair. Despite the overwrought material, the musical bore an indubitable saving grace: the musical numbers that erupt out of the uneven narrative, transporting the characters from their period designations into what essentially are anachronistic subconscious musings, as characterized by a modern vocabulary and the charming ditties composed by Duncan Sheik. While I enjoyed the show tremendously while watching it, I’ve completely forgotten about it until news came out that the musical was to be staged in Manila by Atlantis Productions, the same group that brought Rent, Avenue Q, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee to Manila.

Sadly, the local staging of Spring Awakening feels hugely inadequate. My utter disappointment for the local staging is grounded not on the numerous bum notes that mutated Sheik’s rousing melodies (the major culprits here were Miguel Mendoza and JC Santos, who played piano teacher-fantasizing Georg and onstage masturbating Hanschen, respectively) or the consistently inconsistent energy levels that jar the supposedly seamless transitions from scene to scene, or the generally lackluster performances (again, Mendoza, and to a certain degree, Nicco Manalo, who cannot seem to comprehend the debilitating torment his character Moritz has and therefore resorts to mere copycatting of gestures and vocal intonations of the actor who originally played the character, are the culprits here), but on the consequent wastage that these productions carry with them as they are negotiated, imported, mounted, and publicized. My proposition seems to be an unfair one, especially for the thousands of theater lovers who crave for having a piece of Broadway or West End in Metro Manila, but the proposition, under the understanding that we are a nation that is struggling with a cultural identity that is slowly but surely being dissipated by post-colonial imperialism, is sound.

However, the unfortunate local staging of Spring Awakening allowed me to realize certain matters. During my hiatus from Broadway adoration, I was able to watch several local productions that while flawed, are all products of an independent creative energy. Just recently, Dulaang U.P.’s Atang, about a movie actress who attempts to get to know the legendary Atang dela Rama for a biopic on the National Artist, bowed down to resounding praise from both its audience and theater critics. Tanghalang Ateneo, on the other hand, has staged several of William Shakespeare’s famous plays, most of which are translated to the local vernacular and the most impressive of which are completely reimagined to fit the local culture. In 2004-2005, the same university-based theater group staged JB Capino’s Lam-ang, a cleverly staged musical that transformed the Ilocano epic into a romantic tale of faith, love, and waiting. Tanghalang Pilipino’s Zsa Zsa Zaturnnah, on the other hand, moved both homosexual and heterosexual theater goers to laughter and tears. There is just so much talent in the Philippines, so much material that have remained unstaged or unwritten because of lack of attention or lack of funding, that a local staging of a hugely popular Broadway play, only to be misconstrued, misunderstood, or even ignored because of the cultural gaps that remain unremedied and unadapted because of the strict codes and regulations that have to be followed by Atlantis Productions to be allowed to stage the Broadway musical in these shores, is just wrong.

It is saddening, really. Directors become mere supervisors. Actors resort to mimicry. Undoubtedly, there is talent onstage and offstage but when the material fails to reach you because of an impenetrable sheen of cultural disconnect, you can’t help but wish that these actors just break their obviously fake accents and manufactured gestures and just interpret their characters the way they have lived their own experiences with sexual repression or wish that director Chari Arespacochaga had more guts to actually direct instead of getting directions via email, phone calls, or the strict stipulations of whatever licensing agreement that was signed between Atlantis Productions and the owners of Spring Awakening. You seriously wonder if there is artistry or any independent thought in the production, and doubt whatever notion of creative sincerity in the musical since this opulent drivel can never be representative of Philippine theater. At most, it is purely entertainment whose successes in entertaining its audiences can be argued and refuted, but whose motivation for profit is indubitable. In the end, you cannot help but ask, are they artists or are they mere myna birds?

(First Published in Philippine Free Press, 31 October 2009)