Mariposa sa Hawla ng Gabi (2012)

Mariposa sa Hawla ng Gabi (Richard Somes, 2012)

English Title: Mariposa in the Cage of the Night

Manila has often found itself a central character in many Filipino films. Manila, in Lino Brocka’s Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon, 1975) and Macho Dancer (1988), is a place of failed promises, where innocent men and women from the provinces are sucked into a labyrinth of deceit and violence. On the other hand, Manila, as depicted in Ishmael Bernal’s Manila by Night (1980), is a city that has become home to the perpetually despaired, depressed, and disillusioned. Brillante Mendoza, in his films set in Manila like Tirador (Slingshot, 2007), Kinatay (The Execution of P, 2009) and Lola (Grandmother, 2009), the city is characterized by squalor, where dignity and humanity have become virtues amidst overwhelming corruption. The way Manila has been depicted in films has been rooted to the fact that its allure betrays. The city is a predator that feeds on the need for salvation, for respite.

Richard Somes’ Manila is similar in feel. The difference lies in the way he dresses up Manila. Gone are the hyper-realistic slums and its pitiful dwellers. Instead, he focuses on the labyrinthine alleyways that houses lost souls and strangers. The storyline of Mariposa sa Hawla ng Gabi (Mariposa in the Cage of the Night) is not unlike the many tales of provincial dreamers traveling from their rural villages to the city for the promise of a better life as depicted both in celluloid and real life. What differentiates Somes’ dark tale from the rest is how he molds his protagonist, a barrio lass in search for her missing sister, into the antithesis of the stereotypical victim.

Maya, played by Erich Gonzalez, one of the very few mainstream young actresses who is able to venture towards playing more complex roles, is not one who easily falls victim to the city’s empty charms. Her mission is not survival, but to ease her gnawing curiosities and suspicions as to the strange fate of her only sister. From there, she uncovers the hidden face of the city, one that ekes its existence out of vanity, greed, and pride, despite the abject lack of resources.

Despite the seemingly fantastic design of Mariposa sa Hawla ng Gabi, it remains to be one of Somes’ most personal works. It reflects his initial understanding of the big city. Somes, who hails from Bacolod City in one of the islands south of the capital, has moved to Manila to work. Although dark, damp and dreary, his version of Manila is littered with eccentricities that may or may not be exaggerations of what is really happening deep in the metropolis. Sausage factories are lively with flies and other crawlers feasting on fermenting meat and pig intestines scattered all over. Restaurants serve monkeys and other seemingly unpalatable delicacies. Plastic surgeons make do of tire sealants and other dubious liquids, transforming women into monsters, ready to be hired by the most daring of sexual adventurers. Somes’ film bizarrely charms through its showcase of the colorful depravities that thrive in the city. Framed by a deepening mystery that comprehends the outrageousness of it all, the film outlines the very extent and margins of our humanity the same way it depicts the hidden dirt and grime of the city it lives in.

With Mariposa sa Hawla ng Gabi, Somes adds another dimension in the ever-growing scope of Manila’s character. Brocka showed Manila’s deceit. Bernal showed Manila’s despair. Mendoza showed Manila’s stubborn resilience. Somes showed Manila’s blatant insanity. The film more than just offers a gripping descent into the exotic unknown, it also opens up to a perspective of a city that has too often been relegated by cinema to the boredom of reality.

(First published in the programme of 15th Edition of the Far East Film Festival in Udine.)

I Do Bidoo Bidoo (2012)

I Do Bidoo Bidoo (Chris Martinez, 2012)

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

A Moment in Time (2013)

A Moment in Time (Emmanuel Palo, 2013)

Emmanuel Palo’s A Moment in Time is an exercise in barefaced mediocrity. There is absolutely nothing in the film that exhibits any effort from the filmmakers to be anything other than fodder. Like an overgrown child who is unable to free himself of his parents’ smothering care, the film desperately sticks to formula, inexplicably afraid of exploring new ground. Sadly, the formula has been used and reused to the point of tedium. The characters are nothing but predictable reincarnations of the countless perfect men and women whose convoluted backgrounds have temporarily separated them from their fated loves and in turn, bored their audiences to tears. While the trend nowadays is to reinvent the wheel, to tweak the formula to at least feel a bit fresh, Palo stubbornly insists on yawn-worthy safety.

Perhaps, he thinks he can fool his audience with for cosmetics. He does situate a good part of the humdrum love story in Amsterdam where its lovers can chase each other around in bicycles against vistas littered with tulip fields and windmills. Unfortunately, the foreign city is nothing but a stage. Its gorgeous vistas, famous spots and cultural details are nothing more but empty props, hardly different from the nauseating gloss, the vapid sentimental score, and the hammy acting that identify the film as just another one of those romances that are pretty in the outside but are drab in the inside.

The story is miserably flat. It concerns the eventual relationship of Patrick (Coco Martin), a struggling artist, and Jillian (Julia Montes), the musically-inclined daughter of a very wealthy couple. They meet in a commuter train, where Jillian stalks her crush from school, and Patrick chances upon her and instantly falls for her, prompting him to paint portraits of her all over the walls of Manila. After a handful of coincidental meetings, they finally fall in love with each other, but not without the challenges brought about by Jillian’s worrying parents and the looming revelation regarding the accident of Patrick’s mother which eventually killed her.

Martin, whose expressive face used to be Brillante Mendoza’s canvass for his various portrayals of tortured morality, succumbs to being voluntarily cheapened by blatant commercialism. Given a character that is too two-dimensional to be explored, his interpretation of being romantic has been duly limited to either being an embarrassing creep or a reprehensible sadist. Burdened by an unimaginative script that overdoes the fantasy-driven tone of escapist cinema, Martin comes off as morbidly dishonest, not exactly the proper character one roots for in romantic movies. While he manages to make his teary-eyed stares into nothingness evoke a certain pain and longing, he mouths his lines with the earnestness of an obvious swindler, making Montes’ earnest efforts to reciprocate the attention absolutely confounding.

As with all commercial romances, A Moment in Time dwells too much in the convolutions of a relationship that is really not worth telling. The conflicts have the sheen of depth and gravity, but are ultimately betrayed by a resolution that is all too easy and convenient. In the end, the emotion one feels is not akin to love or any of its other manifestations. It is bewilderment and confusion. It is frustration. After all the effort of filmmakers, some of whom share credits in this film, to raise the bar in filmmaking and film watching, films like A Moment in Time are still produced, and worse, released to further dumb down the mainstream audience.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Jungle Love (2012)

Jungle Love (Sherad Anthony Sanchez, 2012)

At first glance, Sherad Anthony Sanchez’s Jungle Love seems needlessly indulgent. Rebelling against traditional concepts of what is deemed to be acceptable and tasteful in cinema, the film is littered with exposed flesh, dark, wrinkled, blonzed or tattooed, interacting with each other in wild abandon. Its loose narrative deflects any easy reading that could defend the abundant sexuality. If it weren’t for the deliciously ambiguous atmosphere so efficiently conjured by the images framed and lighted by cinematographers Malay Javier and Gym Lumbera and the mystical sounds inflicted by scorer Teresa Barrozo, Sanchez’s film could have been something more akin to exotic erotica than art.

Jungle Love, of course, is far from being plainly titillating. It is draped in irreverence, starting with its repetitious use of a bastardized version of a popular religious song, the lyrics of which is heavy with biting and humorous stabs against the hypocrisy of the church, the most prominent social institution that overvalues sexual morality. The film, with its unabashed exploration of sex without the benefit of love, romance or other man-made emotions, thrusts its audience into a world where men and women are either predators or preys consumed by an inexplicable and inescapable lust. The jungle, aside from being the literal wilderness where the film’s characters get lost into, is also that seductive call to escape from the bounds of what is commonly conceived to be as civilized and to be stripped of society-imposed restraint.

Sanchez succeeds in turning his characters, the well-off hikers (Martin Riffer and Mae Bastes) who find themselves lost in the jungle with their guide (Aldrin Sapitan), the desperate mistress (Gloria Morales) who steals her lover’s baby into the jungle, and the bored soldier (Edgardo Amar) who becomes attracted to a mysterious jungle dweller, into vessels of various repressed longings too outrageous to be let out in the open. The film relishes in sweat and hormones, in things that drive humans to break free from the chains of dull civilization.

Interestingly, for a movie that is unembarrassed in depicting nudity and sexual acts, Jungle Love is most sensual during the moments when it lures its audience to itself intertwined with the characters’ intoxicating indulgences. Its utmost pleasures are experienced during the scenes where the characters are hindered from pleasure, as a result of what seems to be either acts of oppression or playful seduction. The first few sequences feature three of the characters shown alone, but presumably conversing with an offscreen subject. Despite the very limited visuals, Sanchez populates the scenes with a very palpable sense of oppression that is surprisingly erotic. The physical attraction is adequately replaced by mind games, of words and gestures that taunt and tease. The effect is truly remarkable in a way it mirrors how the unseen and the unfelt have a tremendous effects on the deprived psyche.

The film acknowledges sex as a tool for oppression, for power and control. Despite the dissipating traces of social order, of class and religion as the jungle further consumes all the various characters, the film still manages expose the glaring gaps that divide humanity. Sanchez miraculously does it with a wicked sense of humor and a glorious appreciation of the delightful dangers of letting go of human inhibitions and giving into the basest of bodily pleasures. Jungle Love accomplishes the nearly impossible task of turning what could be a lewd and perverted showcase into a mirror of our innate desire to venture into the unknown, to abandon the clutches of good taste, and to get lost in the limitless jungle where men are but beasts among other beasts.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

El Presidente (2012)

El Presidente (Mark Meily, 2012)

A lot has already been said and written about the historical inaccuracies of Mark Meily’s El Presidente, how the glamour project dastardly re-portrayed historical figures to suit enlarged egos and their enlarged pockets. Andres Bonifacio (played with a notable lack of charm by Cesar Montano), the founder of the Philippine revolution who was tragically killed by his fellowmen, is depicted as a severely sore loser. Antonio Luna (played, complete with gritting teeth, by Christopher de Leon), a top-ranking general of the revolutionary government who was murdered, is shown to be cruel, despotic and deserving of his embarrassing death as a matter of narrative logic. Emilio Aguinaldo (played with uncharacteristic and unbelievable nobility by Jorge Estregan), the titular president, reaps all the rewards of Meily’s unapologetic cinematic slander, coming out as an indisputable hero as sanctioned by the motherland herself.

In fairness to Meily, he is simply a writer-director shackled by the demands of producers. He has Aguinaldo’s autobiography, a tome written by the first president late in his life to wash away the sins that have been attributed to him, as blueprint for his screenplay. It is inevitable that the film birthed from the pages of an unabashedly biased account would be sided and slanted.

Meily’s biggest fault is not the fact that it portrays a version of history that is unpopular, but the glaring ineptitude he shapes such portrayal. El Presidente is not only awfully directed, it is also intrinsically confused, unable to determine what it wants to be or what it opts to focus on. The film needlessly details decades’ worth of information within an already overgenerous running time. Such unwise ambitiousness leads it to become unreasonably episodic and absolutely laborious to sit through.

Very telling of the film’s confusion is that it utilizes two introductions. El Presidente opens with an action-packed precursor to the narrative’s turning point, featuring Aguinaldo attempting to evade his eventual capture. After the end of the much-choreographed sequence, Meily proceeds to jump several years before, where Aguinaldo, in his youth, encounters a mysterious old woman who predicts his future in terms of the three women he will be in love with.

The two introductions preview Meily’s intentions with the film. They expose his goal of creating an action-packed historical film that is framed within a storyline that is supposedly laced with romance. The film in turn features plentiful battles, embellished with gunfights and explosions, some of which are played in inexplicable slow motion. Curiously absent is the romance. The women of Aguinaldo’s life are nothing more than decorations, two-dimensional characters that are propelled to the limelight by the sole fact that they are played by famous actresses. El Presidente is just indisputably dull. It is unable to muster enough movement or excitement to be a compelling war film. More importantly, it is sorely drab, unromantic and sexless.

Instead of creating a film that either convinces or creates debates, Meily only stirs emotions because its portrayals are all too easy and convenient for such controversial pronouncements. In the end, El Presidente is nothing more than an annoyance. It does not deserve a riot.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Ad Ignorantiam (2012)

Ad Ignorantiam (Armando Lao, 2012)

Armando Lao’s Ad Ignorantiam can be divided into three unequal parts. The first part, tediously shot real time, details one afternoon in a busy city intersection where a hapless victim (Ina Feleo) of snatching, and her friend (Kimmy Maclang) confusedly scour nearby nooks and alleyways for the snatcher. They end up accusing a man (Kristoffer King), who was at the wrong place in the wrong time, of the crime.

The second part, which serves to frame the first part within the structure of a court proceeding, displays an methodical and undramatic depiction of what happens inside courtrooms, where the frazzled characters, who are now litigants, of the first part are now joined by lawyers (Raquel Villavicencio and Allan Paule), a judge (Archie Adamos), and the overwrought procedure and decorum required in legal proceedings. The third part has a Supreme Court justice (Laurice Guillen) reciting the decision of the highest court on what seems to be an appeal from the decision of the court as depicted in the second part.

The three parts are arbitrarily weaved together, creating a disjointed narrative that attempts to expose the dangerous inadequacies of the Philippines’ criminal justice system. Lao experiments with moods and textures. The first part is shot enunciating the grit and agitation of the frenzied and stressed participants of that afternoon’s unfortunate incident. The second part is handled with marked sobriety in comparison to the first part’s lack of restraint. Its additional parties, the judge and the lawyers, are depicted with emotionless professionalism, remarkably removed from the litigants’ heightened vulnerability in the first part.

The last part is framed and shot with a hint of sarcasm and irreverence. The litigants have completely disappeared, replaced within a static frame by a mighty magistrate who is reciting her final judgment with an omnipotence that is oblivious to probable truths and personal plights. Lao treads a distance, beginning with the suffocating intimacy of the streets towards the callous and stoic resolve of so-called justice. It emphasizes how much of the humanity, of the compassion, of the truth has been lost to jargon and procedure as the criminal case is passed from one forum to another.

Lao’s experiment is intellectually stimulating, at best. Like a puzzle that takes extreme patience to solve, Ad Ignorantiam is more a chore than anything else. The rewards it promises are however inadequate. It is emotionally impoverished, lacking the anger or desperation to convert its noble goals from a mere artistic springboard into potent advocacy. It exists merely as an inert showcase of a third world inefficiency and its dramatic consequences. Despite the gravity of the issue it decides to tackle, it struggles to be pertinent because it busies itself with its style and technique, no matter how noxious they are to the senses, than actual substance.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Indelible Memories from 2012

Indelible Memories from 2012

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

There isn’t any other year in Philippine cinema where the aroma of death is as apparent and overwhelming as 2012. The year saw the untimely demise of four of the country’s film pioneers: Mario O’Hara, an amazing actor, writer, and director whose frequent collaborations with National Artist Lino Brocka are eclipsed by his very own masterworks; Marilou Diaz-Abaya, one of the country’s most beloved directors whose respect for the power of cinema manifested in her very tasteful and mannered works; Celso Ad Castillo, whose unique genius and madness reflected in the many timeless masterpieces he directed; and Dolphy, who gave several generations of Filipinos the ability to surpass life’s difficulties with laughter.

The year’s more notable independent productions also deal with death: Jun Lana’s Bwakaw, the country’s hope for the very elusive Oscar trophy, has an old gay man suffering through the unremarkable last years of his life; Dwein Baltazar’s Mamay Umeng, a striking debut, exposes ennui in a geriatric’s patient wait to cross-over to the afterlife; Loy Arcenas’ REquieme, the theater director’s follow-up to the lovely Nino, has tales of mortality humorously intertwine by fate; Emmanuel Palo’s Sta. Nina has a once dormant town burst with life when a father uncovers the incorruptible corpse of his daughter who died several years ago; Mes de Guzman’s Diablo literally has the shadow of death, or some other entity, lingering over a lonely mother.

The year’s more prominent documentaries tackle the same subject: Michael Collins’ Give Up Tomorrow has then death row convict Paco Larranaga ponder over his own mortality amidst the threat of being executed over a crime he supposedly did not commit; Benito Bautista’s Harana laments the dying art of serenade; Jay Abello’s Pureza: The Story of Negros Sugar laments the impending death of a national industry and an island’s extravagant way of life.

This gnawing awareness of mortality seems to be a repercussion of this year’s much-ballyhooed doomsday. However, the country’s more prominent commercial studios, the unashamed peddlers of fairy tales and fantasies, seem unfazed by the world’s impending end, churning out films that are nothing more than temporary alleviations to the world’s pressing concerns. Their rom-coms remain predictably breezy, tweaking only certain aspects of the formula to feign edginess. Their comedies remain predictably brazen, primarily reliant on cruel wit and dull craftsmanship. Their horrors remain predictably brooding, taking each and every opportunity to shock with tricks and noises because true horror takes too much time and creativity to conjure. Then there is that rising subgenre of infidelity films like Erik Matti’s Rigodon, Olivia’s Lamasan’s The Mistress and Nuel Naval’s A Secret Affair that allow each and every bored wife and horny husband to vicariously experience through the fake stories played out by exaggeratedly attractive stars the thrills and chills of an extra-marital affair.

Despite the stubborn and fatalistic mood of this cinematic year, it is still a year marked with painful revelations, beautiful reunions and admirable persistence. It is a year that had Cinemalaya shaken and the myth of its humble grant and immense prestige challenged. It is also the year that had the long-absent Nora Aunor acting for film again and reaping accolades as a result. It is the year that had the government’s film agency try its hand in grant-giving and film-producing, had local government units take a stab in investing in the filmic arts, and ordinary film enthusiasts take an active role in filmmaking by contributing in various kickstarter campaigns.

I don’t think it is death that marks this year in Philippine cinema. It is memory. It is resilience. It is struggle. We remember the past and our fallen heroes. Film festivals like Cinemalaya and filmmakers like Emerson Reyes succeed despite adversity. Filipino cinema is as vibrant as ever. In the most indelible image from Lav Diaz’s Florentina Hubaldo CTE, one of the best films from this year, we see a woman who is afflicted with a disease that makes it hard for her to remember painfully reciting her name, her situation, her story. This year, Philippine cinema is that poor woman, struggling to tell its story, so it won’t be forgotten, not even after the end of the world.

(A shortened version was first published in Rogue, December issue as "A Year of Local Cinema.")

2012: Philippine Cinema

2012: Highlights in Philippine Cinema 

It was a year marked by struggles. 2012 saw many independently-produced films compete at the local box office, away from the captive audience of the many film festivals that either gave birth to them or granted them a screening. Lawrence Fajardo’s Posas (Shackled), Marie Jamora’s Ang Nawawala (What Isn’t There), Brillante Mendoza’s Captive, were only a few of those films that had their supporters storming Facebook and Twitter, begging everybody to give the films a chance at commerce. The audience simply wasn’t there. They weren’t falling in line, purchasing tickets, and spreading the word. Perhaps they were too busy watching trailers of the latest entry to the various Hollywood franchises, too addicted to the inanities of the local mainstream, too indifferent to care.

It was a year when Philippine cinema was attached to charity. Watch Chris Martinez’s I Do Bidoo Bidoo, Jun Lana’s Bwakaw, Antoinette Jadaone’s Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay, and Brillante Mendoza’s Sinapupunan (Thy Womb) to show you care for the ailing film industry. If money is the sole barometer for the industry’s life, then let it die, I say. It’s about time we separate cinema from the industry that has been declared ailing since we allowed capitalists to have the final say on its condition. From the perspective of an observer who is ignorant of the dirty mechanics of the filmmaking industry except the merits of its various products, money is but a nagging hindrance, an obstacle to noble artistic ends.

However, capital is still a reality that needs to be addressed. It has been the cause of various conflicts of 2012. The very definition of the capital grant of Cinemalaya was questioned when the artistic integrity of Emerson Reyes’ MNL 143 was threatened by the film festivals’ leaders who were only protecting the integrity of their so-called investment. Reyes successfully gave birth to his first film, not by surrendering his vision, but with the help of monetary and creative contributions from both strangers and friends. A number of other films were made with a similar approach, cognizant of the monetary requirements of filmmaking but never too beholden to it to make profit-making an immediate goal.

The best films of 2012 are characterized not by how much money they have earned or how many people have seen them but by the qualities they have that persist to exist despite the lack of money in their making, the lack of desire to make money, or the eventual lack of moneymaking attributes. Joyce Bernal’s Of All the Things is made from the same mold from which majority of the romantic comedies that pollute local cinema with unoriginality and banality are fashioned from. What sets Of All the Things apart from the rest is that it resembles more the old-fashioned romances that Bernal used to make than the ones made recently. Bernal manages to inject the film with a milieu, and make use of her actors’ off-screen personalities, the very fact that Aga Muhlach and Regine Velasquez are way past the age of being crazy in love, to benefit the film.

Marie Jamora’s Ang Nawawala is clearly a product of a very specific experience, one that belongs exclusively to a social class where conflicts arising from the lack of economic capability are exchanged with conflicts arising from the lack of identity. It is that quality of the film that made it extremely accessible to some and reproachable for others. Gino Santos’ The Animals comes from the same experience. While Jamora seems to be entirely comfortable with its cliquish sheen, Santos approaches it with some sort of rebellious cynicism that makes his film viscerally disturbing.

Lana’s Bwakaw is perhaps the most celebrated film on old age, considering that it was a few inches away from nabbing a slot in the Oscars best foreign film race. However, the film, despite its praiseworthy pacing and acting from Eddie Garcia, is predictably bathed in the same sentimentality that is showered to the elderly. Dwein Baltazar’s Mamay Umeng, on the other hand, makes that difficult decision to be simply about waiting. Its storytelling is amazingly measured, providing only enough to satisfy its feature length status without overreaching to be more than what it should be. Mes de Guzman’s Diablo is also leisurely in its pacing its story of an old woman who has been left alone by her boys who have become too busy fighting over their inheritance. De Guzman withholds drama and instead aptly likens the experience of the elderly to an atmospheric horror film.

Adolfo Alix, Jr.’s Kalayaan (Wildlife) is also about waiting. More than waiting, it is also about man’s need to interact and relate lest he fall into self-abuse. Alix, without declaring it, touches on myths, on politics, on the larger things that affect individuals. Vincent Sandoval’s Aparisyon (Apparition) is set in a period of political turmoil, in a convent that attempts to shield itself from being penetrated by outside forces. Sandoval however valiantly focuses not on the footnote in history he has imagined and efficiently created but on the grays of morality the religious are faced with. Brillante Mendoza’s Sinapupunan has both nature and culture on the spotlight. What permeates however is the humanity of people who are fated to live ironic lives. Arnel Mardoquio’s Ang Paglalakbay ng Bituin sa Gabing Madilim (A Star’s Journey into the Dark Night) is perhaps the most honest depiction of the war in Mindanao, with perpetrators and victims trapped in a world of confusion.

Despite its many apparent imperfections, Christian Linaban’s Aberya is that kind of film that is too audacious to be ignored. It is visually and aurally dynamic, providing its four unequal parts irresistible verve. However, Pam Miras’ Pascalina, with its uniquely pixelated visuals, excites the current independent cinematic landscape that has become too concerned with fake gloss and abundance of pixels to have an authentic soul. Miras’ first feature film is full of soul, reimagining the overused aswang myth into an accurate observation of a woman whose humdrum urban life is as lo-fi as the visuals used to depict her story.

Jungle Love is perhaps Sherad Sanchez’s most accessible feature. Its loosely told story of individuals getting lost in the jungle is spiced up by its frank portrayals of longing and lust. Surprisingly, Sanchez’s unapologetic indulgences fit perfectly into his milieu of the strange and the unknown. Exploration has never been this pleasurable.

Gym Lumbera’s two experimental features, Taglish and Anak Araw (Albino), are as different from each other as night and day. Taglish is clearer in its purpose, the way it dissects colonialism through its most apparent symptom: language. By visualizing the corrupting state of the national tongue, Lumbera opens up his personal fears, since he himself is a product of that national duality. Anak Araw treads the same observation, but this time, with more visual wit, and surprisingly, a sizable dose of humor. Its intentions are also more elegantly laid out, paced as if it were a dream where vivid memories of rural life and Tagalog songs sung with American accents are weaved together with figments of remarkable poetic sense.

Michael Collins’ Give Up Tomorrow is often criticized because Marty Syjuco, the documentary’s producer, is a relative of Paco Larranaga, the documentary’s subject. I disagree. The disclosed relationship between the makers and the subject instead gives the documentary urgency and emotional energy, which then turned the documentary into one of the most important films of the year. The same urgency infects Jay Abello’s Pureza: The Story of Negros Sugar while taking a look at the inevitable connection between the province’s sugar industry and dying aristocracy from a perspective of one of its participants. Benito Bautista’s Harana is a well-crafted ode to a musical and romantic tradition that is fated to die as soon as its practitioners have passed on.

Lav Diaz’s Pagsisiyasat sa Gabing Ayaw Lumimot (An Investigation on the Night that Won’t Forget) has Erwin Romulo, the late Alexis Tioseco’s best friend, recall the events after the critic and his girlfriend’s untimely death in their home in Quezon City. Diaz makes use of one long take to allow Romulo an uninterrupted narration of the events. The pain of recalling is palpable. Romulo is transformed into a classic Diaz protagonist, a man who is continuously burdened by the grave injustices of society. Like Romulo, Florentina, played beautifully by Hazel Orencio, struggles to recall, her name, her life, her history. She gazes into Diaz’s camera in the hopes that cinema can save her.

It is that single scene in Diaz’s Florentino Hubaldo, CTE that summarizes what cinema should be. It is not about the amount of money that would keep Philippine cinema, or at least the business aspect of it, surviving. It will continue to survive, as evidenced by the millions of pesos, padded or not, that have been reported as profit from the junkfood the Philippines eagerly devour. The question is who is in it and who has been eased out. I frankly don’t care. Perhaps those who have been eased out from the industry can do something better and start making real cinema, not merely products that pander to the country’s collective ignorance.

Top 20 Feature Films of 2012:

1. Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (Lav Diaz)
2. Give Up Tomorrow (Michael Collins)
3. Pagsisiyasat sa Gabing Ayaw Lumimot (An Investigation on the Night that Won't Forget, Lav Diaz)
4. Jungle Love (Sherad Anthony Sanchez)
5. Anak Araw (Albino, Gym Lumbera)
6. Ang Paglalakbay ng mga Bituin sa Gabing Madilim (A Star’s Journey into the Dark Night, Arnel Mardoquio)
7. Pascalina (Pam Miras)
8. Kalayaan (Wild Life, Adolfo Alix, Jr.)
9. Sinapupunan (Thy Womb, Brillante Mendoza)
10. Aparisyon (Apparition, Vincent Sandoval)
11. Harana (Benito Bautista)
12. MNL 143 (Emerson Reyes)
13. Diablo (Mes de Guzman)
14. Mamay Umeng (Dwein Baltazar)
15. Aberya (Christian Linaban)
16. Pureza: The Story of Negros Sugar (Jay Abello)
17. Taglish (Gym Lumbera)
18. The Animals (Gino Santos)
19. Ang Nawawala (What Isn’t There, Marie Jamora)
20. Of All the Things (Joyce Bernal)

(Cross-published in ABS-CBNNews.com)

Sinapupunan (2012)

Sinapupunan (Brillante Mendoza, 2012)

International Title: Thy Womb

Sinapupunan (Thy Womb) opens with a woman giving birth. Shaleha (Nora Aunor), a midwife, accompanied by her husband Bangas-an (Bembol Roco), assists the soon-to-be-mother in delivering her child. Shaleha then routinely requests for the baby’s umbilical cord. She brings the keepsake from the afternoon home, hangs it alongside all the other cords she has collected from the many mothers she helped. The hanging cords in her home are ostensibly a record of her noble profession. Ironically, it also serves as a painful reminder of the one nagging imperfection of her marriage with her husband, which is her inability to bear children for him. Nature has fated her with infertility. However, her culture has given her the opportunity to remedy it. By finding another suitable wife for her husband, she is able to fulfil what for her is the most essential of her familial duties.

Mendoza strips the film of most external conflicts, concentrating instead on the nuances of infertile Shaleha’s relationship with her husband as she sets out to find a second wife for her husband to bear a child for him. Set in Tawi-Tawi, the Philippines’ southernmost isles which have become infamous for being torn by warring government and Muslim secessionist forces, the film valiantly avoids sensationalizing war and instead delves into the human condition of a people who have grown accustomed to military presence. At one point, a wedding dance is abruptly stalled by violence. When the shock and confusion dissipates, the dance continues, almost as if nothing happened. Mendoza has effectively created a believable world wherein military conflict has weaved itself into the culture by sheer familiarity.

Sinapupunan indulges in its depiction both nature and culture. Mendoza does not hide his fascination, relentlessly breaking his storytelling to make way for gorgeous images of endless seascapes and colorful tradition. He takes time revelling at whale sharks under the sea, or turtles’ eggs hidden dearly beneath Tawi-Tawi’s remote beaches. He stages elaborate Muslim ceremonies and rituals. Surprisingly, the film never feels as if it is treading too closely to exoticizing its subject locale. The overt visualization of both nature and culture seems essential to Mendoza’s goals of exploring the interactions of culture and nature and the people who rely heavily on them for both sustenance and identity.

Henry Burgos’ screenplay is admirably spare. It is unafraid of being judged not by the lyricism of the words spoken by the depicted ordinary folk, but by the measured silence. It allows the couple’s relationship to simmer, to take root, to emotionally attach to the peering audience, before exposing the fissures that will unavoidably grow bigger. It masterfully orchestrates heartbreak, without any hint of artifice or machination. It gives Mendoza enough breathing room to scrutinize the world, which he does so without hardly any hesitation.

Aunor, who has been absent from Philippine cinema for several years despite being renowned as one of its living acting treasures, is the film’s beating heart. Her dutiful portrayal of Shaleha is both spontaneous and intelligent. She cleverly interacts with her surroundings, not as an actress inhabiting a role but as a human being naturally reacting to very real scenarios. When the film requires silence, she makes use of her eyes, which seamlessly hypnotize the audience to believe her character’s plight and sacrifice.

Sinapupunan is observably quainter, tamer, and more mannered than Mendoza’s previous works. However, it still resonates with the same removed yet still potent anger that only an artist who wants to depict truth from a distance can evoke. The film ends with more questions than answers, as it has to. The story, which is essentially the film’s element that begs for a proper ending, is but a tool for Mendoza to frame the grand ironies that afflict humanity. When Shaleha asks for that final umbilical cord, she has finally severed the tie that has severely burdened her. We can only cry because we are also human.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Melodrama Negra (2012)

Melodrama Negra (Maribel Legarda, 2012)

Like Loy Arcenas, Maribel Legarda has several years’ worth of theater experience to guide her first foray into filmmaking. Unlike Arcenas, whose first film is from an original screenplay by Rody Vera, Legarda chose to adapt for the screen an award-winning stageplay by Allan Lopez. Interestingly, Nino, Arcenas’ first film embraces theatricality, limiting most of its moments within the striking dialogues spewed by the characters with such exaggerated extravagance. Legarda’s Melodrama Negra, on the other hand, abandons theatricality in favor of gloss, spectacle and other cinematic excesses. Remnants of the material and Legarda’s stage roots linger, creating an uneasy mix of both theatrical and cinematic excesses.

Melodrama Negra opens with three wandering ghosts (Gee Canlas, Gerald Napoles and Bong Cabrera), wondering what they need to do to move on. Through flashbacks, their respective lives, all of which are typical sob stories designed primarily to grant humanity to those who are no longer human, are revealed. Their deaths are conveniently connected to the individual stories of the film’s living characters: an good-hearted thug (Gerhard Acao) who falls for a prostitute (Sheng Belmonte), a group of high school sociopaths (Nicco Manalo, Cindy Garcia, Ria Garcia) who stage the kidnapping of a congressman’s son and his girlfriend, and their respective respectable parents who have hidden monstrosities. Legarda fervently weaves the stories together, crafting a light-hearted and mostly cinematic take on the innate darkness of humanity.

Eskrimadors-director Kerwin Go turns cinematographer here, giving the material a palatable-enough look, appropriating for the material just enough polish to drown the bleakness. Myke Salomon’s musical score gives the picture a likable upbeat feel. Overall, Melodrama Negra has the tone of a genuine crowd-pleaser. Its humor is amiable. Its drama is relatively efficient.

Legarda is clearly in the business of entertaining. However, it is that eagerness to entertain that bars the film from being nothing more than a well-crafted offbeat caper. The film’s morbid impressions are nothing more than embellishments that serve the purpose of satisfying a curiosity or the need to be different. Its descent to the darkness of men feels false, unable to linger beyond the four corners of the darkened theater.

Melodrama Negra stands out when it doesn’t overreach, when it remains grounded, exploring emotions and relationships that are elementarily human. It leaps when it bares the grief of a drag queen who laments his foster son’s death through an impromptu ballad sung among friends. It flies when it exposes a sister’s concern for her younger sister who is traumatized by their sexually abusive father. It radiates when it tells the blossoming romance between a misunderstood bodyguard and his master’s favorite hooker. Unfortunately, these very human scenes are but half of the experience. The rest is enveloped in tolerable but ultimately forgettable artifice, the same artifice that can only work on stage, where the props, the acting, the lighting, and the sets are as large and as loud as the convolutions of Lopez’s theater-bound material.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)