Batang West Side (2001)

Batang West Side (Lav Diaz, 2001)
English Title: West Side Avenue

Batang West Side (West Side Avenue) represents a turning point in Lav Diaz's career. Unrestricted by the demands of commercial filmmaking, Diaz was able to establish himself as an uncompromising and relentless filmmaker. He populates the film's visuals with frequent motionless and staggered shots of fractured souls framed against the desolate and artificial landscapes of New Jersey, and rare close-ups (and when Diaz does indulge in a close-up in the latter part of the film, particularly of Joel Torre as snowflakes settle and melt on his sorrowful face, the effect is utterly tremendous). Shot by cinematographer Miguel Fabie III utilizing whatever light is available over a period of eight months in New Jersey, Batang West Side looks absolutely mesmerizing. The film is elegant in its visual austerity, something that has since then defined Diaz's unique brand of aesthetics, which is always reflective of the crises that his characters seek salvation from. From the sleepy streetlamp-lit alleyways of Batang West Side's foreign cityscape that enunciate the internal turmoils of the troubled immigrants that populate them, Diaz will similarly afflict the endless roads of the Philippine countryside, the farmlands and mines, the typhoon-ravaged towns with the vast emotional weight of his embattled characters.

It's length of five hours is both famous and justified. Of course, compared to Diaz's later features like Ebolusyong ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino (Evolution of a Filipino Family, 2004), Heremias (2006), Kagadanan sa Banwaan Ning Mga Engkanto (Death in Land of Encantos, 2007) and Melancholia (2008) whose running times range from nine to eleven hours, Batang West Side is very short. Diaz's editing is pitch perfect with scenes that extend to several minutes precisely to immerse the audience into the film's disparate reality. The prolonged moments, mostly draped with ominous silence and staticity, invite arduous contemplation on the matters tackled head-on by Diaz. Joey Ayala's sparingly used score has a haunting effect. His melodies are subtle reminders of the country is totally invisible in the film but perpetually lingering.

Torre plays Juan Mijares, an investigator who is tasked to solve the murder of Hanzel Harana (Yul Servo) in West Side Avenue. The investigation serves as mere backdrop. As Mijares delves deeper into Harana's murder, the film further dissolves into a meditation of the ills that burdens the Filipino. Harana dies a defeated youth, plucked from the Philippines by his mother supposedly to rescue him from the motherland's contagious deterioration only to be lured into the shabu (or crystal meth, the drug of choice, cheap and readily available, of the impoverished Filipino youth) trade and the nightly and often violent escapades of the street gangs of New Jersey.

The participants in Harana's life and death in New Jersey are similarly situated. Lolita (Gloria Diaz), Harana's mother, in order to support her family in the Philippines, travels to the United States to marry a wealthy old man, who has been left physically incapacitated by age and disease. Her husband's mansion becomes stage to a Bergmanesque chamber drama, where Lolita is held captive both by her marital affiliation with her useless husband and her asphyxiating love affair with the Filipino helper (Arthur Acuña). As her reason for leaving the Philippines and entering into a loveless marriage was rendered moot by her son's eventual reversal of ideals and demise, her story warps into an existential void where her sacrifice and suffering become pointless. Fundamentally involved are Harana's grandfather, Abdon (Ruben Pizon), and girlfriend, Dolores (Priscilla Almeda), who offer faint glints of hope to Harana's misdirected youth. Their inevitable failure further emphasizes the painful futility of change in a culture that is headstrong with regards to its vices although stubbornly persistent in its struggle for salvation.

Diaz drifts further from the investigation, as Mijares' personal conflicts become more apparent. As the investigation of Harana's murder mutates into the indictment of the Filipino psyche, his initial recurring dreams of his mother (Angel Aquino) graduate into violent nightmares, torturing him to seek redemption from the sins repressed in his self-proclaimed exile to America. Redemption arrives by the exposition of truth through an act of cinema, represented by a documentary filmmaker recording Mijares' confessions. For Diaz, cinema is not and should not merely be a means for escapism, it is also redemptive in its search for truth.

Through the film, Diaz asks a pressing question, "what has become of the Filipino?" His answer is as bleak as the atmosphere he deftly paints. The Filipino, wherever he may be, whatever he has become, is still a Filipino. The Philippine diaspora, caused by the earnest search for greener pastures, is not the panacea that will cure what aches the Philippine psyche. It is merely a temporary displacement, since the blood, the vices, and the virtues, that bind the Filipino people as dictated by its culture and history is as inescapable as the sins that individually haunt them.

More than being a turning point in Diaz's career as artist, Batang West Side also represents one of the most important junctures in Philippine Cinema, directly or indirectly heralding a new wave of filmmakers (the list includes Raya Martin, John Torres, Khavn de la Cruz) who have have pierced and continue to pierce the veil of mainstream commercial cinematographic entertainment by making films that are fueled with personal aches and visions instead of profit-centered intentions. Although there have been filmmakers like Kidlat Tahimik (Mababangong Bangungot (Perfumed Nightmares, 1977), Turumba (1981)), Raymond Red (Bayani (Heroes, 1992), Anino (Shadows, 2000)), and animator Roxlee whose works have opened the floodgates long before Diaz's five-hour masterpiece, it is the epic scope, the undaunted ambition, and the artistic integrity of Batang West Side that beacons the brave and independent spirit that relentlessly ignites this new generation of Filipino filmmakers.

My Sassy Girl (2001)

My Sassy Girl (Kwak Jae-young, 2001)
Korean Title: Yeopgijeogin geunyeo

Kwak Jae-young's My Sassy Girl is not a great film; quite far from it, actually. The film's humor, a delightful combination of slapstick and satire, is unsustained. When the two lovers separate for their self-imposed two-year sabbatical from each other, the film succumbs to convention, capping what feels like a tireless exercise of non-stop irreverent hilarity with what essentially is a saccharine resolution. However, My Sassy Girl's acclaim is not derived from its supposed cinematic brilliance. The film is heralded by this generation of hopeless romantics who are slowly becoming suspicious of Hollywood's mass-produced and ultimately sterile romances. The fact that the film is based from a story serialized and read by millions in the internet cannot go unnoticed. If anything, the source material is attestation of the film's inherent cool, with the film being a clear product of this age of cyber-love and free internet literature.

Gyun-woo (Cha Tae-hyun), a college student who we learn was made to wear girls' clothes when he was a young boy, rescues a drunk girl (Jun Ji-hyun) from being run over by the subway train. The girl, while inside the train, pukes on an old man. Before collapsing, she looks at Gyun-woo and calls him "honey," leading everyone to believe that the two are dating and eventually forcing Gyun-woo to carry the girl on his back and take her to the nearest motel. Thus begins their atypical relationship, with the Gyun-woo servile and obedient to the girl's whims and fantasies.

The circumstances of their relationship result to an onslaught of hilarious situations which comprise the bulk of the film's running time. There's much pleasure to be derived from the film's comedy especially since Cha and Jun play their roles with endearing conviction, satisfyingly transforming the several over-the-top scenarios into funny deviations. While the humor is absolutely lowbrow with most of it revolving around shock (the girl vomiting what looks like her dinner of rice and noodles on the poor old man's toupee), violence (Gyun-woo being beaten up with a broom by his mother), and absurd scenarios (a birthday bash in a theme park turning bad when the two lovers become hostages of a renegade soldier), there's subtle sophistication amidst the slapstick and seemingly brainless sketches.

Gyun-woo and the girl's love story, while adherent to formula, is laced with musings on fate and its roles in shaping that happy ending. Part of what makes My Sassy Girl such an enduring delight is that its romance is grounded not on predictable logic but on something more mysterious, something more in line with the mystical grooves of destiny. The girl is obsesses with the idea of people from the future living in the present. This obsession reflects in her writing, the way the film treatments she insists Gyun-woo read every time they go out would most likely involve heroes from the future repairing the present. The film treatments not only mirror her obsession, it also echoes her being burdened with an immense pain for which she needs to be rescued from, presumably by Gyun-woo.

Near the end of the film, a UFO zooms past the background as the girl reads Gyun-woo's letter from two years back in their rendezvous. Before that, Gyun-woo is surprised to see a live bullfrog inside the time capsule which the two of them buried two years ago. My Sassy Girl, while not relying completely on these hints that Gyun-woo and the girl's relationship is shaped by something more fantastical than mere destiny, adds charming curiosity to the film's descent to fairy tale convention, eventually making its conclusion more magical and imaginative. Actually, My Sassy Girl is exactly that, a magical and imaginative concoction that is sure to amuse those who merely seek extrication from the idiocy of Hollywood's banal offerings. It may not be great cinema, but it surely does its job well.

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001)

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (Shohei Imamura, 2001)
Japanese Title: Akai hashi no shita no nurui mizu

In one of my morning commutes to work, I inadvertently sat beside this peculiar old man of probably eighty years of age. He smiled at me. I did not return the unspoken morning’s greeting as I was in no mood for weekday pleasantries. When the conductor came to collect our fare, I immediately gave him the correct amount and went on with my business. The old man got two little coins which I knew were not enough to cover his fare and gave it to the conductor. The conductor remarked “Sir, this isn’t enough. Your eyesight must be so bad that you picked up the wrong coins.” While, struggling to remove from his purse the correct fare, the old man retorted with a grandfatherly smile, “I may not be able to see these coins, but I can see a gorgeous woman more than a mile away.” The conductor laughed and received the correct payment. I, however, was more humbled than anything. It would take a quirky old man and his witty retort to make me realize the youth I was wasting away in my intent to flow along the work-a-day world. I finally gave the old man the long-delayed smile he deserved minutes ago.

At the very ripe age of 74 and with several outstanding films including two Cannes Palm d’Or winners under his belt, Shohei Imamura crafted Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, a quirky if not entirely whimsical concoction that seems to be dwarfed by the richer and more complex films Imamura made before it. The film tackles the story of Sasano (Koji Yakusho), a retrenched salary man who moves from the riverside tent city in Tokyo to a rural town upon the parting advice of a homeless philosopher named Taro whom he befriended. The philosopher urges him on a treasure hunt but upon arrival in the seaside town, he gets sidetracked when he discovers and eventually falls in love with Saeko (Misa Shimizu), woman with the curious condition of swelling up with immense amount of water that can only be released by the commission of a wicked act such as shoplifting or through sexual intercourse.

Despite the very simplistic if not trite predisposition, the film is still very much underneath the umbrella of the Imamura’s constant artistic interest, the relationship between the marginalized social strata and human sexuality. Here, Imamura again examines the always-reliable downtrodden Japanese corporate slave, pushed away from the norm of the economically successful post-war Japanese individual by forces which are beyond his control. However, instead of furthering such examination of the unlucky impoverished Japanese as composite for a commentary on contemporary Japanese society, Imamura most delightfully steers away from what is expected of him. Warm Water Under a Red Bridge does not have anything drastically important to say about society in general nor does it need to say anything pertinent of the times. Imamura has already spent a long and illustrious career doing exactly that.

Later in his career, Imamura would strive for humanism within the familiar context that he has grown accustomed to. Such humanism finds climax and maybe, near-perfection in Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, where Imamura’s thematic thrusts are inward, very similar to traditional parables and fables where the narrative primarily serves the characters’ growth to their inevitable betterment supposedly to touch on a universal human trait. The inward thematic thrust of Warm Water Under a Red Bridge becomes more apparent when the film is compared to his earlier works where the elaborate storytelling and characterizations are usually evocations of social and cultural situations that are larger than the films themselves, like the anti-American sentiment within a Japanese society that is under the influence of the American victors in Pigs and Battleships (1961), the struggles of the post-war Japanese women living in the fringes of society in The Insect Woman (1963), among plenty other grander themes that most of Imamura’s films apparently allude to. What Warm Water Under a Red Bridge most successfully imparts is the very personal appreciation of the proper pursuit of happiness --- not through the modernized method of financial stability as dictated by modern norms but through the most primitive yet certain representations of human satisfaction: a job that sufficiently provides and more importantly, an always interesting sex life.

In Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, sex symbolizes a bevy of human needs. In a humorous utilization of magic realism, Imamura conceives a woman’s orgasm as life-giving. He meticulously, and with a glorious touch of lyrical humor, paints how Seako’s fluids flow from the wooden panels of her house, down the drain, and into the river where a school of freshwater fishes delightfully feed on the water-bound nutrients. The sudden abundance of catch impresses the group of village fishermen, including the African student who is training there for the Olympics. It’s quite a refreshing tone, especially in a nation whose pornographic offerings consider such abnormality as a prized commodity along with other impractical yet curiously alluring sexual acrobatics. Here, its nothing short of magical, the way a community of men suddenly become under the spells of a particularly special woman, not through her ill-motivated whims but simply because she is created by nature that way.

Above the life-giving metaphor of sex is the overt satisfaction that is derived from letting go of the societal norms that have encaged the salaried Japanese man, and just seeking out true happiness. That is exactly the inevitable course that Sasano finds himself in. It’s a brush of impractical yet kind fate --- the way he becomes entrusted with the secret treasure by Taro, the way he is conveniently pushed out of the marriage by his nagging wife, the way he notices Saeko in a fit of orgasm while shoplifting in a nearby convenience store. Drawn first by the his desire to cure Saeko of her shoplifting ways through thrusting his sexual capabilities as the least immoral method of releasing her overflowing fluids, he eventually finds his place within the simplistic demands of that rural town where his unique schedule provides for him a sense of belongingness that is absent among the impersonal atmosphere of city living. It is the sex that perpetuates his purpose there, and when that is suddenly troubled by an enterprising ex-convict who sees Saeko’s talents as a source of fortune, he comes out the surprising hero, and defends it the way he hasn’t defended anything in his entire life.

The final few scenes in the film are both intriguing and wonderful. Sasano, jealous from the supposed infidelity of Saeko and disappointed because of the sudden depletion of the fluids that has become the source of his satisfaction, confronts his woman in the breakwaters beside the highway. All reason, sorrow, and questions are erased when in a fit of emotional upheaval (similar to Saeko’s being filled with water), he just lets go and makes love with Saeko. It’s probably one of the loveliest sex scenes ever committed to celluloid, where the sex is there not to make a harsh and guilt-ridden commentary on such pleasures but to celebrate it. Imamura’s visual style makes sure that the sex scenes in the film are both tasteful yet interestingly comical, with both of his actors brandishing an unlikely thus surprising indifference of the entire erotic act --- as if the sex only serves that very particular purpose of momentarily curing Saeko’s condition. In that final lovemaking sequence, it’s different. We are suddenly become knowledgeable of the emotional investments both have committed in that previously only sexual relationship. We acknowledge the hurt, the insecurities, the probable disappointments that suddenly blew up a few moments before Sasano lets go and makes love to Saeko. In that scene, the copulation is clearly not to cure Saeko’s condition, but to represent that final vow --- that with or without the fluids, Sasano has committed his entirety to Saeko. Metaphorically, that also represents Sasano’s acceptance of this new type of happiness, this new type of satisfaction that only Saeko and the entire simplicity of that rural town can provide. Imamura, in a stroke of genius, caps that final lovemaking with Saeko bursting her fluids in the air like a geyser exploding. Funnily, affectingly, and beautifully, a rainbow appears from her fluids as the film’s quirky musical score plays in the background.

In one of the film’s flashbacks, Taro reminds Sasano to have fun while he still can, or in the screenplay’s more imaginative terms, while he can still get an erection. Taro continues to say “Drown yourself in a woman's arms, be faithful to your desires without worrying about daily cares.” Taro’s reminders are the indubitable theses of Imamura’s swansong. It is inaccurate to refer to Warm Water Under a Red Bridge as profusely impertinent compared to Imamura’s other works. In fact, it probably is his most revelatory film; wherein the socially-aware artist suddenly steps out of the supposed legacy he is building to create something surprisingly amiable, entertaining, and personal. He generously grants his viewers the same grandfatherly advice the old man in the bus made to me: to live your life how it should be lived thus finding true happiness.

Narinig Mo Na Ba Ang L8est? (2001)

Narinig Mo Na Ba Ang L8est? (Jose Javier Reyes, 2001)
English Title: Have You Heard of the Latest?

A day spent watching a cable channel specializing on Filipino movies, an unintended trait developed by hectic work schedules and impending deadlines, would arouse the most curious of observations about Filipino mainstream movies that tackle the middle class: that majority of the middle class characters who are gainfully employed work for the advertising industry. It's really unsurprising. Both mainstream cinema and the advertising industry share most of its talents, from director, writer, cinematographer, down to the actors and actresses. The reason for churning out characters who work under the same high-stress, presumably also high-creativity environment could be out of the fear or lack of confidence to tackle something distinctly foreign from what they already know (let's say the banking or legal industry), or the lack of funding or care for research to make sure the little details are accurate, or quite possibly just sheer laziness, that leads most directors and writers to turn their characters into ad people, at least in only a nominal sense.

Writer-director Jose Javier Reyes' Narinig Mo Na Ba Ang L8est? (Have You Heard of the Latest?), like majority of all mainstream movies about middle class people that were made before it, have characters who are ad people. To Reyes' credit, the jobs of his characters aren't only nominal as they are given a fully functioning premise and setting, well-researched although caricatured to the point of being comparable to a serialized television sitcom. The milieu is complete with the distasteful office politics, the unintentional overproduction of pheromones leading to harmless crushes and indecent proposals, and last but not the least, the incessant rumormongering, which seems to be Reyes' unique thrust in this rather predictable romantic comedy. The office gossiping is made even more vicious by the proliferation of cellular phones, which makes those juicy half-truths so easy to report by the utilization of the practical SMS lingo and that conclusive click of the send button.

The would-be victims of the office rumor mill are Popoy (Aga Muhlach) and Gina (Joyce Jimenez). Popoy is the ad agency's writer, rumored to be gay for being so clean, orderly, miserly and handsome yet without any girlfriend or any reported recent date, at least. Gina is the new hire, a production artist who is reported to be an easy lay as she's sporting what possibly are the hugest breasts in the office (which becomes the topic of one of the film's funniest dialogues, when she insists that her brain is bigger than her boobs and Popoy replies with a surprised look and a retort stating how humongous her brain would be) and is interestingly frank about her sexual exploits with her boyfriend. The two are forced to work together for a project, predictably developing a friendship, then a romantic relationship based on the similarities of each other's predicaments and of course, respect. The love story, to be kind, is a bit forced and without the clever pieces of dialogue that Reyes whips up for his onscreen lovers, would have been utterly bland, unpersuading, and disgracefully pointless. Given the milieu that Reyes pits his romance against, the high levels of stress and intrigue an office ordinarily includes, you would've expected that the film end in a more mature tone but instead Reyes follows the textbook instructions of how romantic comedies should conclude: with an irrational change of heart and a kiss.

It really is a pity since Reyes convincingly builds his milieu with colorful characters who are sadly more interesting than the two leads, and recreated funny anecdotes of horrifying ad experiences, including a shoot of a shampoo commercial wherein the director just surrenders to the demands of his insatiable client, a shoot involving an uncooperative brat, and a review of commercial model applicants with the ad people muttering with ungraceful disdain the physical defects of the applicants. Among these colorful ad people are Miren (a delightfully histrionic Tessie Tomas), the over-caffeinated boss, Alvin (Mandy Ochoa), the sexual predator slash second-in-command, Dennis (an amusing Gabe Mercado), Popoy's sidekick who thinks there's a sexual creature hidden underneath his short and plump frame, and Nestor (Ogie Diaz), the perpetually annoyed proprietor of the outdoor canteen where the office people eat their lunch, among other weirdos. Reyes was able to manufacture a highly entertaining, highly watchable ecosystem within the confines of the drab interiors of the ad office, where the interest on the lives of other people seems believable since almost all of the personalities thriving therein seem to be hiding shady back stories worth digging for.

In summary, Narinig Mo Na Ba Ang L8est is passable entertainment, exactly what you'd expect from Reyes who is best known for writing stories about the mundane concerns of the middle class. The film is technically polished considering that it had full studio backing but on the downside, it's quite visually flat. It's meandering and safe, if not deprived of the possibilities of being something more, something that could have transcended beyond the whims of this Filipino bourgeoisie.

Booba (2001)

Booba (Joyce Bernal, 2001)

The title is a combination of two words, obviously boobs (or breasts, for the prudent minded) and boba (which is Tagalog for stupid). The titular character (played by gifted comedienne Rufa Mae Quinto), bears both traits, prominent melon-sized breasts and an absurd state of heightened ignorance. Booba's mission is to find her twin sister, the evil kidnapping mastermind Madame X (played by a very hilarious Ai-Ai de las Alas), as promised by her to her dying grandmother (Gina Pareño, who is clearly having fun with her role as guardian ghost with streaks of chronic horniness).

The plot, conceived and written by director Joyce Bernal and prolific screenwriter Mel Mendoza-del Rosario, is absolutely non-sensical. Booba, newly arrived in the bustling metropolis (her choice of transportation from her farflung province, where her family owns a profitable fruit stand, should be seen to be believed), moves from an all-male dormitory (with its hole-infested bathroom door, for better peeping of course) where she worked the nights as a go-go dancer, to a Filipino-Chinese household where she worked as a nanny to an overfed eight year old, before ending up as the police's top secret agent. Poli (an enjoyably uncomfortable Gary Estrada), Booba's partner who has a very unfortunate problem holding an erection, is the obvious love interest, or if we're going to follow the descriptions during the opening credits, the sex object.

The rest of the plot is a series of inane sketches: Booba finally catches up with her evil sister only to throw pails and buckets of water at each other, or when Madame X successfully disposes of her husband, takes over the crime group, and shoots a member for simply looking stupid, or when Booba reveals to Poli that she's a virgin but suddenly rides him like an Olympic-trained rower in probably one of the most bizarrely uncomfortable sex scenes committed on celluloid, or when asked by the president in a press conference of one wish he can grant her, she declares that she wants to be the star of the night, immediately removing her dress to reveal her naked body covered by two glittering stars where her nipples should be, and a whole lot more to fill up its running time.

Following the conventional standards of judging cinematic creations, Bernal's Booba is undoubtedly a bad film. However, it is precisely because of this unabashed badness that makes the movie so watchable (and I believe I am not alone in this one since the movie made tons of money making Quinto an instant star). Bernal, Mendoza-del Rosario, heck, even film studio Viva Entertainment (most famous for their well-made dramas and romantic comedies) have conspired to make a film purely to ridicule anyone and anything they can poke their fingers on and make everyone who dares to sit through the lampoon laugh. It feels like a product of whim where most of the dialogue and the situations were sourced from drunken sessions or sober conversations with colleagues, heterosexual but most probably homosexual (some of the jokes and hilarious banter onscreen are distinctly attributable to the very colorful humor of the Philippines' third sex). Booba doesn't have a moral lesson (actually, the club of Catholic bishops condemned it for patronizing premarital sex, murder, among others in its movie review) and it doesn't need one. It is one circus act from start to finish.

Whim, lively brainstorming and creative sessions, and fortune are not the only reasons why Booba works. A big chunk of the credit belongs to comediennes Quinto and De Las Alas. Quinto is the perfect Booba; she is the Filipino variation of Anna Nicole Smith, adorably clueless but has the ability to invoke anyone's innermost sexual desires. Unlike the famous American blond though, Quinto is intelligent in her comedy, has precise comic timing and her seemingly dimwitted inflection (which apparently is not acted, merely exaggerated) is irresistible. De Las Alas, who has much more experience making Filipinos laugh mostly due to her physical appearance (she is gifted with a prominent chin), is deliciously evil as Madame X. She is vulgar, demented, loud, and kinky, exactly the perfect recipe for the memorable villain.

The success of Booba has been met with further tries to replicate that brand of humor. Rufe Mae Quinto has gone on to portray similarly huge-chested and light-headed characters like in Radyo (Radio, Yam Laranas, 2001), as a radio DJ victimized by a deranged fan, Super B (Joyce Bernal, 2002), as a superheroine, Masikip sa Dibdib (Tight in the Chest, Joyce Bernal, 2004), as a girl whose inability to comprehend English causes her nose to bleed, and Apat Dapat, Dapat Apat (Four in One, Wenn Deramas, 2007), as a domestic helper in Hong Kong. Ai-Ai De Las Alas follows up Booba with films like Ang Tanging Ina (The True Mother, Wenn Deramas, 2003), where she plays suffering mother to several children, Volta (Wenn Deramas, 2004), where she plays a superheroine with the power to control electricity, and Ang Cute ng Ina Mo (Your Mother is Cute, Wenn Deramas, 2007), again, as a mother with problems with her two children.

Joyce Bernal has made several more films, mostly comedies and light dramas; Mel Mendoza-del Rosario has written several more screenplay; while Viva Entertainment, the worst hit of the big studios, is content in producing soft-core pornographic straight-to-video films, limiting their glossy pictures to one or two per year. The very successful comedy of Booba was never replicated and probably will never be replicated. While sometimes funny, the several films that tried didn't have or maintained that natural energy or gleeful abandon Booba balanced. It is for this reason that I return to Booba for a dose of much-needed chuckles during my most stress filled days.

******
This post is my contribution to M.A. Peel's Comedy Blog-A-Thon at Newcritics.

Tatarin (2001)

Tatarin (Tikoy Aguiluz, 2001)
English Title: Summer Solstice

Don Paeng (Edu Manzano) and Lupe (Dina Bonnevie) Moreta are trapped in a difficult wedding; at least for Lupe who starts to feel her subservient role in the household. We first see them in bed; Paeng on top while a bored Lupe suffers through the mechanical thrusts of her husband. The couple's morning lovemaking coincides with a woman's fervent prayer for a child (followed by a steamy scene of self-stimulation), and the couple's household helps' rabid humping; with the woman (played by Rica Paralejo) erupting into an illucid trance that would define the feast day of St. John the Baptist, which also coincides with the pagan ritual of tatarin (which in English refers to chopping).

The wedding vows aren't tested due to infidelity or a lack of love, but because of the skewed sense of inequality between the sexes. Paeng's conservative views force Lupe to stand by his side. You can see the effects of that patriarchal sternness: Lupe would always look with approving eyes before trying to do anything like watching the passing parade through their manor's balcony. It is the same patriarchal reign that Paeng would like his eldest son to inherit; that women are subservient to the man's concept of order.

The tatarin ritual is an affront to that patriarchal state which the Philippines has inherited from its Western colonizers. Guido (Carlos Morales), Paeng's cousin who relocates from Europe to take part in the pagan rituals, relates that women have always been powerful; that before there were kings, there were queens; that before there were priests, there were pagan priestesses; and that the sun bows down to the moon (which symbolizes femininity). You see Lupe's surprise of her undiscovered power upon hearing those words and while her legs are fondled by the very masculine Guido while her husband peeks through their balcony.

Director Tikoy Aguiluz carefully maps Lupe's transformation leading to that final tatarin procession where she overtly disobeys her husband. His adaptation of Nick Joaquin's short story may be viewed as gratuitously perverted (the way Paralejo's breasts are lighted with erotic tenderness, and other young starlets are casted to gyrate for presumably, tittilation). However, the visually portrayed sexual energy serves an appropriate purpose. It delivers a shameful light to the subtle cruelty of Paeng's controlling nature and his mechanical sexuality. It places points of extremes in a film that is basically about the jarring battles of the two sexes --- it spells out the differences between sensual and formal, freedom and restraint, female and male.

Set in the 1920's, Aguiluz makes sure that every detail is accomplished perfectly. The meticulousness shows. The wardrobe, the setting, the props are carefully conceived to match the era. It's all wonderful, the way Micaela (Ces Quesada) and her daughter (a tepid Maui Taylor who is unused in the department wherein she could've shined) steps out of their polished antique car; or the interiors of a provincial manor with its lovingly constructed furniture and its walls adorned with Catholic paintings; or the methodology in making the noodles the Moretas' factory is producing.

More interesting is the actual tatarin procession where women (all obviously choreographed) dance and gyrate in delirious drumming, and the men (who are celebrating St. John the Baptist's festival --- a Catholic feast which figures, since Catholicism espouses patriarchal society) who strut alongside the women. It is quite easy to get lost in the orgy, and the sequence is pungent with sweat and saliva. The men fall under the spell of the women and are revealed as equal, if not weaker (especially in that scene wherein Guido stumbles into tears when Lupe abruptly ends their lovemaking, thus, revealing Guido's past in Europe wherein he wails the name of a woman he presumably loved and lost).

The final scene ends the transformation. Under the glow of a full moon, Lupe finally gets what she wants and becomes on top (sexually and emotionally) of her husband. The mechanical nature of their sexual consummation is abandoned when Paeng reveals his emotions and steps out of the formalities dictated by the patriarchal society they live in. Paeng follows the whims of his wife; and disobeys the commands of the Church (which approves of only one sexual position) while he gets consumed by the spirit he has, in his entire lifetime, rejected.

Sex and Lucia (2001)

Sex and Lucia (Julio Medem, 2001)
Spanish Title: Lucía y el sexo

Julio Medem's Sex and Lucia is such a confounding film, quite frustratingly so. Characters appear, disappear and reappear. Settings evoke an air of unearthiness and mysticism. Sex is almost too erotic, just a few steps above being too sinful. It lures, and teases. The moment you get a feeling that you already have a good grasp of its overflowing narrative, it forces you to let go by throwing a few more tricks to your inconvenience. Despite that, it's still a good film --- incredibly sexy, unbearably magnetic, and quite surprisingly, very coherent.

Lucia (Paz Vega) sojourns in a remote Mediterranean island after learning that her long-time boyfriend Lorenzo (Tristán Ulloa) has killed himself. The island is also the setting of Lorenzo's wildest one-night stand with Elena (Najwa Nimri) in the middle of the ocean, underneath a moon-lit sky. During Lucia's stay in the island, she meets several characters from Lorenzo's past, including Elena (who is taking care of the island's hotel) and scuba-diving Carlos (Daniel Freire), and encounters several metaphors from Lorenzo's own novels, including a mysterious hole in the middle of the island, a lighthouse, and other curious phenomenon.

The other half of the film, told through flashbacks that mix what is offered to be real and what is imagined, details Lucia's relationship with Lorenzo --- from the point wherein Lucia proposes her love to him inside a side-street cafe, to the time when their relationship crumbles with Lorenzo's breakdown over personal problems and the accompanying rigors of writing. The reality of Lorenzo's life gets mixed up with his art. Characters from his novel seem to be derived from the eventualities of real life; then these characters start to breathe a life of their own, their personalities and sensibilities intermixing with reality, until you wouldn't be able to discern which is taking over and which is subordinate.

Medem makes you believe that there are two aspects to his films --- of the real world and the world within Lorenzo's novel; of the periods before and after Lorenzo's suicide; of sex and Lucia. However, the entire film actually belongs within Lorenzo's novel-in-the-making. The contrivances, and the unrealistic plot mechanics (the dog accident and the entire scenario that revolved around it is surely something that doesn't belong in our conventional concept of a real world) are all too literary to evolve within the framework of real-life experiences; and I believe Medem is that talented a writer-director to know what fits in a film that details reality.

The entire film is nourished (as much as it also nourished by an abundance of naked flesh and sexy scenarios) by an explicit attraction to the mystical, whether it be during the moments that are implied as within-novel, or real. Medem drapes his day scenes with an abundance of sunlight (Lucia is also heard singing a song about the sun); while the night scenes are made distinct by the appearance of a very attractive moon (its presence lingers because of the name of Lorenzo's daughter, and other devices). The island itself is described as a natural anomaly; a lid in the middle of the sea with labyrinthine underground passages and its tides affecting the human mind. The entire film feels generally like a modern Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, or at least externally reads like one, with its adherence to magic realism. Even the sex scenes have that literary imaginative character.

The biggest mistake in watching Sex and Lucia is to try making something logical about it or to perceive it as a film with a fractured narrative, because it shouldn't be logical nor is it a puzzle to be solved. The film is something to get engaged in (and its sexiness does help a lot in that bit) and to enjoy in all its unabashedly pulpy naked glory.

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This post is my contribution to Culture Snob: The Misunderstood Blog-A-Thon.

Flower Island (2001)

Flower Island (Song Il-gon, 2001)
Korean Title: Ggot seom

Other than Yu-jin (Lim Yu-jin), who we first meet narrating how she got punished by the gods for abandoning her promise of using her gift of song for good, we get introduced to the trio of females in very compromising scenarios. Seventeen year-old Hye-na (Kim Hye-na) undergoes a self-inflicted abortion inside a filthy restroom; while motherly Oak-nam (Seo Ju-hie) bares herself for a paying elderly man who after several sexual thrusts, dies of a cardiac arrest. Oak-nam is temporarily discharged by her husband who learns of her prostituting to buy her daughter a piano. She meets Hye-na inside during a busride to the Southern Seas --- Hye-na is on a trip to find her lost mother while Oak-nam seeks the legendary Flower Island, said to be the place to ease pains and burdens.

We finally witness Yu-jin compromising scenario when an impersonal doctor announces her medical predicament --- her tongue has to be removed to prevent the spreading of a cancerous growth in her throat. An opera singer, she loses the will to live, until she is rescued by Oak-nam and Hye-na who brings her along their trip to Flower Island. The three females undergo what seems like a roadtrip to an Oz-like place of magic and promises; along the way, they meet colorful characters who in their respective manners and ways, allow a tender and subtle release of each female's personal ache. A truck driver who carries his friend's corpse to town, a traveling music band led by jealous singer and his life partner, a mysterious man who lived with Hye-na's mother, and the proprietress of the island --- these personalities and their anecdotes and methods represent the promises of the island.

Lodz-trained Song Il-gon's directorial debut, Flower Island, is fashioned like several pieces of individual memories forcedly pasted together, like the coincidental meet-ups of these three troubled women. The point-of-view is always past-oriented, with the narrative being interrupted by flashbacks; as if there's a likely prevention of moving forward, of an outward acceptance as the world has been swallowed by the lasting scars of a troubled past.

Song's method of using digital film to capture the happenings creates an unfathomable viewing experience. The lack of detail (caused by digital filmmaking) causes a frustrating feeling of being trapped within the meager extents of the medium. Bodies and faces fade and disappear from focus; objects do not have their concrete appeal; experiences and events therefore are appropriated a fleeting feel, like they're happening not in this real world but in a mythical other-universe wherein pains and aches are as temporary as the captured movements and conversations. It's oddly mesmerizing; wherein the visual technique inhabits the poetic form Song drapes his feature with.

The film's ending is both mysterious but unsurprising. It adequately gives the feature an earthy and mortal conclusion without necessarily pulling away from the fairy-tale feel of this grim yet hopeful parable. Song possesses an admirable control on his vision and his themes; something quite surprising as this is his first feature film. The film aches when it needs to ache, and its joyous when there's a reason to celebrate --- yet despite the numerous facets of emotions on display, the film is headed in a single direction; no tricky shortcuts or long-winded stop-overs. Flower Island is one satisfactory road trip where emotions swell in every step, that when the destination is reached and leaves you still cold and curious, there still seems to be no trace of regret and remorse in traversing such path.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001)

Hedwig and the Angry Inch, John Cameron Mitchell's breakout film, is a cinematic translation of his successful off-Broadway musicale. It's hugely helped by the song compositions of Stephen Trask --- from its hyperactive opening song to the more mellow, more emotionally driven slow songs that inhabit the work's core. Trask and Mitchell's collaboration has crossed over to the silver screen with relative ease: the film is independently funded; no studio bickering beneath the translation; thus, the creators manage to keep their intentions intact.

Let's stop kidding ourselves though. True, the melodies, the rhythms, the driving force behind the art are all original but the work won't survive without the centerpoint of everything: Hedwig (as played by Mitchell). He's a cinematic anomaly. You just can't pinpoint what he is: he's had a sex change operation (but without that inner drive that pushes most transgender individuals; he was forced to undergo the operation by his American boyfriend and his mother); the sex change operation is not entirely successful as a bit of his phallus would grow back (thus, the angry inch). Hedwig is a character that uncomfortably sits in a vague middle: fabulous and almost nearly female (yet with signifiers of his male past --- underarm hairs, the prominent Adam's apple); Mitchell casts a female (Miriam Shor) as Hedwig's jealous boyfriend (it connotes another conundrum --- is their relationship homosexual or heterosexual?).

Hedwig's backstory is also wildly interesting. His life is told through the several musical numbers performed by Hedwig and his band in buffet restaurants while trailing rock icon Tommy Gnosis (Michael Pitt), Hedwig's ex-boyfriend and intellectual property-thief. It's an elementary technique that surprisingly works. A decision to record the songs live as sung (it helps that Mitchell and his band has had years of on stage performances to make it work, and work very well). Mitchell's visuals provide a very satisfying range: The song "Origin of Love," about how the Greek gods physically separated men and women as theorized by Plato, is accompanied by crude animation; a dreamy sequence of Hedwig (then, Hansel)'s seduction by his then-husband shows off the uncontrollable tempting power of Gummy Bears and American candies; Hedwig's childhood in Communist East Berlin is treated with nightmarish candor --- Hansel hidingly wiggles to the ditties of American radio or uncomfortably holes up in his mom's oven just to listen to his American inspirations.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is more of a statement, a very powerful one on sexual and gender ambiguity, than a concrete narrative. This brings me to my serious problem with Mitchell's film: it's unconvincing (or pretentious) and highly open-ended conclusion. It's as if Mitchell couldn't come up with an adequate end to Hedwig's mission of reclaiming fame and intellectual integrity from Tommy Gnosis, that he just settled with something more symbolic (a cheap way out as it will excite and satisfy those watching the film as an activism or a strengthening of one's choices in life, sacrificing narrative competency). It's my same problem with Jonathan Larson's Rent (Chris Columbus, 2005; which appears a lot in the film probably as a symbol for selling out) which conveniently ended with a fantasy sequence and a medley of songs of affirmation.

It's a huge complaint, but one that didn't dent my appreciation for Mitchell's effort. Above everything else, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is bombastic, at time irreverent, always hyperactive, truthful, and most importantly, highly entertaining.

The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001)

The Happiness of the Katakuris (Takashi Miike, 2001)
Japanese Title: Katakuri-ke no kôfuku

The Katakuris operate a guest house in the middle of a remote mountain where a highway is supposedly to be built. The family is composed of the grandfather (Tetsuro Tamba), father Masao (Kenji Sawada), mother Terue (Keiko Matsuzaka), son Masayuki (Shinji Takeda), daughter Shizue (Naomi Nishida), and granddaugher Yurie (Tamaki Miyazaki). There hasn't been a single guest in the Katakuris' guest house, until a morose traveller makes an appearance and in the middle of the night, decides to kill himself by stabbing himself in the neck with the room key. The family decides to just bury the body in order to salvage the guest house's business feasibility. Guests do flock in, but meet the same morbid fate.

The plot comes from Kim Ji-woon's The Quiet Family (1998), but in the hands of Japanese schlock-meister Takashi Miike, becomes a musical extravaganza that is both weirdly entertaining and surprisingly touching. The family whose core seems to be best suited for a dysfunctional family: there's the idealistic dad and the supportive mom, the criminally callous son and the flirtatious and hopelessly romantic daughter. Yet in the hands of Miike, the dysfunction becomes utterly charming. Their bantering and frequent arguments only humanize what may seem like a totally ridiculous familial relationship that can never ever exist in this rational world of ours. And when they start positioning themselves to initiate an absurdly over-the-top musical number, one can't help but both giggle and nod by the fact that despite the weirdness of it all, it works in a totally ununderstandable way.

Miike is at his schmaltziest here. Instead of using CGI to create blood fountains or other gore visual fests, here, computer technology is used to pump up the colors. The Happiness of the Katakuris looks like a 50's musicale in the vein of The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965) with its bright greens, pleasant blues, and other striking hues. Miike also uses claymation to probably excite the toddlers or to make more palatable the more violent and objectionable portions of the film. The claymation sequences are haphazardly done, but that only adds to the cheap charms of the film. The changes in visual style might be a bit too gratuitous but that's better than turning the film into a drab and lifeless feature.

If you intend to watch The Happiness of the Katakuris to grab something deep and subtle, be ready for disappointment. The Happiness of the Katakuris is nothing more than an absurdist fantasy whose only aim is to entertain and while doing so, add some moralistic lesson on what really makes a family happy. It's something you can learn a dozen times while watching the features shown in Hallmark Channel, or reading through last month's issue of Reader's Digest. The only proper way to watch The Happiness of the Katakuris is with an open mind ready for whatever visual and other sensory attacks Miike has devised and just enjoy whatever (positive or negative) effects it has on your intellect (which I assume you've already put at an all time low to get ready for the film). The songs are musically bad, the actors' singing even more so. Yet in the insane hands of Miike, these songs fit perfectly well in the stew pot of kitsch, bad taste, abnormally childish antics, and almost every other thing and gimmick that should never ever be used in a fare like this.

The Warrior (2001)

The Warrior (Asif Kapadia, 2001)

Director Asif Kapadia's first feature film The Warrior is what a person may unbashedly describe as a mongrel film. The story is based on a Japanese tale, adapted to an Indian setting, directed by a Brit-Indian who co-penned it with an Englishman, photographed by a German-Nigerian cinematographer, scored by an Italian, with a Bollywood star for the main lead, and hundreds of Indians as extras, all funded with money sourced from the Great Britain and Germany. Despite the confusion that may arise out of the mixed nationalities of the people behind the production, The Warrior is a simplistic epic whose raison d'etre can be likened to the recurring themes of Western-genre films.

It's basically a revision of Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966) trimmed down from sprawling historical epic to near-silent parable. That simply means that there's a lot less of the fun, the testosterone, and the adventure of the spaghetti western, and instead of Clint Eastwood who figures out a way to use his gunslinging skills for arguably moral ends, we have the titular warrior who completely erases violence from his vocabulary to live a life in the serene splendor of the foothills of the Himalayas.

The titular character (Irfan Khan) is a hired thug of the local landowner who exacts revenge from his non-paying tenants by ordering the warrior and his horde to pillage and burn the villages of those who can't pay. The point of catharsis for the warrior is when he almost kills a little girl who is wearing the necklace of his son. Almost immediately, he withdraws from his former life of killing to finally reunite with his hometown. The warrior's betrayal of his duty angers the landowner and orders the other mercenaries to hunt him down, and in the process, killing his only son. Instead of vengeance, the warrior quietly journeys to his hometown, meeting a petty thief (Noor Mani) and a perceptive blind woman (Damayanti Marfatia) on the way.

One thing that can be said about The Warrior is that it is gorgeous. Cinematographer Roman Osin captures the change of landscape from harsh deserts to the peaceful mountains with a touch of visual poetry. There's so much beauty to behold in the film that one may consider the film's visual touches a mirage to the barrenness of the material. It is acknowledged that The Warrior's story has meager roots. Co-writer Tim Miller describes the source as a fable about the son of a warrior who is killed for lying to save his father when a cruel landowner asks whether the beheaded man his minions has just killed is his father.

Kapadia and Miller muse as to what could've happened to the father, who doesn't figure anymore in the Japanese fable. Their conclusion is that the father suddenly leaves his life of violence, which is totally acceptable if Kapadia merely took a strong-willed insistence on the entire catharsis. In the film, the change is so sudden, far-too mystical and abstract, to have you suddenly rooting for the changed hero. All his life he led a life of violence, doing the bidding of his cruel master, and even training his son to follow his footsteps, and in a whim, he lets go of such without a care.

Kapadia insists on telling his tale as minimally as possible. He relies on Irfan Khan's subtle gestures to move his plot, but as such, he often stumbles in his struggle for simplicity. The result is quite a hefty bore. True, I was enchanted by the scenery, lullaby-ed by the musical score, and lead on by the afterthought of a parable, but in the end, it all feels so dull, so inherently pointless, that I adopted a conclusion that the film is mostly pretentious, insincere, and confused. Kapadia sought to utilize his European film theories learned from film school, with what he thought was an adept knowledge of his Indian roots, but fails to understand that his unvocalized tale staggers with the weight of his overly zealous visuals.