Unfriend (2014)

Joselito Altarejos' Unfriend: Of Love and Other Demons

Joselito Altarejos opens Unfriend with black and white image of two boys in a perfect state of romantic bliss. On top of an abandoned building, they whimsically exchange longing gestures to each other. It is as if they were the only lovers left in the world.

The opening image is of course far from reality. Altarejos deliberately segues to the same two boys having sex in a dingy and dimly lit room whose walls are peppered with posters bearing demons and other video game monsters. Gone are the serenity, sincerity, and the careless euphoria of the film’s monochrome opening dream sequence, only to be replaced by the sweaty and graceless tryst between two men in the end of their relationship.

The break-up does not sit well with David (Sandino Martin), who at fifteen is the younger of the lovers. He retires to his room, where he keeps a shrine dedicated to his former boyfriend (Angelo Ilagan), and for the next few hours, initiates an attempt to win him back through desperate text messages and Skype calls. When reuniting seems impossible, he decides to embark on a mission to broadcast to the world the love that his ex-lover just threw away.

Altarejos, in collaboration with Lex Bonife, has etched quite a successful career tackling queer concerns in the country through his films. Ang Lalake sa Parola (The Man in the Lighthouse, 2007), his first film, puts in its center a homosexual romance in the midst of traditional intolerance. Altarejos was able to confront his audience with the possibility of tackling certain issues without any context of exoticizing or sensationalizing the lifestyle. Ang Lihim ni Antonio (The Secret ofAntonio, 2008), Kambyo (2008), and Little Boy, Big Boy (2008), despite the variety of approach, are all created with the same intent of depicting queer lifestyle absent the typical cross-dressing, brash humor, and other commonly conceived notions of homosexuality that has been depicted by mainstream media.

Ang Laro ng Buhay ni Juan (The Game of Juan's Life, 2009) combines Altarejos’ knack for exploring queer themes with the blend of real-time filmmaking and focus on social realism that was gaining popularity among Filipino independent filmmakers. Pink Halo Halo (2010) is the director’s tender account of his own coming-of-age as a homosexual boy growing up in a military family living in a very rural area. On the other hand, Laruang Lalake (Boy Toys, 2010), by documenting the struggles of a director from production to exhibition, has Altarejos tackling the prejudice the type of cinema he is specializing in has been receiving from most sectors. Without abandoning the main concerns that define queer cinema, Altarejos was able to widen his canvass by ticklish issues that are inherent to the lifestyle but do not pertain specifically to it.

Unfriend, on one hand, is an indictment of the modern world that is fast becoming too reliant on technology. By focusing on a protagonist who is inseparable from his various communication gadgets, the film criticizes the very illusion of connectivity that most communication technology propagates.

In one scene, David, on a mission to purchase credits to resume his online stalking of his ex-boyfriend, is oblivious to the intolerant insults being thrown by his neighbors. When he temporarily snaps out of the spell and responds to the insults, he becomes aware of his surroundings. At that point, David withdraws from his self-wallowing and becomes witness to problems that seem greater than his own.

The film, on the other hand, is also a potent observation of obsession. As soon as Altarejos retracts from the blatant romanticism of the film’s introduction, he proceeds to detail the less endearing qualities of the specific homosexual relationship that has been defined by the virtual world it mostly exists in. Altarejos seems to blame the blurring of the line between love and fatal obsession to the convenience technology provides. David, with his consistent and quick switching between pained lover and sex-starved cruiser, exemplifies the youth that has been conditioned to trivialize emotions.

Unfriend shocks not because of the event that would eventually unfold after such a protracted depiction of a very banal life. The film’s culminating event is after all hardly a surprise since Altarejos has made it clear that the inspiration for the film is the much-publicized shooting incident that happened inside a mall a couple of years ago. The film shocks precisely because its unabashed portrayal of current attitudes and demeanors are too close to reality for any comfort. Infused with love and all other demons, there is no predicting as to what kind of monsters we can all become.

(First published in Rappler.)

Laruang Lalake (2010)

Laruang Lalake (Joselito Altarejos, 2010)

English Title: Boy Toys

In an age in Philippine cinema where filmmakers and their films are thirsting for a local market at the risk of solely relying on the international film festival circuit for an audience, a genre of films persisted, with a captive market that was loyal to it no matter how technically inept and creatively insipid the films were. Queer cinema took over the space the titillating films of the nineties outgrew. Initiated by Cris Pablo’s ultra-low budget meditations on the gay lifestyle that were shot on digital video, these queer films were mostly independently produced, a quality that separated it from the sex-oriented films of the nineties which were heavily supported by the country’s profit-hungry mainstream film studios. As a result of the genre’s indisputable profitability, which in turn opened it to exploitation by more enterprising producers who opt to concentrate on what drew viewers to pay and watch, which is the nudity and the sex, instead of artistic integrity, it earned ill repute among film circles who saw the genre’s domination in both numbers and earnings of the entire independent film industry, if ever such a thing exists, as an affront to what independence in filmmaking really meant.

Yet queer cinema in the Philippines per se is not exactly an evil thing. Sex, the element that is easiest to target as indulgent and needless, is essential to genre. After all, it is sex and the differences in sexual preferences between homosexuals and heterosexuals that birthed the genre in the first place, and any pretense of purity in the genre is misaligned. Perhaps the only fault of the country’s queer cinema is that its target audience is so loyal, so willing to part ways with their hard-earned money to vicariously live their sexual fantasies through the fictionalized lives of the gay men appearing in these films that there’s a tendency to be unforgivably lax in the actual process of filmmaking, with filmmakers churning out films at a pace that renders the products questionable.

Joselito Altarejos, whose career as filmmaker is a product of the recent boom in queer cinema, has made seven features in the span of only three years. His staggering output as a director is a testament to the undying demand for the films that follow the formula that breathe economic viability to that particular genre. With Laruang Lalake (Boy Toys), Altarejos offers an insider’s look as to how these films are made, starting from when an aspiring actor (Arjay Carreon) from the province is pushed to audition for an upcoming gay feature by his ambitions of stardom and dire financial needs to when the film gets made but its life hinges on the hands of the members of the censors board.

It’s clearly and understandably a non-judgmental portrayal of what happens behind the scenes. The characters, from Carreon’s timid neophyte and his motherly manager to the admirably honorable director (Richard Quan), lack that certain darkness in their personalities that could have caused the requisite conflict in this film about filmmaking. Instead, the film focuses on the mechanics of making a gay film, concentrating on moments that are by themselves banal, but as a whole, is a statement on how gay films, despite their assured profitability, are still subject to all the rules of independent filmmaking in the Philippines, which include making most of shoestring budgets, putting up with unprofessional upstarts and being at the mercy of established ones, personal loans for the sake of the craft, and censorship.

Altarejos dutifully mounts scene after scene, attempting to approximate the tedium that goes with the filmmaking, coloring the tedium with bits of comedy and drama. Despite the effort however, Altarejos fails to engage primarily because the film is not consistent in its aim, struggling to initiate its audience with the familiar story of an upstart getting into a profession that will predictably eat his soul before completely changing course to focus on the fate of the film. The problem stems from the fact that neither the upstart nor the fictional film is interesting enough to carry a film about them. Carreon plays his character with hardly any charm to pull away the fact that the character is severely thinly written. Fortunately, Quan and Mon Confiado, who plays a strip club owner who is venturing to produce gay films, are believable in their respective parts. The fictional film, showed in bits and pieces as being filmed and as shot, seems to be the typical gay film, defended righteously by the director as an exploration of gay sexuality, but as portrayed in the partial pieces that Altarejos shows, is more of a montage of naked male bodies in various simulated sexual acts.

Despite all its faults, Laruang Lalake contains a sequence that makes it worth anybody’s time. The director faces the censors board for a second time, pleading for his film to be given a go-signal to be screened commercially. As the censors rip his film apart and tackles each objectionable scene and explaining why it can’t be screened to the public, the film morphs into something else. Sure, ostensibly, the scene laments a film culture that bows down to individuals whose senses and tastes have become obsolete (as deliciously displayed when the censors themselves are unable to turn a cellular phone in silent mode). However, much more than a statement as to the dangerous inutility of the censors board, the scene, in the way the director defends first the scenes and later on, the homosexual acts depicted in the scenes, begs for acceptance of the genre that exists primarily because there exists sexual differences. To disparage the genre itself is akin to intolerance, and in a way, just like all the members of the board that condescend on the elements that are essential to both gay cinema and being gay, we’re all suspects.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Pink Halo-Halo (2010)

Pink Halo-Halo (Joselito Altarejos, 2010)

I cannot imagine Pink Halo-Halo being directed by anyone but Joselito Altarejos. Altarejos, who has made a name for himself in Philippine cinema as one of headliners of the burgeoning and bursting gay genre with such films like Ang Lalake sa Parola (The Man in the Lighthouse, 2007), Ang Lihim ni Antonio (Antonio’s Secret, 2008) and Ang Laro ng Buhay ni Juan (The Game of Juan’s Life, 2009). The film, about a boy (Paolo Constantino) whose father (Allen Dizon), a soldier, is detailed to war-torn Mindanao to keep the peace during a special elections, is inspired from Altarejos’ own childhood, one that has been marked by the loss of a father, also a soldier, who was killed in the service of the country.

Set in Altarejos’ native Masbate, Pink Halo-Halo opens with a row of soldiers jogging amidst a serene backdrop of the province. Several boys, running and carrying toy guns, follow suit. As the jogging soldiers leave the frame, Altarejos’ camera follows the boys playing. Altarejos’ gaze, from then on, is focused on the boy. Adult affairs, from domestic issues like the tenuous relationship between the boy’s mother (Angeli Bayani) and her in-laws to more serious matters like the war in Mandanao, are kept in the background, overheard rather than outright dictated. Seemingly uninterested in the world of the adults and therefore free from any discussion of poverty, politics, and other unpopular issue, the tone is consistently and refreshingly light like child’s play.

Life is strictly observed from the boy’s perspective, a perspective that is intriguingly shaped by a blossoming affinity for feminine interests. This intentionally limited point of view that Altarejos insists on enunciates the sheen of safety and tenderness that is rightfully reserved for the boy. Given that, when these adult matters forcibly invade the boy’s innocent world, such as when the boy finds out the fatal predicament of his father in Mindanao on television and discovers firsthand the immediate dangers of the real world, the effect is indisputably heartbreaking. Even in detailing the specifics of personal and familial grief, Altarejos does so with admirable restraint and control. That Altarejos was able to handle the pain and heartbreak with hardly any artifice or flair is a testament to both his passion for the subject matter and his maturity as filmmaker.

Much of the film is fueled not necessarily by spectacle or technical knowhow but by a more appreciable earnestness and simplicity that is quite rare in cinema nowadays. As a matter of fact, Pink Halo-Halo is hardly a perfect film. The film’s infrequent indulgences, from the gratingly saccharine musical score to the occasional directorial hiccups (a far-too-obvious cue here and there), are too apparent to be left unnoticed. However, on the sole basis of poignancy by way of its inherent honesty and sincerity in telling a story that is based on the director’s childhood experiences, the film is a marked revelation of what Altarejos, whose previous works’ merits seem to be limited to queer interests and nothing else, can do with the medium without necessarily losing himself in the process of expanding his artistic horizons. Pink Halo-Halo, notwithstanding its homosexual undertones and its distinct local color, speaks a universal language that is indifferent to gender, creed, and nationality.

(Cross-published on Twitch.)