Maling Akala (2007)

Maling Akala (Pablo Biglangawa & Veronica Velasco, 2007)
English Title: Mistaken Assumption

A man tries to balance himself in the middle of a rickety wooden bridge. He does the same inside a boat. He also loses grip of a glass which falls and breaks into several shards. An abandoned hut sits in the middle of a picturesquely constructed frame, and on the window sill of the hut is a bowl uncomfortably maintaining its balance against the humping movements of the hut's occupants. Pablo Biglangawa and Veronica Velasco's Maling Akala (Mistaken Assumption) has an almost obsessive interest on balance, whether it be on a bridge, a boat, a window sill, or the camera's frame. It somehow matches the film's inherent theme of the discomfort in living in the middle when one is assured that he sways further on the side, as what JP (a frustratingly flat Victor Basa, ) tries but fails to do in the movie (which is also the theme of Biglangawa and Veronica Velasco's first feature film Inang Yaya (Mother Nanny, 2006), where Maricel Soriano's character struggles to maintain a balance between being a loving mother to her lone daughter and affectionate nanny to her ward).

Like JP, Maling Akala is a film that continuously morphs. It starts out with a chance encounter between the two lead characters, JP and Teta (Jodi Santamaria), aboard a passenger bus to the province. JP, we are hinted by the recurring hazy flashbacks and the little details that Biglangawa and Velasco provide like the tiny blood stain in his branded shirt, his shady get-up that somewhat provides anonymity, and his aversion for the police, is on the run while Teta, as obviously evidenced by the rotundness of her belly, is on the brink of labor. While in the rest stop, Teta goes into labor and caught in an unexpected scenario, JP lends a hand by bringing her to the hospital and paying for her hospital bills. The doctor and the hospital staff mistakenly refer to JP as Teta's husband, and the two adopt the erroneous belief, introducing themselves as a married couple to Teta's parents (for different reasons: JP, to acquire a suitable hiding place in the parents' provincial house; and Teta, to give her childbirth a semblance of propriety in the eyes of her parents, which would later on evolve into a desire to turn the temporary ruse into reality).

It's the prime set-up for a timeless love story, at least in the eyes of Teta and the rest of us who, like her, still believe that love makes the world go round. The fortuitousness of their meeting, the gentleness and non-obligatory kindness of JP, and the seeming perfectness of it all would cloud any hopeless romantic's senses of what is real and not, what is possible and not. On the other hand, the set-up can also be perceived as the beginnings of a crime thriller, a daring mystery, a Filipino noir. In JP's mind, the present world revolves around the crime he has committed and is seeking absolution from to the point that his connivance with Teta becomes nothing more than a procedure for him to buy more time from justice, any attribution of emotion is utterly impossible.

Sadly, the film seems to be less deliberate and subtle than I would have wanted (Biglangawa and Velasco have a tendency for trite sentimentality, and mawkish visual and musical cues, as with Inang Yaya; that is something they probably learned while working in advertising, where every second paid by a client for must be loaded with emotions and information, thus the tendency to overexpand gestures and abandon subtlety). The film would often indulge in prolonged moments of solitary bliss (as when JP first wakes up in the provincial house, enjoying the surrounding, his body frame one with the beautiful surroundings, enough to be understood as commercial for tourism), cheesy dialogue, and a visual style that is not well-suited for the type of film they are intending to make. I prefer more somber visuals (like the ones Tsai Ming-liang or Apichatpong Weerasethakul use in their thinking-men's comedies), indicative of an unapparent yet slowly surfacing humorous core instead of Maling Akala's candy-colored commercial hues and overly-scenic framing, that pay too much attention to itself.

What Biglangawa and Velasco try to achieve in Maling Akala is a risky feat, contemplating the differing motivations of the two characters within the movie without necessarily harmonizing them. The film is not a romantic thriller, or any other mixed genre critics love throwing around. Maling Akala is essentially a comedy of errors that transforms, if necessary, into romance or mystery, but never both at the same time. It seems that the film is structured in a way that would allude to the main conflict of JP: a person cannot have two jarring personalities, two different roles, have two conflicting attractions at the same time.

Inang Yaya (2006)

Inang Yaya (Pablo Biglangawa & Veronica Velasco, 2006)
English Title: Mother Nanny

Snow globes, cute young faces, bubbles, kids' voices struggling to match a sugary melodic song: the initial scenes of Inang Yaya (Mother Nanny) warned me that this is not a film for the cynical and realist in me. I usually cringe at the sight and sound of kids trying to look cute, but miraculously I was quite tolerant of the first few minutes. Even more miraculous is that I was very tolerant throughout the film. I have never utilized such tolerance for cinematic tearjerkers that use kids and their plights since Maryo J. delos Reyes' Magnifico (2003), but there I was: sitting, munching and swallowing every bit of emotionally manipulative scene with a fanciful glee and memory-dusting gaze.

Inang Yaya starts with Norma vacationing in her province for a few days. We are introduced to her daughter, a very curious and energetic Ruby (Tala Santos) and her mother (Marita Zobel). The mother complains of the very short vacation that is afforded her, and begins to warn her of the possibility that she might not always be there to take care of Ruby while she's in Manila taking care of another person's daughter. The vacation ends with a heartbreaking farewell between the family members. Norma returns to her employers' home. There, she also takes care of the young couple's daughter Louise (Erika Oreta) with a careful combination of sincere affection and professional duty. An emergency forces Norma to bring Ruby to her employers' household. The couple is nice enough to accept their nanny's daughter and even enrolls her in the private school where Louise is enrolled.

I've never been a fan of Maricel Soriano. While I acknowledge her skill, she has ticks and quips I dislike. Consider me a convert after seeing her change within a year from upper-class haunted romantic in Bobi Bonifacio's Numbalikdiwa (2006) to Inang Yaya's kind hearted nanny of humble roots. She is one of the few Filipino actresses who can convincingly play characters of different social dimensions, from films of different genres, with scenes that change from one mood to its opposite end.

However, Soriano doesn't single-handedly carry the film. The two young actresses (Santos and Oreta) manage to be adorable without being generic. The scene where Santos slowly nears Oreta who is playing with her dolls have that innate quality that carries that scene from being seriously overplayed to breezily charming. Also, the film is technically impressive: the musical score (by Nonong Buencamino), the glossy cinematography (by Gary Gardoce), and the relaxed editing (by Randy Gabriel), all contribute to the film's consistent quality.

The cynic and realist in me kept on asking questions: Why is the couple so nice to Norma? Oh, that's utterly impossible unless Norma has tremendous luck to land in such wonderful household when the rest of the Philippines' one million maids are tortured or treated with inhumanity by their employers. But then, those questions and observations are just me begging for something dramatic to happen or at least a tinge of real conflict to arise. Inang Yaya's light plot involves a string of well-placed situations that either push for tears or delight you with a well-earned chuckle. The lack of a real conflict is a sign of weakness for the filmmakers who are either too respectful of their topic (I thought the film is basically a tribute film, and thus, any conflict might make a ripple that could destroy the point of tribute) or just afraid to commit an imperfection that might arise from a cinematic dilemma. The situations, the environment, the characters are all too unrealistically perfect that the point of making a film about them seems questionable.

But the film has been made, and I'm sure the film was based from the very best of the collective Filipino's experience with their yayas or stay-in nannies, which are probably endemic to Filipino culture since these nannies literally become part of the family and have become an indelible part of the childhoods of those privileged enough to have them. I can have no grudge with the film's good-naturedness and I can only commend the filmmakers' acknowledgment of these unsung heroes' sacrifice of being dual mothers (more often than not, feeding a bigger portion of their maternal pie to children of other people) to their natural children and their children out of employment. The plot may be merely a string of heart pounding situations and scenarios that dwell on slight conflicts and the film may not have a dramatic turning point or a climax of epic proportions, but the emotional wallop that is derived from those vignettes of joyous ordinary life is just undeniable.