Ano ang Kulay ng mga Nakalimutang Pangarap? (2013)

Jose Javier Reyes' Ano ang Kulay ng mga Nakalimutang Pangarap?: The Colors of Forgotten Dreams

Jose Javier Reyes, for all his faults as a director, has earned his renown for one singular artistic characteristic, which is his ability to enshroud his works with a distinctly middle-class perspective. His astute interest in the clear lines that divide Philippine society into various socio-economic classes are often depicted through satire, as in Mga Mumunting Lihim (2012), where the friendship of four middle class women is abruptly tested by deceit, envy and various fleeting plights, or in Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo (2006) and its sequel Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo (2007), where the concerns of the marital life of a middle class couple are mined for comedy.

His best romances are the ones draped with class issues. May Minamahal (1993) has affluent Aga Muhlach falling in love for Aiko Melendres, the lowly daughter of a jeepney driver. Instead of depicting the cross-social class love story with fairy tale allure, Reyes injects realistic observations as to the very apparent lines that have been punctured because of the two lovers’ affectations. Kung Ako na Lang Sana (2003), on the other hand, tells the atypical love story of Aga Muhlach’s financially stable playboy and Sharon Cuneta’s hardworking entrepreneur, documenting along the way the worries and problems of a privileged generation.

Whenever Reyes decides to tackle the issues of the impoverished, such as in Live Show (2000), which is about men and women forced into performing live sex shows for survival, the perspective is evidently middle class, with depictions of oppression and struggle shrouded with pity, regret, shame and seriousness that only a repentant member of the ruling class can offer. Ano ang Kulay ng mga Nakalimutang Pangarap? (What are the Colors of Forgotten Dreams?), which narrates the life of a Teresa (Rustica Carpio), a domestic helper who has spent most of her life serving several generations of a middle class family, is possibly the most persuasive of Reyes’ expression of middle class guilt.

Domestic servants have become a necessity for most middle class households, who find both parents becoming breadwinners to maintain a lifestyle. The servants, instead of being regarded as typical employees, become part of the household, taking on tasks from simple cleaning to raising children in the absence of their parents.

Unfortunately, their very vague position within the family unit deprives them of certain securities. Emotional attachments become too irresistible. Monetary compensation becomes a non-issue. In the end, however, when economic circumstances are weighed alongside de facto relationships, the former takes precedence, resulting into an oppressive tradition that we can only quietly acquiesce. It is perhaps our undeniable familiarity with this oppression that makes Reyes’ film genuinely affecting.

Reyes complicates this depiction of middle class oppression by situating his tale during the twilight of Teresa’s career, when she has become close to being useless to the family she serves. The family’s remaining members, Stella (Jackie Lou Blanco), Vince (Bobby Andrews), and Andre (Ryan Agoncillo), have all migrated outside the Philippines, leaving the family mansion for sale. Amidst negotiations with brokers and buyers, they become confronted with something they have glaringly omitted: what happens to Teresa?

Reyes depicts the siblings unequally. Stella and Vince seem intent on moving on, regarding Teresa’s situation a mere diversion from the goal of disposing all of their family’s assets in the Philippines. Andrew, however, has more benevolence in his affairs with Teresa. Despite that, Reyes approaches the moral dilemma in his narrative with logic and reason. He ensures that no inherent antagonists arise, and instead, all acts and inactions are mere results of a situation that all characters find themselves trapped in.

Melodrama is Reyes’ weapon of choice. Ano ang Kulay ng mga Nakalimutang Pangarap? is effectively manipulative. Flashbacks are utilized to indulge in key scenes that enunciate Teresa’s sacrifice for and investment in the family. From Carpio’s resplendent performance to the howling musical score, the film immediately urges pity for the aging woman whose illusions of being part of the family she has served is about to shatter. Pity, after all, is but a by-product of guilt. It is most sincere when there is an acceptance of a wrongdoing. When it is sincere, it prods for compassion. Reyes, true to his mission of exposing either the excesses or the shrouded inhumanity of his class, aims to use his film to move for compassion.

Thus, subtlety is not an option. The film ends with Teresa, alone and on the verge of confusion, looking into the camera and at the audience. She probes for pity and for compassion. At the very least, she probes for guilt from the social class who can afford to watch her life’s sufferings but cannot afford her the humanity she deserves.

(First published in Rappler.)

Mga Mumunting Lihim (2012)

Those Glaring Inconsistencies in Jose Javier Reyes' Mga Mumunting Lihim (Those Little Secrets)

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Tragedy is the inspiration for Jose Javier Reyes’ Mga Mumunting Lihim (Those Little Secrets). A death of a dear friend, whose wake and eulogy revealed to Reyes certain circumstances in their friendship he may have overlooked, would urge Reyes to craft a story out of newly discovered questions and insecurities pertaining to long-term platonic relationships. The most interesting thing about Reyes’ story is that it is more reliant on witty humor than weepy dramatics, suggesting that Reyes is more fascinated in the comedic urges of social humans than he is with teary narrative contrivances. That suggestion, as it turns out, never ripens into reality.

The plot is driven primarily by the estrogen-powered histrionics of a bunch of middle-class friends who’ve gone through a lot only to have their friendship dissolved by a devious plan of the deceased to leak well-kept secrets into the consciousness of her still-living long-time pals. It starts with ad executive Carla (Iza Calzado), poised, eloquent and all too ready to show-off her mannered intellect, who surprisingly did not get the honor of giving the eulogy for her best friend and cancer victim Mariel (Judy Ann Santos). That honor went to Sandra (Agot Isidro), the crew’s infamous gold digger whose sudden rise in status saw a decline in her reputation among her very subtle friends.

However, Mariel bequeathed to Carla her private journals, which at first revealed innocuous details about her childhood insecurities. However, the more she reads through the entries, the more she discovers how little she knows about her friends and how much has been hidden from her. As she relates these new found bits of information to Sandra and Olive (Janice de Belen), she starts to weigh whether the truth is worth the eventual deterioration of their bond with each other.

Reyes takes full advantage of the opportunity to direct a film without the shackles paid for by a commercial studio. True enough, Mga Mumumunting Lihim is a confusing parade of styles. At one point, he indulges in close-ups, parading the immaculate beauty of the faces he has assembled for his film. Then, he attempts to adopt a more freewheeling aesthetic style, with the camera wafting around, capturing whatever action or dialogue. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the flipflopping between gloss and grit, except that it is fashionably free. The film’s editing is more infuriating than functional, divulging the inconsistencies with outrageous shifts in plotting instead of conveniently hiding them with brisk and clean cuts.

Reyes is not let down by his actresses, who in varying degrees give satisfyingly assured performances. Sadly, the trite portrayals of the male cast become more apparent, further exposing the film’s frustratingly rough edges.

It seems that Reyes cannot rid himself of the conventional and formulaic filmmaking which became his bread and butter for decades, remaining beholden to the melodramatic artifices in storytelling of the so-called mainstream which instantaneously tug the heartstrings of the unsuspecting audience. Mga Mumunting Lihim is more than ready to abandon the zesty irreverence the film seamlessly developed for an unsatisfying conclusion that is bludgeoned to death by conventional good taste and safe sentimentality. More than the confusing aesthetics or the very wide gap between the performances of the leads and the support, the film’s sudden movement towards sap and predictability is its most glaring undoing.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Till My Heartaches End (2010)

Till My Heartaches End (Jose Javier Reyes, 2010)

The young lovers in Jose Javier Reyes’ Till My Heartaches End have the easiest of romances. Unfettered by meddling family members, poverty, or other problems that stall the relationships of their counterparts in other movies, Powie (Gerald Anderson), a young man who ambitions to make his own name and wealth, and Agnes (Kim Chiu), a nursing graduate from the province who relocates to Manila to review for the board exams, get into a relationship without any issue.

After an encounter in a coffee shop where Powie was working and a fateful meeting in the heart of Manila that led to a lunch of cheap soft-boiled eggs covered in orange batter in the middle of a busy street, the two become inseparable. When Powie starts to earn more money as a real estate agent, the relationship starts to crack and reveal its weaknesses, starting with the impression that maybe Powie, whose ambition seems to precede everything else, and Agnes, whose naiveté in the affairs of the heart has rendered her vulnerable to the inevitable heartaches of being in a relationship, are not exactly compatible.

Reyes’ aim is to filter fantasy from the romantic film. In that sense, Till My Heartaches End plays like an account of an ordinary relationship, starting with the joys of falling in love for the first time and ending with the gnawing aches of expecting the inevitable conclusion to what used to be a perfect love affair. The only difference is that this account banks heavily on the individual charms of Anderson and Chiu and the chemistry that was manufactured specifically for their duo. Unfortunately, the moroseness of the material overwhelms the possible charms of Anderson and Chiu’s tandem.

The film, despite Reyes’ earnest attempts in recreating a love affair that started perfect but was not really meant to be and despite the momentary pleasures of Reyes’ consistently pleasant writing, is just very dull. Reyes’ film fails primarily for the very simple reason that the romance that is at its center so torturously tedious and its participants so obnoxiously obsessed with whatever they’re obsessed with that caring for the couple and their relationship, as the movie moves along, gradually evolves to be a chore. Beyond the requisite gloss of the typical mainstream production, Till My Heartaches End pushes the boundaries of monotonous commercial filmmaking. Having Powie and Agnes’ love story unfold through the curiosity-triggered conversations of people around the couple seems to be an expendable storytelling conceit. With or without it, the film still struggles to make magic out of the mundane facets of what it believes to be the realities of falling in and out of love.

Its attempts in demystifying cinematic romance, derivative of the anti-romantic charmers from Hollywood like Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer (2009), is hurt by its own indecisiveness in whether or not it wants to map the life and death of a romantic relationship or it wants to betray that completely by hinting of the possibility of still a romantic happily-ever-after for the beleaguered and tortured lovers, as exemplified by the anti-climactic buss in the forehead that precedes not one but two telling instances where the girl looks back at her ex before singer Carol Banawa belts out a song about loving so stubbornly, it hurts.

Believe me, this hurts.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Working Girls (2010)

Working Girls (Jose Javier Reyes, 2010)

Jose Javier Reyes' Working Girls is a disappointment. Just like the counterfeit bags one of Reyes' characters peddles to her internet clients, the film hardly matches the 1984 Ishmael Bernal satire with the same title that it supposedly updates. Even if independently assessed of Bernal's acclaimed urban comedy, Working Girls is still an unforgivably incoherent, annoyingly shallow, and ultimately pointless exercise. In an interview, Reyes admits that this film was made as a sort of tribute to Bernal and Amado Lacuesta, screenwriter of the 1984 comedy. Given Reyes’ intentions for writing and directing this update of Bernal’s classic, I can only conclude that this films’ biggest achievement is that it will inevitably raise awareness of the existence of Bernal’s film, and hopefully gain for it more followers.

Perhaps my displeasure for Reyes’ film is a tad exaggerated. Reyes, I admit, is a very smart and able writer whose gift for gab translates very well both on the page and on screen. Also, Reyes may perhaps be one of the few Filipino filmmakers who can translate middle-class woes and aspirations into commercially accessible films. For example, Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo (2006) has a middle-class wife fitting into her husband’s affluent family. The result is probably one of the funniest and truest domestic comedies in the past few years. Unfortunately, its sequel, Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo (2007) feels more like an undercooked rehash of what made Kasal feel sincere notwithstanding its glossy mainstream trappings. Reyes’ Working Girls, I again admit, is not a total disaster. There are portions of the film that are absolutely lovely, some are even heartbreaking. However, these scarce nuggets of what Reyes’ brilliant mind can come up with are immediately drowned by the film’s tedious attempt to match Lacuesta’s inimitable wit.

In Bernal’s Working Girls, the rich and handsome boss catches his secretary (Carmi Martin, who plays a secretary who dreams of ending up with one of her wealthy bosses) talking to her best friend on the phone about how she has fallen for her boss (she screams the film’s most famous line, “Sabel, this must be love!"). Her boss calls her to his office, asks her to note down his dictations which turn out to be his declaration of love to her. When she realizes that, she throws away her notepad and pen, and jumps to her boss, now her lover, in glee. Lacuesta is undeniably gifted in conjuring these scenes that are memorable not only because of the humorous outrageousness of the situations his characters find themselves into but also because these outrageous situations actually reflect a reality Filipinos can only admit in between laughs and chuckles.

Borrowing several of the characters from the original and using them as linkages for the new women whose lives he momentarily explores, Reyes actually manages to juggle both continuity with Bernal’s film and his own authorial fulfillment together. Actually, there’s a certain enjoyment in seeing how the original characters have placed themselves more than two decades after their various escapades; however, this enjoyment is completely lost when it turns out that Lacuesta’s characters have basically turned into either caricatures (Martin’s gold-digging, Botox-addicted cougar; and Gina Pareno’s boisterous mother-in-law) or wallflowers (Rio Locsin’s token doting mother).

Reyes newly-concocted characters, unlike the original working girls who were located mostly within Makati City’s business district and occupying various positions within the corporate world, are spread throughout the metropolis and are plying different professions. Paula (Eugene Domingo) sells counterfeit designer bags through her Multiply account, in the hopes that her earnings will be enough to bring her kids to an expensive private school. Marilou (Ruffa Gutierrez) is a beauty queen-turned-trophy wife of a tycoon who is struggling to retain the very little she inherited from her husband. Wendy (Cristine Reyes) is a social-climbing promo girl who dreams of hooking up with a wealthy lawyer (Rafael Rosell). Ada (Jennylyn Mercado) is a tech support agent who is trying to get over the father of her child. Tere (Iza Calzado) is a nurse who suddenly finds herself in a difficult position when she has been assigned to take care of the dying wife (Ina Feleo) of her first love who just disappeared on her. Dara (Bianca King), a Berkley graduate, attempts to prove her mettle in the TV news industry. Finally, Cleo (Eula Valdez) is a cosmetic surgeon who is fighting off pressure from a women’s activist group headed by Rose (Maria Isabel Lopez, who played the same character in the 1984 film, and who back then was a receptionist who was subbing as an escort girl).

There basically lies the problem with Reyes’ update. Reyes’ Working Girls is a film that struggles with its own indulgences. In his reckless effort to portray the current situation of women in the labor force in all aspects and facets, mapping out each and every possible niche that women have tried to penetrate, he has achieved really nothing. This is because the film is mostly composed of skits that are tied together by a filament of a plot that is far too convoluted to be taken seriously. Sure, there are scenes which may be brilliantly written (the jeepney ride wherein Paula and her driver (Ricky Davao) start to get to know each other’s stories and slowly fall in love is a well-acted and well-directed sequence, only to be betrayed by a subversion to crass and unneeded humor; similarly, Tere’s private conversation with her patient about the latter’s sadness is somewhat touching), but the entirety of the film is nothing more than a loosely weaved collage of uninteresting curiosities and farfetched generalizations.

Bernal’s Working Girls, released during Ferdinand Marcos’ volatile regime, works because beneath its stories is a reflection of an economy that is extrinsically booming but is internally depleted, with its work force relying on other methods to escape the well-dressed and perfumed rut they are trapped in. There is nothing of that depth in this sequel. As it turns out, Reyes’ Working Girls, if I may be permitted to use the now-famous words of character actress Cherie Gil (who plays another snooty rich girl in this film) in Emmanuel Borlaza’s Bituing Walang Ningning (A Star Without Shine, 1985), is nothing more “but a second-rate, trying hard copycat.” I have a feeling, Reyes himself probably agrees.

(Cross-published on Twitch)

Can This Be Love (2005)

Can This Be Love (Jose Javier Reyes, 2005)

Ryan (Hero Angeles) is a nursing student who dreams of working abroad. To make ends meet and earn enough for tuition and his daily expenses, he starts working for Roger (Tirso Cruz III), owner of a stall that accepts typing and printing jobs. Daisy (Sandara Park), an exchange student from Korea who is studying English in Manila, submits her draft essay to Roger. Roger assigns the essay to Ryan for him to correct, type, and print. The essay, about how Daisy feels about the Philippines and Filipinos in general, irks Ryan enough to start his seemingly endless tirade against Koreans studying English in the Philippines. Through some twist of fate, Daisy turns out to be the same person Ryan is buying a second-hand cellphone from, and the same person who he has been exchanging sweet text messages with. The initial shock of knowing that the person you were falling for represents everything you hate mellows into romance.

The narrative of Jose Javier Reyes' Can This Be Love is undoubtedly a result of the exigencies of casting rather than of Reyes' sheer ingenuity. Angeles and Park were the winners of a local talent search television show. The two were matched to form a love team, the best and most cost-efficient way to market up and rising talents. To mine on the love team's sudden spike in popularity, a movie that featured them had to be produced. Perhaps Angeles and Park's love team's unique selling point is that it crosses pertinent racial and cultural boundaries, since Angeles is Filipino and Park is Korean. The Philippines, at least for the past decade or so, has become the destination for Koreans who would want to learn English. Due to this increase in the population of Koreans in the Philippines, the purely-Filipino society has been inflicted an expected change: with Korean establishments gradually dotting the city landscape and Koreans mingling in crowds becoming more and more a norm. In such a case, Angeles and Park's love team is an inevitable response to this societal change. It perhaps represents a subconscious fantasy of homogenizing the natives with the newcomers.

Reyes' movie mines predominantly on this fantasy. It is structurally and thematically formulaic, working on traditional tropes of love overcoming all hindrances, only this time, there are added elements of racial prejudice and cultural differences. The narrative follows a predictable arc, beginning with supposed incompatibility and ending in fairy tale bliss. I was hoping for the material to be handled with a little bit more intelligence. After all, Reyes has succinctly laid down his setting: of a city where racial discomfort between Filipinos and Koreans that goes both ways. Perhaps, I was, at the very least, waiting for a more convincing explanation how Ryan got past his vocalized prejudices to fall for Daisy, or how Daisy got past her adherence to tradition to get the resolve to stick with Ryan, instead of being merely force-fed the fantasy.

Reyes directs the way he wrote his screenplay, all style without much substance. Thus, we are given a film with littered MTV-like sequences that display the two lovers snuggling in slow motion, and time-trapped pieces of dialogue that sneaked into the screenplay in obvious deference to then current fads. I guess I am asking too much from a film that is a product of a studio that thrives on public ignorance. Can This Be Love is primarily crafted as escapist mechanism for those who feed on corny love stories. It is a film that exists as merely plebeian entertainment, although it is placed in a milieu that is pregnant with far more intelligent and interesting possibilities.

Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo (2007)

Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo (Jose Javier Reyes, 2007)

Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo, like most of Jose Javier Reyes' slice-of-life dramas and comedies, is trite entertainment. The film is the result of the kneejerk reaction of film studio execs when Reyes' Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo (To Marry, To Join, To Share) made lots of money. Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo continues the story of newly-married couple, Jed (Ryan Agoncillo) and Angie (Judy Ann Santos), who during the final minutes of Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo reconcile after the birth of their son. The sequel's not as good. It lacks the refreshing charm, the sincere attitude, and the novelty of the original. It helps that it was released during the usually dispensible yearly Metro Manila Film Festival where most mainstream studios release half-baked products while the moviegoing market is cornered. Compared to the brainless and unspectacular spectacles, the tepid family dramas, and the inept horrors, Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo feels like an absolute masterpiece.

Of course, Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo is definitely not a masterpiece. It's quite far from it. At its best, the film is enjoyable but completely forgettable. At its worst, it is overly indulgent and excrutiatingly redundant. The film starts where Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo ended, with Jed and Angie in supposed bliss over their renewed romance and their firstborn. Reyes keeps the story in lightning pace, with scenes jumping right after another with the efficiency of a clockwork assembly line. The jokes are executed in a similar manner, with characters mouthing one-liners and retorts with the accuracy of a rusty gatling gun. That's basically my problem with this film, and even with Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo. It is too busy in telling a very simple story with overly glorified with unnecessary sideplots, thus turning the film into what feels like an episodic, contrived, and scattered sitcom for the silver screen.

Divided into three parts like Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo, Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo proceeds on detailing the hardships of parenthood for Jed and Angie. The first part (Sakal, which roughly means to strangle) is concerned about the new parents balancing their responsibilities with their jobs, themselves, their baby and their parents. The second part (Sakali, which roughly means to chance upon) mainly focuses on the couple's trip to Barcelona where they leave their toddler son to be taken cared of by their respective parents. The third part (Saklolo, which roughly means to help) has the couple giving back to their respective mothers who are experiencing differing conflicts with Jed's mother (Gloria Diaz) suffering from what she thinks is cancer but is actually severe bouts of inattention, and Angie's mother (Gina Pareño) falling in love quite belatedly with a widowered Filipino-American (Freddie Webb). While the three-part format might have worked with Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo because the themes in that movie were carefully structured (marriage, difficulties with the in-laws, and infidelity), the same cannot be said with Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo. The three-part format here is unconvincing.

Reyes can be a very good screenwriter if he is writing about a milieu or a topic that he is familiar with: the Philippine middle class, their problems, relationships, their lives in general. Reyes' screenplay here is composed mostly of bickering: between husband and wife, husband and mother, wife and mother, wife and friends, mother-in-law and mother-in-law. It's a very talkative film, with characters fuming marital and familial angst, anger, and fury, with hyperactive fervor. It's all a bit too chaotic, with the film having barely no time to breathe or at least exude a really impressionable sentiment. It seems like Reyes thought that Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo worked because of his self-aware writing and assumed the sequel needed more than that kind of writing. His assumption is dangerously incorrect since Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo turned out to be ridiculously overwritten, and overly plotted.

Unfortunately, the film veers away from the affectingly familiar sentimentality that made Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo's appreciable familial weirdness so delightful. Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo, with its concentration on showing the beauty of Barcelona, its incessant mouthiness, its hyperbolic parents-in-law, and its supposedly humorous abnormality, is entertainment that works best during Christmas, when all local mainstream producers fart out movies and expect the moviegoing public to spend their year-end bonuses watching them.

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.

Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo (2006)

Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo (Jose Javier Reyes, 2006)

Rough English Translation: To Marry, To Join, To Share

In a film festival that mostly caters to plebeian tastes and whose raison d'etre is commercial viability rather than artistic inegrity, it is quite pleasing to have something like Jose Javier Reyes' Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo (roughly translated in English as To Marry, To Join, To Share). It's a film that understands the clamour of the real moviegoers while understands the fact that the overused conventions of genre-filmmaking are getting old, too old. It's a film that acknowledges swift as an editing style, and natural as a comedic enhancement. In other words, Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo is dutiful in its profit-making mission, fresh in its artistic presentation, and actually quite entertaining.

Casting real life lovers Judy Ann Santos and Ryan Agoncillo as the film's lead couple is simply a stroke of genius. It saves a lot of time by deleting the need to establish chemistry and rapport. It only took Reyes around fifteen minutes to have Angie and Jed (Santos and Agoncillo, respectively) fall in love and get married. Although it feels slightly breezed through, I do understand the point that Reyes is not interested in pre-marital romances, but on what actually happens after the marriage; when all things previously invisible have materialized in a matter of days from the marriage ceremony. It's that pre-established chemistry that helps the film once the initial romance wears off. And there is actually a danger of shifting the focus from the central couple to the colorful support. Gina Pareno steals the show as Angie's histrionic mother who juggles her sausage-manufacturing business with her trite political career.

The storyline is probably a result of mixed real life experiences, conventional cinematic inspirations, formulaic genre-specific scenarios, and a select sprinkling of Reyes' talent in reorganizing real events into gems of filmic entertainment. Overall, aside from a few quibbles with regards to factual, legal (the questionable marriage license), and stereotypical issues in the film, its pretty much a faultless if not inconsequential tale. It's a comfort zone Reyes just can't get away from, and I'm actually glad he doesn't stray to uncomfortable territories --- we have seen him breezily tackling and portraying the lives of the middle class or the upper class, but he stumbles when its time to depict the lives of the less fortunate (he either forces the lower class to adapt to middle/upper class culture or just paints these characters as commonly acknowledged Lino Brocka-inspired caricatures).

It's actually quite admirable that Reyes trods a different path here when his recent filmography shows a director that has probably lost originality and artistic integrity (his recent features are all second tier horror/suspense flicks). Instead of drinking the panacea of sure success by rewriting the age-old tales of fairy tale-inspired romances, he cooks up something surprisingly refreshing (although it'd be criminal to claim that the film is entirely original --- it has shades of Hollywood films like Meet the Parents/Meet the Fockers, etc.) especially if taken from the viewpoint of someone who has suffered through the regurgitated rehashes of mainstream Philippine cinema.

Matakot Ka Sa Karma (2006)

Matakot Ka Sa Karma (Jose Javier Reyes, 2006)
English Title: Be Afraid of Karma

Matakot Ka Sa Karma (Be Afraid of Karma) is writer-director Jose Javier Reyes' fourth consecutive Metro Manila Film Festival horror offering. He copies the Shake, Rattle and Roll format (he directed an episode Anino (Shadow) for Shake, Rattle and Roll V (1994) back in the early 90's) and presents three ghost stories in a single film. The concept that drives the three stories together is not new material: Three women would chance upon a piece of antique furniture that has a tragic past; such past would resurface in the present by the ghosts that would start haunting and wreaking havoc in the women's homes. Cursed haunted objects have always been a bountiful device for horror filmmakers (Ishmael Bernal turns the trusty ice box into a sex-crazed and murderous monster in Fridyider (Frigidaire), Rico Maria Ilarde puts a nightmarish curse upon the innocent aquarium in his own Shake, Rattle and Roll 2k5 epiosde Aquarium). Reyes opts to connect the antique pieces by giving them a singular origin: an antique shop (this vaguely reminded me of an American television series entitled Friday the 13th wherein a shop would sell cursed items to its patrons) that specializes in original pieces sourced from different parts of the country.

The first tale concerns an antique bed that lands in the home of a mother (Gretchen Baretto) who singly takes care of his son; the antique bed has brought to the house the spirit of a disgruntled mother. The second portion concerns a closet that lands in the home of a young couple (Rica Paralejo and Derek Ramsey); it turns out that the closet was formerly used to hide a deformed youth. Lastly, a rustic dresser becomes a gift by persistent suitor (Rafael Rossel) to her object of affection (Angelica Panganiban). It turns out that the dresser contains a necklace that becomes the device for a Jack-the-Ripper-type wraith to know his next victims.

Matakot Ka Sa Karma's failure can largely be faulted to the unimaginative writing ability and the craftsmanlike directorial advances of Reyes. You can observe that the cinematography is actually quite good; the visuals provide a discomforting polish to the incompetent tales of upper class horror. The production design is also quite nice (the antique pieces are very beautiful and rustic (to the point that you can really imagine respective stories behind them)). Unconvincing and criminally grating is Jesse Lucas' looping musical score --- which at first was eerie and haunting but upon the umpteenth loop became unbearable and overused.

Three tales. Three repetitive tales that have no bearing whatsoever. It becomes very predictable that each and every tale will end in an abrupt and shallow tragedy as Reyes is too incompetent to infuse such tales with any emotional or at least societal weight. Characters are introduced and have no room for unique personalities or deep backgrounds. Each tale drives no point, no philosophical undertones, no cultural significance, or even artistic merit that the entire exercise becomes utterly repetitive and tedious. The result is a triptych of skin-deep scenarios that achieves nothing but pedestrian and juvenile scares.