The Healing (2012)

The Healing (Chito Roño, 2012)

Chito Roño’s The Healing is afflicted with a chronic case of indecision. It is viciously a horror film, one that stretches the limits of good taste with very visual and shocking depictions of violence and morbidity. In fact, the film holds the record for being the first Filipino film to be granted two different ratings by local censors, one for the trimmed version that is presumably more suited for teens and another for the version that displays all the acts of depravity Roño’s creative mind can conjure within the limited range of popular cinema.

However, Roño apparently has more ambitions for the film other than trite terror. The film is specifically designed, divided into various parts that are differentiated from one another by color schemes, beginning with white, then blue, then red, and yellow. Such designs are too obscure though. They are more puzzling than elucidating, more annoying than enlightening. The experiments only succeed in diluting the scares, bewildering the sense with what essentially are artsy indulgences that are either infuriatingly empty and shallowly motivated or too inexplicable to matter.

The film opens in a remote village where faith healer Elsa (Daria Ramirez) is busy receiving a crowd of sick people. Seth (Vilma Santos) has brought her father (Robert Arevalo), a stroke victim, for healing. Seth’s father miraculously recovers. Inspired by the miraculous recovery of Seth’s father, her sick friends and neighbors decide to take the trip to Elsa’s house to urge her to also heal them. Cookie (Kim Chiu), the daughter of Seth’s ex-husband who is desperate for a cure for her cancer, also joined the group going to Elsa. They eventually get what they wished for from the faith healer. However, one by one, they become brutal and violent, killing as many as they can before committing suicide.

The Healing spends a great deal of time needlessly attempting to make sense of the plentiful contrivances it filled its plot with. Simplicity is not one of Roño’s priorities. The film indulges in so many points that require tiring explanations and expositions, some of which seem too farfetched to be believed or to be appreciated. While the genre relies heavily on the supernatural and the unexplainable, Roño’s story seems too all over the place, forcing everything to cohere seamlessly like a completed jigsaw puzzle. Unfortunately, the film’s insistence on forcing the details mostly backfires, creating a story that meanders a little bit too much.

The key to good horror is not necessarily what is overtly shown and depicted but the quality and the extent of what is left to the imagination. Roño invests a lot in The Healing’s visual design. Practical effects are abandoned for computer-generated effects, allowing grislier and more deranged sequences to exist with absolute ease. Instead of heightening the tension, the computer-generated effects only deflates it, inviting humor with how closer it resembles cartoons than macabre realism instead of fear. The acting is also unnecessarily pronounced and hysterical, despite the characters’ unnatural reaction to impending amorality and death. There is just too little left for the audience.

The film is just frustratingly cluttered, serving details and elements, motivations and reactions, all of which do not necessarily fit the material they are forced to support. The Healing is commendable only for the fact that it attempted to stray from the inanities of uninspired horror cinema that has occupied Philippine cinema for far too long. It bears ideas and an execution of such ideas that evince an ambition and effort to break away from tired conventions. Sadly, everything ends up in forgettable confusion.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

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.)

Harana (2012)

The Lost Kings of Serenade in Benito Bautista's Harana

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Nothing is ever truly obsolete. When something loses its supposed relevance because its functions have been taken over with more efficiency by another thing, it gains a different use altogether, as a product for nostalgia, a beacon for the past that is an unstable depositary of memories. Nothing is ever truly obsolete, unless forgotten. Memory, being a product of human thought, is needed to be urged to exist. Remembrance is not automatic. It requires an impetus, a switch to initiate the rollercoaster ride down experiences and emotions guarded by used time.

The harana, a traditional means of courtship where the boy would recruit a troupe consisting of a guitarist and a crooner to join him to the house of his beloved who is about to be serenaded to romantic submission, is on the verge of obsolescence. In an age past emotion-laden mixtapes, an age that is obsessed with speed, love has no more use for rustic rituals and ceremonies that enunciate what nowadays is perceived to be a dethroned and antiquated sense of romance. Filmmaker Benito Bautista and renowned guitarist Florante Aguilar, in their documentary that proudly bears the name of the courtship that is embattled by the natural course of time, intends to redeem the tradition from being completely forgotten.

Aguilar, motivated by a diaspora-charged obsession to preserve his native culture, decides to go back to the Philippines from the comforts of the United States to look for the last true remaining practitioners of the harana. Aguilar would at times play timeless melodies with his guitar to unlikely crowds in unlikely places, gaining further motivation for his search and hope that there remains an audience for whatever he is trying to find based on the resounding reactions he would garner from the most unadorned and unsophisticated of audiences.

Bautista dutifully follows Aguilar in his seemingly quixotic quest to revive the musical tradition by picking whatever remnants he can find. The film starts questionably, making it more a profile of Aguilar than anything. Thankfully, the film progresses away from Aguilar’s persona and further into his mission. Aguilar generously disappears into the background, and allows himself to play backup literally and figuratively to the long-lost troubadours he found and assembled into a charming troupe.

The old men that Aguilar deemed fit to represent the dying tradition have stories worth telling. Bautista carefully allows them their own narrative threads, emphasizing the intriguing possibility of their noble talents converging with their humble livelihoods and living conditions. It seems the sincerity that the music offers is a product of very modest circumstances, of timid gentlemen with nothing but their voices and their hearts to craft melodies from. They are unsung heroes passionately singing to save their songs’ fragile relevance. Harana marvellously allows their timeless voices to get heard and enjoyed along with memories of romances that persist or could have been had they not been rendered obsolete by the unstoppable passage of time. The best parts of the documentary are when ageless serenades are allowed to drown cinematic and narrative conceits. It is most moving when it graduates from the search and the struggle and becomes an unabashedly hopeful celebration of music.

(Cross-published in Twitch and ABS-CBNnews.)

Mga Dayo (2012)

A Quiet Diaspora in Julius Sotamayor Cena's Mga Dayo (Resident Aliens)

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Julius Sotomayor Cena’s Mga Dayo (Resident Aliens) examines the life of three Filipinos living with various statuses in Guam. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the film is that it situates its three stories involving the Philippine diaspora in Guam. Guam is a tiny island that is closer to the Philippines than it is to the United States. In fact, the history of the island is deeply intertwined with that of the Philippines. Filipinos comprise one fourth of the population of the island. Although English is widely spoken, the Filipinos living there converse among themselves using their native languages. The culture and location of the island is conducive to Filipinos seeking a better future. It has almost all of the benefits of America like the dollars, the abundance of employment, and the predictable living conditions, but with less of the cultural displacement.

The America of Cena’s film is therefore oddly familiar, in a sense that the already stereotypical issues of immigration, whether it is the quiet or more pronounced manifestations of racial discomfort or the sudden absence of cultural integrity in a setting that feels so foreign, are avoided. Instead, the characters cope up with carious and issues, dilemmas involving the particular processes and setups that allow or disallow certain freedoms that dictate identity, employment, and stability. Cena, without insisting on the details, creates drama out of these processes, out of the much-wanted acquisition of the titular political status and the economic stability that comes along with it.

Alex (Sue Prado) has just been laid off from work and is now due to go home because of the expiration of her working visa. To prevent her deportation, she hesitantly agrees to marry her best friend. Ella (Olga Natividad), a supervisor in a local hotel, has been living in the island for several years already. Through her determination, she was able to raise a family and bring her 88-year old mother to Guam to live with her. However, her mother has fallen ill and needs fly back to the Philippines to recuperate. She then struggles to amass enough money to cover her mother’s trip home and back. Miriam (Janela Buhain), a journalist who was also recently laid off, spends her day carousing with her friends, flirting with several men, and drowning her sorrows and insecurities with alcohol. She eventually ends her day with a bittersweet surprise from her husband.

The conflicts are very subtly played. They are barely there, manifesting only in telling trickles and occasional bursts, in moments where feelings and issues that are repressed by the routine comforts provided by the island have to be let out. That is the beauty of the film. Almost nothing happens. It simply breezes along, allowing the piled up seemingly inconsequential events of the day to erupt into an emotional climax.

The problems of diaspora Cena is interested in are more personal. It is less about the social malaise that migration provokes and more about the despair and frustration of those composing the diaspora. In the end, Guam will not stop because of the problems of a certain demographic. It will chugs along, whether or not these residents chug along with it. The hotels will fill up, its transient residents unaware of what ails the dutiful cleaners that are but phantoms in their presence. The city light up to prepare for the night. Behind closed doors, the displaced can only cry, away from the eyes and ears of those who are better off being born privileged within man-made borders.

(Cross-published in Twitch and ABS-CBNnews.)

Aparisyon (2012)

The Sins of Silence in Vincent Sandoval's Aparisyon (Apparition)

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Prior to Marcos’ declaration of Martial Law, the country was in complete disarray. The regime, dictated by a culture of corruption and violence, would have students and other activists disappear, only to be discovered as victims of torture or worse, as dispatched bodies. However, in the Adorasyon convent, nestled deep within the forests of Rizal, news of these abuses are only heard from the occasional visits of family members or smuggled newspapers and transistor radios.

Kept away and protected from the harshness and temptations of the outside world by their dutiful mother superior (Fides Cuyugan-Asesnsio), the nuns enjoy the simple pleasures of a life lead by the daily routine of work and prayer. One night, newcomer Lourdes (Jodi Sta. Maria) gets raped by bandits on her way home with other external nun, Remy (Mylene Dizon), who makes use of the time outside the convent to join activists’ meetings in town.

Vincent Sandoval, in Aparisyon (Apparition), tackles both sin and guilt in a setting that is supposed to be immune from them. The plot he conceives is simple and succinct, concerning a tragedy that would cause the secluded nuns to suffer contrition in the midst of their supposedly immaculate faith. Despite the sparseness of the narrative, Sandoval manages to examine the various sins that manifested because of the single violent act, purposely pitting the gravity of the sin’s various proponents with the perdition they respectively seek.

Remy, for example, runs for her life while the bandits succeed in capturing Lourdes. On top of that, she introduced Lourdes to the activists’ meetings which eventually led to their being unable to return to the convent before dark. Perdition for her is through Lourdes’ forgiveness. In one extremely effective scene, Sandoval quietly captures Lourdes slapping Remy, pouring whatever anger she has for both Remy’s carelessness and abandonment. Remy, aware of the extent of her sin, forces Lourdes to slap her more. The anger finally gives way to forgiveness, and the two nuns exchange a wordless but tearful embrace.

The other nuns’ trespasses are more complicated. Their acts for redemption are more desperate. As it turns out, Sandoval’s story is more complicated. The details he weaved into the plot give way to an examination of sin and guilt that exist within a grey area. There are sins of omission, of the mind. There are also sins shared by a community. Sandoval sprinkles his film with sinners suffering not from obvious guilt but questions whether decisions made for the supposed safety of all have made them co-perpetrators to a perpetually continuing wrong. Sandoval also maps the contagious quality of violence, how that one random act has caused an epidemic of wrongs. Sandoval breaks the myth by raising the humanity of those who exhibit divinity in our most imperfect world.

Fortunately, Sandoval does not gravitate mainly towards the cerebral aspect of his thesis. He adeptly communicates the consuming anguish of having fallen from grace. Sta. Maria, Dizon, and Raquel Villavicencio, who plays Sr. Vera, the mother superior’s assistant, aptly inhabit their respective roles. Cuyugan-Asensio however is particularly impressive. She portrays the sudden mastermind of the film’s biggest sin of omission with masterful clarity and expert care. In one scene, she retreats with impassioned shame when an elderly nun (Rustica Carpio) who has lost all memory mistakes her for the devil. Yet she never appears to be wholly deserving of the despair. She comes off as a hapless and pitiful victim, stripped of the pride and stature of morality her position and responsibility initially provided her.

Jay Abello’s cinematography is sublime. He pits shadows with light, creating visuals that evoke the mental and moral conflicts surrounding the characters and the suffocation they suffer from being snatched of their prized innocence. Teresa Barrozo’s music is never interruptive. It beckons only when needed, enunciating the already uneasy atmosphere dealt by Abello’s arrestingly fractured images.

Sandoval’s direction is undeniably sophisticated. He forgoes safety and ease for risks that pay off, creating a film that is also a devastating mood piece, a product of the cross between the immense possibilities of the imagination and experiences dealt by inherited history. At one point, he projects curated videos of Marcos regime strife over Sta. Maria’s face as her character confesses her abandoning her vows to take part in an activists’ meeting in town, allowing the audience to immediately understand the plight of her troubled conscience, which is now being divided between her religious vows and her responsibility for nation.

He constantly reminds the reality of the historic and political milieu, through real videos and photographs of real activists and their family that momentarily puncture the film’s well-crafted illusion. In a way, without having to rely on cheap didactics, Sandoval warns his audience of the sins of apathy, that beyond the secluded convent that is cinema and its intoxicating pleasures and erstwhile depictions of truth filtered through a filmmaker’s art is a world where people really have suffered and continue to suffer.

(Cross-published in Twitch and ABS-CBNnews.)

Bwakaw (2012)

Coming Out Late in Jun Lana's Bwakaw

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Jun Lana started his career in film writing screenplays for directors Marilou Diaz-Abaya and Maryo J. de los Reyes, among others. In the several years where the country was starving for quality films, he penned films like Diaz-Abaya’s Sa Pusod ng Dagat (In the Navel of the Sea, 1998), Jose Rizal (1998), and Muro-ami (1999), tasteful alternatives to the crass titillating films that were being produced by the dozens.

Interestingly, Gigil (2006), Lana’s directorial debut, capitalized largely on babes clad in bikinis, parading both their bodies and loose morals in the beach. He then dabbled in various other genres, directing disposable horrors like Mag-ingat ka sa… Kulam (2008) and Tarot (2009) and sleazy dramas like Roxxxanne (2007) and My Neighbor’s Wife (2011) for various studios and producers. The career of Lana became a prime example of initial promise gone wrong. His latest, Bwakaw, seems to be his belated apology for the misdirection of his career.

Bwakaw is about Rene, a gay old man (Eddie Garcia) who only came out of the closet when he’s already very old and is now coping with the loneliness dealt by his delayed decision. The film is movingly sincere. Lana molds Rene not from stereotype but from accurate perceptions of how a man would be had he lived his life as a lie and decided only to admit his reality when he barely has any years left to enjoy it. Garcia understands the specific nuances of the character he’s portraying. He does not pepper his portrayal with gags and cheap imitations. Instead, he allows his performance to be subtle and low-key, resulting in what essentially is a quiet triumph in acting.

Lana smartly plays Rene’s repulsion towards his friends and acquaintances as the core of the film’s humor. He also purposefully manifests Rene’s repressed guilt with a beautiful sideplot involving a failed romance. While the film’s depiction of an old man’s loneliness is already astute and affecting, it still forces more storylines than the film’s elegant pacing can manage. The result is a screenplay that is a bit too busy and a bit too lenient to the many contrivances in plotting.

The screenplay’s excesses are thankfully grounded by Lana’s surprisingly restrained direction. Set in San Pablo, the film remarkably incorporates a very provincial laidback appreciation of time, perhaps the only thing that both tortures and gives hope to the film’s impossible protagonist. A less sensitive director would rush to forward the story, relish in the big dramatic moments, and exploit the storyline of the titular dog. Lana, on the other hand, allows the story to crawl, to stagger and earn the emotions that have been repressed by the abundance of silence and the occasional jokes.

Delightfully unhurried, Bwakaw manages to make stretches of quietude and nothingness both entertaining and meaningful. It also helps that the film’s images are composed, lighted, and framed exquisitely. The music is sparse but elaborate, starting with light strumming of a native instrument before evolving into something more hopeful, following the eventual restoration of Rene’s faith in life.

The film’s final frame, a long shot of a street where Rene is walking as a former flame drives his tricycle by totally ignoring the old man, is painfully lovely. It depicts a life where fairy tale endings do not exist especially for people who are most susceptible to melancholy yet notwithstanding that, living it still seems to be the most gratifying choice.

(Cross-published in Twitch and ABS-CBNnews.)

Ang Nawawala (2012)

Mapping a Hipster's Heartbreak in Marie Jamora's Ang Nawawala (What Isn't There) 

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Gibson (Dominic Roco), after ten years abroad, returns to Manila for the holidays. He still opts to not talk, a decision he made after seeing his twin brother die. He arrives to a house and a family that barely changed. His mom (Dawn Zulueta) still plays stern mother hen to Promise (Sabrina Man), his youngest sister. His father (Buboy Garovillo) still dons a mask of contentment. Corey (Jenny Jamora), his elder sister, is now in a relationship with a clueless blockhead (Marc Abaya) but remains to be the overstressed overseer of the seemingly normal family.

Teddy (Alchris Galura), Gibson’s childhood friend, rescues him, introducing him to new friends, a possible romance, and a lifestyle that serves as respite from his family’s torturous tedium. Along the way, Gibson finds his greatest diversion in Enid (Annicka Dolonius) and shares with her the stories of his life, his music, his inexperience in bed.

Marie Jamora and co-writer Ramon de Veyra has carefully conjured a coming-of-age tale that withdraws from the traditions of the genre. Instead of the raging hormones of burgeoning maturity or the delightful impulses of first love, Ang Nawawala (What Isn’t There) maps the redemption of lost years spent making sense of a childhood trauma that resulted in the most enduring of heartaches.

The conceit of Gibson’s decision to be quiet is admittedly farfetched but placed in a plot where the functions of communication are confused leading to a situation where people talk but nothing is truly understood, it transforms into an apt metaphor of the pervading theme that champions the universality of music, which plays a major role in the film, how music breaks barriers of language and location in transmitting messages that matter, and how it becomes the most potent drug for forgetting such scars from the past.

A part of the film is spent exploring the more meaningful margins of the current Philippine music scene. It features songs that are kept hidden and protected from the attention of the moneyed and usually empty mainstream. The film maneuvers the story of Gibson’s eventual falling for Enid’s unique charms along a myriad of melodies that explore the complexities of affairs of the heart, providing a distinct backdrop to the initial stirrings of a possible ecstasy.

Ang Nawawala is a love letter to a Manila that barely gets featured in film. It is specific on a certain demographic, the small percentage of the youth that gets high on a peculiar new music, also on everything pop and old, on infatuations that dangerously border on love. It locates itself in the various spots in the metro that attract the demographic, like the bars and concert venues that feature indie bands in their nightly gigs, or the rare vinyl stores, or the convenience stops and their cheap treats and time-wasters, or the all-night spas and their peculiar features. The film details these various diversions, from the hipster scene to the drugs and the various methodologies of taking, which shrouds the conflicts of the youth that feed on them.

Jamora’s first feature is obviously crafted to incorporate the attributes that define the lifestyle it portrays. It is paced like a rock star, relaxed when it needs to be but quick at the edges. The visuals are absolutely lovely, revealing an angle of the city that is patterned, orderly, the absolute opposite of the maniacal chaos of the various slums and squatters’ colonies that have been featured tirelessly in other films about Manila. The acting is mostly superb, with the performers tackling the entire spectrum of the multi-faceted demographic, from the overactive jerks that stalk the concert venues for a quick lay down to those authentically serious about the music with their eyelids shut to further increase the effect of the notes and lyrics.

In the end of it all, the film’s detour to the world populated by hipsters and wannabes only exemplifies the fleeting nature of the somewhat effective departure that world provides. Everything begins at home. Naturally, everything should end there. The problems and dilemmas sparked by the lack of understanding and communication at home cannot be solved by escaping them. In the film’s sublime final few moments, Gibson literally comes of age. He does what he’s supposed to have done when his youth, adolescence and everything good and bad that came along with it were suspended over a debilitating heartbreak. He did not need the drugs, the fireworks, the first kisses, and other spectacles. All Gibson needed was to talk.

(Cross-published in Twitch and ABS-CBNnews.)

Sta. Niña (2012)

The Price of Redemption in Emmanuel Palo's Sta. Niña 

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Set in the bleak plains of Pampanga, Emmanuel Palo’s Sta. Niña tells the story of Paulino (Coco Martin) who suddenly unearths the coffin of his daughter ten years after her death. Despite the length of time the coffin has been buried, her daughter remains uncorrupted, seemingly miraculously unchanged. Rumors of the marvel start to spread, causing several townspeople, including the province’s sickly governor, to flock Paulino’s house to be cured of their afflictions. More than that, the return of Paulino’s daughter again unravels his sins from the past and his unfinished efforts for redemption.

Palo’s crafting is exquisite. The film is beautifully photographed. The greys of the lahar-covered landscape evoke the very emptiness that confounds the people that manage to make a living despite the sudden desolation brought about by Mt. Pinatubo’s eruption. When the film finally adopts colors, they are quiet and muted, very telling of the despair and the secrets that are supressed by circumstance.

The music is aptly spare and haunting. The film’s pace is unhurried, allowing stretched moments of silence that allow for a clearer communication of many of the film’s more nuanced emotions. The performances of the actors, more specifically Martin, Anita Linda as Paulino’s dementia-afflicted grandmother, and Irma Adlawan as the unforgiving mother of Paulino’s former lover, are especially fine.

However, the biggest triumph of the film is how it clearly portrayed a land and a people wanting of salvation despite the abundance of religion. Palo paints the Pampanga of his film as ridden with fake prophets and empty symbols, where statues and icons are peddled to the ignorantly faithful and every instance of the supernatural would be considered an act of God. He portrays his characters as especially burdened by the weight of religious zeal, more than willing to ride the wave of popular faith to be salvaged from the gravity of errors of the past.

There is actually more to the film than to pinpoint the blatant hypocrisies of the self-proclaimed religious. There is more to it than the overused dynamics of act and practice as displayed in various other films that criticize traditional Catholic rituals because they do not reflect the real religiosity of the people practicing them. The film is made from a perspective that does not hold judgment towards these beliefs and practices. It finds humanity in the very reason why these beliefs and practices exist and persist. Instead, it connects the outward and perhaps sham religiosity of these people with their inward insecurities because of their very own acknowledgment of their own sinful ways.

Sta. Niña depicts sinners suffering so much in such a judgmental world that the sudden appearance of the titular incorruptible saint becomes the only viable escape, and the price they would have to pay for a much-ambitioned redemption. Nothing is more human than survival in a society that is quick to pass guilt and slow to forgive and forget.

(Cross-published in Twitch and ABS-CBNnews.)

Kamera Obskura (2012)

Out of the Camera, into the World in Raymond Red's Kamera Obskura 

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

There are a lot of great ideas swimming in a pool of confusion in Raymond Red’s Kamera Obskura. The film is conceptually sophisticated, more so than the bunch of films like Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist that merely borrowed stereotypical silent film aesthetics for trite nostalgia. Red, in recreating a silent film and dressing that recreated silent film within a storyline of a celebrated discovery of an obscure lost film in an abandoned warehouse, already tackles several very current issues that deserve to be put in the forefront of cultural discourse.

In the first few minutes of the film, Red has legendary archivists Teddy Co, Cesar Hernando and Ricky Orellana debating on the import of their discovery in front of the media. In their excited discussions, they traverse a gamut of intelligent topics from Philippine film history to the dilemmas of film preservation, preserving in the film what would have been limited in private conversations over beer or coffee.

The film concludes with the same kind of discussion by the same people, although this time, their discussions are shielded from the eyes and ears of media. The three scholars, in a darkened screening room where their discovery just finished screening without the missing final reel, begin debating the merits of what they saw and the repercussions of the missing final reel. Hypotheses, educated guesses and opinions are thrown around. Despite that, everything deliciously ends in more confusion than when they began, cinephiles lost in cinematographic concerns. The film’s lack of resolution is remarkable. It expresses the very state of discourse in Philippine cinema, how it is honestly just a lot of babble and issues discussed and re-discussed ad infinitum.

The most painful part of this is that Red’s film is utterly brilliant, at least in concept. It is just that the middle and most important part --- the silent film that urged those three wise men of Philippine cinema to debate endlessly --- is wanting.

The film is tainted by Diwa de Leon’s ludicrous and tyrannical score that both limits and betrays the possibilities of emotions of Red’s undeniably dynamic visuals. The very existence of the musical score betrays the nature of the silent film where music is played live during screenings. The film’s bookends, where the projection of the so-called rediscovered lost film is featured as the framing device for the silent middle part, further negates the need for the scoring. The logical guffaw could just be ignored had De Leon’s score been a mere background, an ornament. However, the score is more damaging than that as it supplants interpretation and emotions with its inherent lack of imagination and subtlety.

Absent the score, the very silent film part itself, shot in digital and made to look like it was shot in film during post, is a mixed bag. The filmmaking process seems to be a brash betrayal of the core concept, but arguments can be raised supporting Red’s choice of filmmaking, especially in this age where film is quickly entering obsolescence.

There are arresting moments, particularly in the opening where Juan (Pen Medina) finds himself trapped in a cell where a single ray of light reveals the world outside, with an imposing building and flying machines all over, upside down, like inside the titular camera obscura. The very idea of that silent film within the film is astounding. By telling the story of Juan who upon his escape from the cell becomes some sort of political hero when a movie camera assimilates with his arm, Red expresses the power of cinema, how it can be used and abused, in the name of money, advocacy or, as the post-credit sequence reveals, the filmmaker himself. Unfortunately, most of the message gets lost in the spectacle and the noise.

Perhaps Red could have spent several more months or years perfecting the crafting of the film. The final product reveals the many compromises Red had to make in order to reach the wide audience that Cinemalaya has earned for itself. These compromises may very well be the culprit of all the disappointments and frustrations with the film. These compromises Red had to make expose the deficiencies of the film festival’s rules and mechanics that surround its film’s production, how its obsolete grants and inhumane deadlines create a culture of hurried filmmaking, turning filmmakers like Red and his compatriots into factories for the admittedly lofty goal of reaching to the festival’s captive market that promises the possibility of an audience for the their films once freed from the constrictions of a film festival.

A question appears. “Is that lofty goal really worth all the compromises?” Well, only the filmmakers can sincerely answer that.

(Cross-published in Twitch and ABS-CBNnews.)

The Animals (2012)

Sex, Lies and DSLR in Gino Santos' The Animals 

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

The Animals is a film of many influences, from Boyle to Brillante. Its director, Gino Santos, is after all a fresh film grad who interned for Captive (2012). His eagerness shows. Every trick is bared like there is no tomorrow, or in this particular case, like he has so much to prove. The film risks being stereotypically style over substance. Fortunately, it’s not. While the needless abundance of style turns out to be more of a liability, there’s more to the film than the spectacles that fail to hide the undisciplined editing and incongruent cinematography. With the film, Santos reveals himself to be a filmmaker with a lot of both promise and room to improve on.

Santos opens the film with an awkward aerial view of a posh gated subdivision. He then introduces his crew of upper class brats: enterprising but emotionally inert Jake (Albie Casino, who gives a surprisingly believable performance), his kleptomaniac girlfriend Trina (Dawn Balagot), and her angsty brother Alex (Patrick Sugui). In the midst of excitement over college entrance results, random issues bubble to the surface. Lovers’ quarrels erupt when Jake forgets to inform Trina his admission to all the top universities, causing the confused girl to raise questions about their future when they both graduate from their private high school. For Jake however, the future he’s concerned about is more immediate. He is throwing a party tonight.

The beauty of The Animals lies in the accuracy it depicts a generation. Santos and co-writer Jeff Stelton sprinkle the film with the usual suspects of the troubled youth: the inexplicable consumption of alcohol, the drug use, the violence, the sex, and the betrayals. Then, they lace it with what makes this generation’s conflicts unique: the impatience brought about by the convenience technology offers, the insensitivity to promise brought about by the unabashed display of the adults’ propensity to corruption the growing immensity of the class divide. A click of the mouse fulfils the duties of advertisement. A father casually and jokingly talks of his political dealings over family breakfast. A group of household drivers gang up to gossip about their employers’ embarrassing hedonism.

The most harrowing part of it is that these ills fit within the film’s timeline of just a day without being put-on or too coincidental. It only expresses the extent of how rotten society has gotten, and how the future seems to be hopeless as well.

The Animals is hardly unique in world cinema. Several filmmakers have expressed their concern for the future with works that detail generational divide. Fellini has I Vitelloni. Truffaut has The400 Blows. Kiyoshi Kurosawa has Bright Future. It seems to be a staple for every national cinema to have film that expresses society’s worries about the next generation. What sets Santos’ film apart is that it is not made from the standpoint of the previous generation but from the perspective of somebody who was or is still there.

The Animals is more a confessional than a cautionary tale from an artist who is removed from the milieu he tackles. It was made from both the pleasures and sins of recent memory. That probably fuels the film’s familiarity and energy. The shallowness of the youth masks the very insecurity they naturally possess. Santos bravely expresses the carpe diem John Keating had no guts to warn his students of. Its parting shot, an overburdened glance of the possible repercussions of this youth’s wild abandon, could perhaps be Santos’ harsh farewell to an evolving lifestyle that welcomes ninja parties, drunken nipples over DSLR-improved pixels, and careless ecstasy. In that case, the film is that fitting graduation.

(Cross-published in Twitch and ABS-CBNnews.)