ABNKKBSNPLAko?! the Movie (2014)

Mark Meily's ABNKKBSNPLAko?! the Movie: Fun Overtaking Depth

The pleasures of Bob Ong’s ABNKKBSNPlako?! are not hinged on its generic plot but on its unabashed appreciation of all things close to being forgotten from decades past. While the book namedrops various references to 80’s and 90’s pop culture to tickle its readers’ fancies, what really makes Ong’s first published work so memorable is its depiction of what seems to be a shared attitude towards a recent past. Sure, the book does rely on shallow nostalgia, but at least it does so with such colloquial flair that it is almost impossible not to get hooked into its

It is therefore not surprising that the book is eventually made into a movie. Directed by Mark Meily, the movie version approximates the book’s informal charms with a bit of visual inventiveness. Narrations are accompanied by quickly edited montages. Words of juvenile love letters pop out from the paper with mock elegance. Meily has quite a bag of tricks here, and he’s definitely not scrimping.

Nostalgia is much easier to translate. Meily, armed with the entire arsenal of copyrighted material of Viva at his disposal, has direct references to Maryo J. de los Reyes’ Bagets, the movie that best represents the youth of the 80’s, and Sharon Cuneta’s wispy chirping of George Canseco’s High School Life, a song that is to become an anthem for all things slight and mushy about high school. ABNKKBSNPlako?I the Movie, at least for the part of transporting its viewers to a time when Maricel Soriano and William Martinez’s surprising relationship was the butt of gossip, is quite successful.

Where the movie falters is when it tries to find relevance to its protracted reminiscence. The heart of the film’s narrative seems to be Bob Ong, played during his grade school days by Adrian Cabido and from high school to present by Jericho Rosales who does his best in a role that feels more like a caricature than a challenge, and his on and off love affair with his Special Someone, played by an unsatisfyingly static Andi Eigenmann. Their romance, depicted by Meily with obvious slightness, is tenuous at best and is very hard to root for. Considering that Bob Ong’s relationship with his two best friends, played ably by Vandolph Quizon and Meg Imperial, is given more weight, the romantic angle feels off-tangent and unnecessary.

The movie also attempts to touch on things more pertinent than long-standing crushes. Bob Ong’s journey from an ordinary grade-schooler to a high school teacher is one riddled with challenges that supposedly touch on or replicate experiences that are shared by most Filipinos. There is Bob Ong’s long-suffering mother, played wonderfully by Bing Pimentel, whose doting approach to her son’s heartaches and failures is quite touching. There is Bob Ong’s difficulty to finish college, which is the logical result of youthful uncertainty and emotional distress. There is Bob Ong’s qualms of attending his high school reunion as only a teacher with a paltry salary.

However, the movie’s insistence on evoking certain life lessons is overtaken by visual gimmickry and an overreliance on throwbacks to the past. Meily can never seem to balance nostalgia and depth. He instead throws everything into the mix and comes up with a product that confuses as much as it entertains.

The past few years have produced films that did what ABNKKBSNPLAko!? the Movie was intending to do but with better results. Aureaus Solito’s Pisay (Philippine Science, 2007), about a group of gifted high-schoolers in the Philippines’ national science school, mixes themes on young romance, ambition, defeat, and individuality in a package that is rift with humor and levity. Jerrold Tarog’s lovely Senior Year (2010), which also dealt with an underachiever returning to his high school, is less about nostalgia but about the fragility of growing up among friends and competitors in a school setting.

In the midst of the quality of what has been done before, Meily’s effort to mine on Bob Ong’s popular first book is unfortunately quite lacking in substance. It just severely pales in comparison, forcing it to make up for what it does not have with fun trivialities.

(First published in Rappler.)

Mana (2014)

Mana (Gabriel Fernandez, 2014)

English Translation: Inheritance

Gabriel Fernandez’s Mana opens with complete darkness, which is accompanied by horrid sounds of pained wailing. The image of rustic mansion replaces the black screen. Drowning the incessant moaning are impassioned voices of several arguing adults, all brothers and sisters who are heirs of their dying mother. Instead of fighting tooth and nail over their inheritance, they seem to be ironically arguing their way out of it. What exactly is it that the siblings are to inherit from the dying Conchita Villareal that is threatening to break familial bonds? The answer to the question is the central conceit of Mana, one that would open for Fernandez an opportunity to explore his own native Negros and the island’s peculiar familial structures and attitudes.

Fernandez is not the first Negros filmmaker to dissect the Negros family through film. Peque Gallaga, in his World War II-set epic Oro, Plata, Mata (Gold, Silver, Death, 1982), has carefully laid down the excesses of the province’s many aristocratic families on the eve of their eventual despair. In the face of near nothingness and stark desperation, they bend and cling to an illusion of privilege their social class has imposed on them. Although it concerns a more modest family, Richard Somes’ Yanggaw (Affliction, 2008) criticizes the very concept of family by testing a patriarch’s resolute and fealty to his when his daughter arrives home a monster. Draped in genre conventions, Somes’ film utilizes local folklore to allude to more real horrors. Although their films are set far from their hometowns, Erik Matti and Borgy Torre, in Pa-Siyam (2004) and Kabisera (2013) respectively, have crafted genre works that also tackle the delicate threads that bind families.

Fernandez similarly clothes Mana with an atmosphere of mystery and waiting. Deliberately paced, embellished with a visual and aural design that is spare but effective, and delightfully unhinged, the film manages to balance its horror aspirations with what it tries to allude to. The film could have done away with some of the computer effects, which, while passable, is absolutely not really necessary.

Although it dabbles in the occult, Mana is still pretty much an ensemble piece. Fernandez thankfully understands this and has his film be carried from start to finish not by cheap shocks but by the fantastic performances of his cast. Fides Cuyugan-Asensio, who gives life to the ailing Conchita, is a continuous presence despite the very limited time that she is actually onscreen. She exudes the physical and emotional suffering that would push her sons and daughters to action despite the stakes. Cherie Gil exemplifies the desperate hesitation that consumes her character Sandra who returns to Negros from her many travels to provoke her siblings to decide quickly. Jaime Fabregas, Mark Gil, Ricky Davao, Tetchie Agbayani, Epy Quizen, all of whom play the remaining members of the Villareal clan, work together to enunciate the family dysfunction that seems to overshadow all other horrors.

Mana is far from perfect. It tends to linger longer than necessary. Its essential depictions of the supernatural are also compromised by an insistence on computer graphics instead of entrusting the same to the audience’s imagination. However, it is successful in reshaping centuries-old folklore into something that is relevant amidst more modern concerns.

(First published in Spot.ph.)

Tado Jimenez (1974-2014)

Tado Jimenez, the Off-Beat Hero

February 7, at around 7:20 in the morning, a Bontoc-bound bus fell off a ravine, immediately killing fourteen passengers. One of the fourteen victims of corporate negligence and bureaucratic incompetence is Arvin Jimenez, more popularly known as a comedian with such the unforgettable nickname of Tado.

Tado is a lot of things to the people he has had an effect on. He was one-third of the inimitable cast of Strange Brew, the pioneering indie TV show that would be fondly remembered for the eccentric humor that was during its time was novel. He has acted in several movies, including Lav Diaz’s Hesus Rebolusyonaro (Hesus the Revolutionary, 2002), Yam Laranas’ Radyo (Radio, 2001), Doy del Mundo’s Pepot Artista (Pepot Superstar, 2005), and most recently, Brillante Mendoza’s Captive (2012). He also became an erstwhile annoyance of Vice Ganda when he proudly showed off his t-shirt which proclaimed a message that did not sit well with the popular host. The t-shirt was of course a product of Tado’s entrepreneurial efforts, since the comedian has a t-shirt shop called LimiTADO in his native Marikina, where he unsuccessfully ran for city councilor.

To most of us, it was Tado’s public figure that will be missed. In any alleyway in urban Manila, anybody with Tado’s physical features and arguably abrasive demeanor would have been dime a dozen. However, in the world of mainstream show business where fair skin, bulging muscles and mestizo features are essential, Tado can only be seen as a misfit. He wore the role of misfit with pride and a certain sense of rebelliousness. The name he chose for himself exemplified the image he wanted to drape himself with. Abrasiveness was part of his act. It was the unlikely cocoon from which butterflies of wisdom and advocacy were birthed from.

To those who were close to him, Tado represented that rare artist who was fuelled not by fame or fortune but by convictions. Tado was no ordinary comedian who was content with making a bad day a little better with laughter. He was an advocate, who made use of the popularity he invested in as a tool for revolution. His entire career was engineered to change mindsets and perspectives. Whether it is by exposing mainstream media for its myopic appreciation of gender advocacy or by throwing off-kilter ideas for businesses that initially seem funny but are actually brilliant, he has made enough of a difference to be remembered with equal amounts of reverence and levity.

“Tado is funny, and he is an activist. He is well-tuned to the country’s issues. If there was a rally, he was probably in it. Imagine, he is a rallyist with a sense of humor. It makes taking in life easier if you think about it,” recalled Zach Lucero, former radio jock for NU107, where Tado hosted Brewrats with Ramon Bautista and Angel Rivero.

“Lungkot ang nararamdaman ko para sa isang mabuting tao at kaibigan. Sana hindi ito madagdagan pa ng galit. Isa si Tado Jimenez sa mga taong nagpapaganda ng mundo na ito. Simula sa Strange Brew hanggang sa social work niya, makikita mo ang gaan niya sa puso. Malaking kawalan ang nangyari dito (Sadness is what I am feeling for the good person and friend. I wish that it will not be coupled with anger. Tado Jimenez is one of the people who makes this world beautiful. From the Strange Brew up to his social work, you will realize the heft of his heart. What just happened is a huge loss),” lamented Ping Medina, entrepreneur and actor, who Tado collaborated with in many of his advocacy efforts.

“It is when a friend like this passes on that we are reminded of how small and insignificant our own lives and our contributions are compared to his,” expressed Gabe Mercado, fellow comedian and entrepreneur. Mercado’s words speak volumes of truth especially with the knowledge that Tado, along with Lourd de Veyra, Noel Cabangon, Buhawi Meneses, and Ronnie Lazaro, founded Dakila, an advocacy group that uses culture, from films to music, to inspire awareness and change.

Dong Abay, poet and rock musician, reveals Tado’s philosophy when it comes to his comedy. Given his untimely demise, his words evoke common wisdom that we tend to forget given the hardships of living in a country that is riddled with problems: “Nais kong pagsaluhan natin ang mga masasayang alaala. Wala man tayong pera ay hindi naman tayo mauubusan ng mga pabaong ngiti. Mas panget kasi kung gutom ka na, nakasimangot ka pa. Pag nakangiti ka na hindi halatang kulang ang iyong pamasahe. (I want us to share with each other the happy memories. We may not have any money but we shall never run out of treasured smiles. It is uglier if you are not only hungry but also forlorn. If you are smiling, nobody will notice that you don't have enough money for your journey.)”

Similarly, Quark Henares, filmmaker, shares the precious words that Tado composed as a reminder as to how he chose to shape his career and live his life: “Kung ako ang pagpipiliin, gusto ko na maalala nila ako bilang hindi isang pulitiko kundi isang rebolusyonaryo na naghahangad ng tunay at ganap na pagbabago. (If I were to choose, I want myself to be remembered not as a politician but as a revolutionary with the desire for real and palpable change)” The words quoted by Henares would have served as the perfect eulogy.

Our eyes have been trained by mainstream media to appreciate beauty that is only skin-deep. Tado, with his lanky frame, long hair, and very Filipino looks, has taught us to look beyond what is easily covered by make-up and bright lights. Whether or not Tado designed his persona precisely to counter the shallowness that is enveloping our culture, his persisting existence within pop culture proves that there is indeed hope for a positive revolution, whether it be in how we want to be entertained or in something more relevant and pertinent.

Very few of us can ever claim to have lived a life for advocacy. Fewer can claim to have died for it. Tado can carry that rare honor to the sweet hereafter.

(An edited version was published in Rappler.)

Snowpiercer (2013)

Snowpiercer (Bong Joon-Ho, 2013)

With Snowpiercer, Bong Joon-Ho may have made that rare Hollywood-style science fiction film that does not need to take itself too seriously to provoke. As with The Host (2006), Bong acknowledges the outright ridiculousness of his film by injecting it with humor, countering the bleakness that is inherent in any post-apocalyptic tale.

Several years into the future, the earth is engulfed by ice caused by humanity attempting to reverse the effects of global warming. Except for the passengers aboard a train that perpetually chugs along a route that spans the entire world, everybody else has frozen to death. The world, as a result, has been shrunk within the confines of a luxury train.

Cinema has always maintained its love affair with trains since it utilized a steam engine rampaging towards the unsuspecting audience as the prime spectacle in The Great Train Robbery in 1903. With strangers forced to interact and socialize within limited spaces, the cramped and claustrophobic interiors of trains become apt stages for suspense and mystery, as with Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers in a Train in 1951 or the many adaptations of Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Orient Express.

In 1964, John Frankenheimer, acknowledging the potential of the locomotive to evoke excitement and urgency, released The Train where Burt Lancaster attempts to save art treasures from the greedy clutches of the Nazis. Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express, set on an express train from Beijing to Shanghai, envelopes its sordid tale with the exoticism of travel. In 2005, Tickets, featuring three episodes directed by Abbas Kiarostami, Ken Loach and Ermanno Olmi, emphasized the social stratification that is part and parcel of travelling by train.

With Snowpiercer, which is based on the graphic novel Le Transperceneige, Bong exposes the same fascination with trains that has consumed the many filmmakers that preceded him. The film, which concerns itself largely with the oppressive social divide that was created supposedly for the survival of the last remaining human beings that exist inside the train, has Curtis (Chris Evans), a resident of the unfortunate tail section of the train, spearheading a revolution to reach the engine where the train’s creator, the mysterious Wilford (Ed Harris), lives.

At once, Bong capitalizes on the innate inequity of the class structure that train travel subsists on. The first class passengers will eat steak and have all the amenities their first class existence naturally provides them. The passengers in the tail end, stowaways whose lives are owed supposedly to the generosity of the first class passengers, will have to satisfy themselves with dregs.

Bong begins with the concept, before enlarging it as his characters move forward, discovering that humanity does not revolve around the injustice they personally suffer but also about structures, norms and measures that have become necessary for both survival and the containment of the evils humanity is capable of. By the end of the film, inequity becomes the least of humanity’s problems, as humanity bares its fundamental monstrosity. The stakes cascade and the lines blur as the plot thickens.

Snowpiercer however is a lot more fun than it sounds. Not only does Bong capitalize on themes that are readily available because of his use of the train as a centerpiece to his tale, he also capitalizes on the physical traits of the train to create a more visceral viewing experience. He understands the mechanics of the train’s narrow space. He himself limits his camera within the finite borders of the train, and creates action sequences that have realistic depth. The brutality that bolsters the film’s themes is therefore more palpable with bodies being hacked and abused within close distances.

The perpetual movement of the train also plays a big role in Bong’s well-orchestrated spectacle. The film follows the incessant rhythm and velocity of the vehicle as it avoids being stalled unnecessarily. Even its lengthy expositions are accompanied by wit and absurd pageantry, as exemplified by Tilda Swinton’s histrionic portrayal of a high-ranking bully. Snowpiercer is precise in its intent to primarily entertain and exhilarate despite its fluent observations on the human condition.

Snowpiercer is loud and brazen. It is consistently hilarious, yet at the same time, it also never fails to inflict fear, suspense or sentiment whenever it needs to do so. Snowpiercer is Bong’s outrageous ode to trains, to their power that have always fascinated us, and to everything else they can ever represent. This is also his tribute to cinema, which has the power to turn the lowly and hardworking train into an emblem for how humanity has remained woefully unchanged despite its years of persistent existence.

2013: Philippine Cinema

2012: Highlights in Philippine Cinema 

It was a year that was touted by excitable pundits as one of the best years for Philippine cinema at least in terms of quantity of quality films produced and released, even rivalling 1976, which saw the releases of Lino Brocka’s Insiang, Mario O’Hara’s Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years Without God), Eddie Romero’s Ganito Kami Noon… Paano Kayo Ngayon? (This is How We Were, How Are You Doing Now?) and Lupita Aquino-Kashiwahara’s Minsa’y Isang Gamu-gamo, or 1982, which brought to the world Ishmael Bernal’s Himala (Miracle) and Relasyon (Relationship), Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s Moral and Peque Gallaga’s Oro, Plata, Mata (Gold, Silver, Death). As early as May, the year to be already exhibited promise with the announcement of Lav Diaz’s Norte: Hannganan ng Kasaysayan (Norte: The End of History), Adolfo Alix’s Death March and Erik Matti’s On the Job as part of the prestigious film festival in Cannes, whose programming choices would raise expectations for either quality or extreme eccentricity. It only got better. By the end of 2013, there were so many films to rave about, all different from each other in terms of style, theme and intention. The pundits are correct.

It was also a year that saw the birth of more local film festivals, whose modus operandi is drawn from the successes of Cinemalaya and Cinema One Originals. Cinefilipino, a partnership between an emerging television network and a struggling film studio, produced a handful of interesting films, most of which come from new talents. Mike Alcazaren’s Puti (White) is cool and quiet, a very fine spectacle until it unravels itself as a morality play. Randolph Longjas’ Ang Turkey Man ay Pabo Din is a hilarious look at cross-cultural marriages. Sigrid Bernardo’s Ang Huling Cha-Cha ni Anita (Anita's Last Cha-Cha) tackles very serious issues from the wide-eyed perspective of a young girl blossoming into her own sexuality. Sari and Kiri Dalena’s The Guerilla is a Poet, about the life of Communist Party of the Philippines founder Joma Sison, is best seen outside the politics it shrouds itself with. As a love letter to a man admired with such an intense passion, the film bursts with palpable earnestness, which is strange for biopics that adorn their subjects with cinematic expletives.

Quezon City, self-proclaimed City of the Stars, has finally put up their own film festival, financing the production and post-production of three films, Alvin Yapan’s Gaydar, Joel Ferrer’s Hello, World and John Torres’ Lukas Nino (Lukas the Strange). Unfortunately, Gaydar, about a woman who always falls for guys who turn out to be gay, is evidently a product from a very tired and spent director. Ferrer’s Hello, World, about a teenager who is off to spend his remaining days in the Philippines before migrating to America with his buds, on the other hand, is fresh and funny whose only problem is that its outrageous humor seems to have overtaken its heart. Lukas Nino, about a young boy who discovers his father is a half-man half-horse mythical creature, is a marvel, marrying Torres’ very personal aesthetic with the bygone cinema he evokes nostalgia for.

The Film Development Council of the Philippines, on the other hand, produced several features directed filmmakers whose careers were birthed in the 70’s or 80’s continuing up to the present but have been inevitably denied to make the films they want to make because of market forces. The film festival, referred to by the government body as the “All-Masters Edition,” featured films that would showcase immense talents primed by decades of experience. Peque Gallaga’s Sonata, about a young boy’s unlikely friendship with a faded opera star, is charming at best, a mere shadow of the director’s more daring works. Mel Chionglo’s Lauriana tells the story of a woman being victimized by her abusive lover with such exhausting and needless exuberance. Joel Lamangan’s Lihis is woefully ridiculous, a promising script mired by a lack of directorial focus. Fortunately, three directors took responsibility over being referred to as masters. Jose Javier Reyes’ Ano ang Kulay ng Mga Nakalimutang Pangarap? (What are the Colors of Forgotten Dreams?) is heartfelt in its portrayal of an old helper discarded by the family she served for years. Elwood Perez’s Otso (Eight), about a scriptwriter who gets too involved with the residents of his erstwhile apartment building, is wonderfully beguiling in both its shortages and excesses. Chito Rono’s Badil, set in a remote town a few days before the elections, is tense, taut, and terrifying, despite the fact that its focus is just small-time electoral fraud.

Cinemalaya, on the other hand, continuously produces quality, if albeit conventional, fare. Jerrold Tarog’s Sana Dati (If Only), about a wedding videographer who is perhaps the quintessential film for moving on from trauma caused by abruptly terminated romantic relationships. Adolfo Alix’s Porno features various stories strung together by a mysterious and mystical force, astounds with its creation of atmosphere out of what is traditionally considered as lewd and depraved. Jeffrey Jeturian’s Ekstra (The Bit Player), about bit players working in popular soap operas, exposes the discomforting pecking order within the entertainment industry that supplies the country with cheap escapism.

The so-called New Breed directors offer more intriguing films. Hannah Espia’s extraordinary debut, Transit, exposes political inequity through the very intimate struggle of a Filipino family living and working in Israel. Alvin Yapan’s Debosyon (Devotion), a love story between a man and a forest spirit, is an exploration of a culture where folk paganism and Catholicism co-exist with surprising ease and comfort. Mikhail Red’s Rekorder is a study on a man consumed to self-alienation by an inherently violent society. Jason Paul Laxamana’s Babagwa (The Spider's Lair) is timely in its exploration of the ins and outs of online scamming through the equally exploitative and gullible minds of lowlife opportunists. Eduardo Roy, Jr.’s Quick Change, a follow-up to the exquisitely crafted Bahay Bata (Baby Factory), propels its viewers into the distinct desires and pains of transsexuals, humanizing and exoticizing them at the same time.

Cinema One Originals separates itself from the more popular and lauded Cinemalaya by producing features that dare to experiment. Arnel Mardoquio’s Ang Tigmo sa Aking Pagpauli (Riddles of My Homecoming) is a powerful and fluent expression of the indescribable woes of an island riddles by conflict. Whammy Alcazaren’s Islands tackles the juvenilia of loving through a work that takes the emotion through vast expanses of time and space. Keith Deligero’s Iskalawags graduates from being just a coming-of-age of its band of young rascals by narrating the story from the perspective of a sentimental adult, turning the film into an ode to childhood innocence. Siege Ledesma’s Shift exposes the call center generation’s struggle for identity by telling the story of a tomboy falling for her gay co-worker. Timmy Harn’s Ang Pagbabalat ng Ahas (Reptilia in Suburbia) wears all the trappings of a low-budet, made-for-quick-profit flick from the 90’s to dissect a film culture where the gaudy mainstream and the underground alternative give birth to the monsters that we have now. Jet Leyco’s Bukas na Lang Sapagkat Gabi Na (Leave It For Tomorrow For Nights Has Fallen), a lyrical and fantabulous take on the abuses of the Marcos regime, is a potent indictment of institutional censorship.

Borgy Torre’s Kabisera, about a fisherman who discovers boxes of meth in the ocean, studies the nature of greed and ambition from the perspective of a dominating family man. Miko Livelo’s Blue Bustamante, about a father who takes in the role of Blue Force in a sentai show after being terminated from his engineering work, invests on a country’s collective nostalgia and earns back a lot of heartfelt tears and chuckles. Keith Sicat’s Woman in the Ruins situates its post-apocalyptic exploration of survivors clamoring for fertility in a story of a marriage struggling to strive within societal and religious expectations. Mes de Guzman’s Sitio, about a urbanized family settling in the boondocks, criticizes privileged perceptions and expectations. Adolfo Alix, Jr.’s Ang Alamat ni China Doll (The Legend of China Doll), written by Lav Diaz, dissects the nature of truth in a society that is so infatuated by it, it is willing to distort it for its own purposes.

Outside local festival grants, filmmakers still manage to thrive to make films and exhibit them. By documenting the relationship of a Filipino man and his German boyfriend, Baby Ruth Villarama’s Jazz in Love filters typical fantasies and prejudices out of homosexual romances. Yapan’s Mga Anino ng Kahapon (Shadows of the Past) is on its surface a by-the-books description of the progress of schizophrenia. Below the surface, it is a study of a schizophrenic nation, quick to abandon the memories of the abuses of a former cruel regime. Raya Martin’s La ultima pelicula, co-directed by Canadian film critic Mark Peranson, satirizes the film world’s obsession over the death of celluloid by following a fictional filmmaker making the last film on Earth. Less celebrated but personally more powerful is Martin’s How to Disappear Completely, a frequently troubling descent into the mind of a girl terrorized by parental authority, depicted alongside a school play that discusses a harrowing event during America’s colonization of the islands.

Lav Diaz’s Norte: Hangganan ng Kasaysayan is a tremendous portrait of a country riddled by both physical and ideological torture. Set in a region in the Philippines made famous by political clans lording over the poor, the film sees the breakdown of two families, one by injustice caused by an unreliable legal system, and one by confusion caused by conscience interfering with political convictions.

As with previous years, the story remains the same. Several of the titles previously mentioned are bound to be more foreign than a lot of the foreign blockbusters to majority of Filipino viewers. While mainstream film studios have been experimenting with their products, creating worthwhile films like Cathy Garcia Molina’s It Takes a Man and a Woman, the third entry to the protracted love story of a rich man and an ordinary girl, and Four Sisters and a Wedding, about three sisters finding ways to stop their brother’s wedding, Chito Rono’s Boy Golden, a reimagining of 1960’s Manila as glitz-and-glamour stage for the sordid squabbles of upscale gangsters, Joyce Bernal’s 10,000 Hours, an actioner whose talk on Philippine politics is more thrilling than its shootouts and chases, Veronica Velasco’s Tuhog (Skewered), about three individuals skewered by fate and a deadly steel bar, and more notably Erik Matti’s On the Job, about political assassinations executed by prisoners, there still remains no market for more imaginative fare outside the festivals that either produced them or have decided to exhibit them.

The most glaring difference between 1976 or 1982 and 2013 is the fact that the masterpieces made then were seen and enjoyed by the movie-going public. Our recent masterpieces are and will be obscure to most. Efforts were done by filmmakers to make their films more accessible, employing huge television stars who are more than willing to test their mettle with more challenging roles that only alternative films can provide. Sadly, the story of Philippine cinema remains the same. It remains only festive during festivals. Celebrations remain within internet groups, and cliques. Outside the many news articles that proclaim the triumphs of Filipino films abroad, the rest of the Philippines will remain oblivious as to why 2013 was a great year for local cinema. The only consolation for the sad parting thought is that there is still 2014 to continue working on building that elusive audience that will make these Filipino films truly for Filipinos.

Top 20 Filipino Feature Films of 2013:

1) Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan (Norte: The End of History, Lav Diaz)
2) Lukas Nino (Lukas the Strange, John Torres)
3) How to Disappear Completely (Raya Martin)
4) Iskalawags (Keith Deligero)
5) On the Job (Erik Matti)
6) Ang Pagbabalat ng Ahas (Reptilia in Suburbia, Timmy Harn)
7) Bukas na Lang Sapagkat Gabi Na (Leave it for Tomorrow for Night has Fallen, Jet Leyco)
8) La Ultima Pelicula (Raya Martin & Mark Peranson)
9) Badil (Chito Rono)
10) Transit (Hannah Espia)
11) Ang Tigmo sa Aking Pagpauli (Riddles of My Homecoming, Arnel Mardoquio)
12) Ang Huling Cha-Cha ni Anita (Anita's Last Cha-Cha, Sigrid Bernardo)
13) Porno (Adolfo Alix, Jr.)
14) Mga Anino ng Kahapon (Shadows of the Past, Alvin Yapan)
15) Sana Dati (If Only, Jerrold Tarog)
16) Debosyon (Devotion, Alvin Yapan)
17) Islands (Whammy Alcazaren)
18) Rekorder (Mikhail Red)
19) Babagwa (The Spider's Lair, Jason Paul Laxamana)
20) Ang Alamat ni China Doll (The Legend of China Doll, Adolfo Alix, Jr.)

(First published in Rappler)

Boy Golden (2013)

Boy Golden (Chito Roño, 2013)

Chito Roño's Boy Golden, the third of actor-turned-politician Jeorge "E.R. Ejercito" Estregan's yearly vanity projects, is a surprisingly offbeat actioner. A fictionalized take on the life of 1960's gang leader Arturo Porcuna, the film transforms Manila into a stage where upscale criminals dance to Elvis Presley's hits while gunning down rivals. The city, reeking of the country's infatuation with anything and everything American, has streets lined with the popping neon signs of various diners, hotels, and burlesque clubs that hide the stench of many opium dens, gambling halls, and bordellos that serve as cash cows for the metropolis' many gangs.

Estregan's Arturo Porcuna is sleek and sophisticated. Although driven to bloodlust by the need to avenge the rape and murder of his sister, he does not neglect style when committing his many murders. In the film's opening, he performs a boogie right before he massacres an entire bar full of tuxedoed thugs. He is not without a sense of humor, cracking jokes while torturing his prisoner for answers or sending his muscle-bound lackeys to sing Presley's "Hound Dog" barbershop style in front of battle-ready police officers. Much like the glitzy Manila that Roño meticulously recreated from a mixture of history and high imagination, his criminals, headlined by Porcuna, hide their illicit activities with glamour and high fashion.

Porcuna's morality is thankfully not an issue. Roño, and screenwriters Guelan Luarca and Catherine Camarillo, has crafted a world of organized lowlifes whose only redeeming factor is honor and loyalty. Even Razon (John Estrada), who controls much of Manila's criminal world and has masterminded the rape and murder of Porcuna's sister, is bound by honor, repaying the turncoats who betrayed Porcuna in favor of him with death instead of the promised monetary rewards. Boy Golden, like the dynamic Hong Kong triad films it borrows from, is shrouded in lawlessness and violence, humanized by a persisting acknowledgment of the virtues of dignity and fealty.

Freed from unnecessarily being depicted as a valorous hero, as opposed to Asiong Salonga of Tikoy Aguiluz's Manila Kingpin: The Asiong Salonga Story (2011) or Emilio Aguinaldo of Mark Meily's El Presidente (2012), all of whom are shady characters from history forced to suspicious heroism for Estregan's political aspirations, Porcuna is depicted without the burden of being anything other than what he is, a common criminal. He talks of carnapping without regard to the law, tortures without flinching, and kills without remorse. Estregan inhabits the role with still a ton of vanity but at least absent the self-seriousness and self-importance that plagued his recent performances. Alongside KC Concepcion, who portrays Porcuna's vengeful love interest Marla D., with an astounding physicality and apt histrionics, Estregan rounds up the charismatic grotesquerie that makes Boy Golden such an enthralling spectacle.

Boy Golden is unabashed in its blatant pageantry. From Datu Putla (Baron Geisler), Razon's powder-faced sergeant, to Mr. Ho (Leo Martinez), a Chinese briber who predictably speaks in broken English while garbed in a traditional Chinese outfit, the film's characters, borne from a wild marriage between actual ingenuity and reprehensible stereotype, are but bizarre facades of the corruption they feed from. Draped in otherworldly reds, yellows, purples, and blues by cinematographer Carlo Mendoza, the film has a feel of being set in an alternate universe where commonplace logic is replaceable with mood and energy. Boy Golden may not be the most coherent film, but it is bursting with charm and identity, a feat that justly deserves recognition especially today when most action films are unfortunately made with less verve and just more starpower.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Bukas na Lang Sapagkat Gabi Na (2013)

Bukas na Lang Sapagkat Gabi Na (Jet Leyco, 2013)

English Title: Leave it Tomorrow for Night Has Fallen

"Bukas na lang sapagkat gabi na (Leave it tomorrow for night has fallen).” It is a phrase most commonly used by doting mothers who keep secrets from inquisitive children. Jet Leyco, who has heard the phrase as a kid curious to know the fates of his two grandfathers, takes the phrase from personal memories to encompass a nation troubled by a history of institutionalized silence.

The film opens with a montage of photographs of smoke bellowing out of the land. The photographs are revealed one by one, with bits of cryptic information, such as the year presumably when the eruption happened. They do not reveal much. In fact, the figures do not pertain to anything definite or specific, but the images themselves evoke something troubling, something pertaining to events of cataclysmic proportions. The greater tragedy however is what is not revealed, that nagging impression that something important has happened but was not disclosed for whatever reason. The montage has a feel of evidence being laid out in court, pertaining to a truth masked for decades. Without the comfort of definite answers, the pictures immediately come to life, exposing both the enormity and the spectacle of a calamity.

The rest of Bukas na Lang Sapagkat Gabi Na follows the same maxim of censorship, although in various degrees and for various intentions. Its first episode, an observation of a provincial wedding as captured from the camera of an amateur videographer, reveals nothing but riddles surrounding what supposedly is a celebration of love. Mystery necessarily looms as questions trickle in from guests unlucky enough to be the subject of the videographer’s impertinent mind. Nothing is definitely divulged, just bits and pieces about a priest gone missing, rebels in hiding, and in-laws quietly fuming.

The second episode, an observation of the affairs of the communist rebels that were briefly spoken of during the wedding, concentrates on a rebel soldier’s own inability to tell his father of his homosexuality, a subject that is also taboo within the armed revolution. Leyco dissects a movement that is plagued with an identity crisis. The montage of actual footage of communist rebels that closes the episode serves as both ode and elegy to a struggle that has survived through years of being quelled into the margins of both national consciousness and history by a campaign characterized by government propaganda and censorship.

While communist rebels are struggling to topple a prohibitive regime, the clergy indulge in prohibited pleasures that are kept hidden from the public. The third episode, aptly pervaded by a certain sense of godlessness, has a young sacristan witnessing the priest perform sexual acts in his private chambers. On their way to a wedding, the priest would eventually abuse his sacristan in the guise of showing him the ropes towards his sexual awakening. Wrapping up Bukas na Lang Sapagkat Gabi Na is the story of the communist rebel’s father, who is hired to drive an ice delivery truck to the military camp. Little does he know that inside the truck are bodies of fallen rebels to be used as propaganda tools by government troops to cause fear in the hearts of the villagers.

Through Bukas na Lang Sapagkat Gabi Na, Leyco exhaustively and compellingly dissects a nation’s culture of suppression. He even becomes his own censor, replacing drastic sounds of gunshots with innocuous noises from low-budget sci-fi laser beams. He upends the immense gravity and seriousness of his episodes with ironic turns only a repressed over-imaginative mind can cook up. The video-captured moments prior to an imperfect wedding surprisingly give way to a sequence straight out of a cheap action flick. The abusive military’s victory over rebels is interrupted by a montage of communist propaganda. The morally depraved priest peacefully passes away with an amusingly paternal parting sermon for the sacristan he victimized. Dead rebels come back to life. Leyco proposes that fantasy, in all its shapes and forms, is but a product of a vast unknown, which is but a product of curbed information.

And who else could be the most apt mascot for censorship but Ferdinand Marcos, who masterminded an entire country’s ignorance with several decades’ worth of laws and rules that suppress basic freedoms. When Leyco, in the spirit of worthwhile mischievousness, concludes his film with the famous bust of Marcos crudely animated to mouth the same words mothers tell overly-inquisitive children, the effect is both humorous and quietly disturbing. The dictator’s shadow still looms, and his legacy remains, although evidently not in the same degree as when he was in power. Still, like children forced to sleep to dream of answers to unanswered questions, the nation remains bamboozled and blinded by tall tales and fantasies, all in the name of paltry escape from a country's persisting calamity.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Call Center Girl (2013)

Don Cuaresma's Call Center Girl: Graver Than the Graveyard Shift

Don Cuaresma’s Call Center Girl was made to entertain. There is absolutely no question about it. The movie has almost all the elements of a television sitcom. It is pregnant with gags, most of which is gratingly dull and mechanical. Its idea of substance is nothing more than motherhood statements on motherhood, which would have more effect had it been written in a greeting card than in this movie. Bereft of any real substance, it aspires for nothing else but shallow giggles that quickly dissipate once the feeling of being cheated of hard earned money starts settling in.

At the center of the movie is Pokwang who turns her role of Teresa, a recently repatriated mother, into a repetitive spectacle, or worse, a ponderous anomaly. She rapidly mouths supposedly funny nonsense, automatically bursts into tears with superhuman ease, and needlessly performs splits and stunts for no apparent reason. By the middle of the movie, the curiously charismatic comedienne has turned the hapless mother into a circus act, siphoning all humanity out of an already thinly-written character.

Yet Call Center Girl actually begs for sympathy for Teresa, who as directed by Cuaresma and portrayed by Pokwang is woefully immature. She is still insisted to be presented as the pinnacle of Filipino suffering. She is an overseas worker, slaving away in a cruise ship for the survival of her family. She returns just to be widowed and to find out that her youngest daughter (Jessy Mendiola) abhors her. Just to repair her relationship with her wayward daughter, she works with her in a call center, spending her nights selling useless fitness products to depressed Americans just to earn enough money to pay for her daughter’s whims.

If the plot is familiar, it is not because it grossly resembles reality. It is because it has been told and retold, in various other films and shows that portray the Filipino mother as constantly misunderstood and mistreated. Setting the plot within the world of call centers is nothing more than a needless front. Call Center Girl says nothing relevant about the lifestyle and profession it brazenly utilizes for its own generic purposes.

Cuaresma’s only attempt at originality lies is his effort to juggle within the sordidly schizophrenic narrative his brand of inane comedy with the requirements of sappy melodrama. The attempt is evidently a failure since never once does Call Center Girl evoke anything other than uninspired silliness.

There is very little characterization elsewhere in the movie. Every character is either a stereotype or an ornament, meant to be nothing more than an ingredient to carry on a punchline. The movie is afflicted by atrociously lazy writing. The characters, instead of being shaped from concept or the logic of the story, are just reliant on the offscreen personas and charisma of the actors and actresses playing them.

Consequently, Call Center Girl hardly feels thought out. It has the feel of sterile improvisation. It is what it was set out to be, entertainment, the cheap and horrible kind.

(First published in Rappler.)

Woman of the Ruins (2013)

Keith Sicat's Woman of the Ruins: A Marriage in Ruins

In the middle of all the post-apocalyptic madness of Keith Sicat’s Woman of the Ruins is a story so painfully familiar. When a woman (Alessandra de Rossi) washes ashore in an island ruined by wars and storms, Pasyon (Art Acuna), one of the island’s resilient survivors, immediately claims her as his long-lost wife Maria. The woman, bereft of any memories from the past, hesitantly assumes the role. Her hesitation irks Pasyon, urging him to hold her captive, for him to easily claim from her marital obligations owed to him. Most of the island’s residents just ignore the atrocities, seemingly content with the religious implications of Maria’s dubious return.

Sicat claims Ishmael Bernal’s Himala (Miracle, 1982) as an unconscious inspiration for his film. However, Bernal’s masterpiece is not as consciously crazed as Woman of the Ruins If there is one classic that resembles most the moods, themes and rhythms of Sicat’s allegory, it is Elwood Perez’s Silip (Daughters of Eve, 1985), the screenplay of which was also written by Himala’s writer, Ricardo Lee. Perez’s film features a parochial community, not unlike the one that lives in Sicat’s desolate ruins, that is overwhelmed with religious fervor. The arrival of a woman breaks the calm, testing collective morality amidst dogmatic dedication.

Lee served as Sicat’s creative consultant for Woman of the Ruins. Sicat however has more to say about religion than the hypocrisy that it naturally germinates, which seems to be the unifying theme of Lee’s screenplays for Himala and Silip. Where Bernal and Perez’s masterpieces pertain to communities that expose darkened hearts amidst spiritual convictions, Sicat’s film depicts a community strangled by communal norms.

In the spotlight of Sicat’s interests is Pasyon and Maria’s marriage, which essentially is just fiction arising from the community’s persevering beliefs. Immediately depicted by Sicat as grossly imperfect, the film’s central marriage persists not out of love but of pressure and necessity.

Rape and torture then become logical after-effects of a forced relationship. Forgiveness is forthcoming, given societal and religious pressures. The sins, however, are never erased. They gnaw on whatever remains of the marital union until nothing is left, except a stark desperation to escape despite the limitations society provides.

In a way, despite its obviously foreign landscapes, Woman of the Ruins reflects present-day society, where religion has a grab hold of the very concept of marriage and gender roles remain steadfast despite modernity.

In one scene, Sol (Peque Gallaga), who serves as the community’s wizened leader who keeps an almost perverse eye on the affairs of everyone, urges Sabel (Chanel Latorre) to become a mother. The exchange leads to her and Maria’s rape by unknown perpetrators, a sequence visually reminiscent of Silip’s devastating conclusion. The horrid crime eventually leads to her and Maria getting pregnant, in fulfilment of the role she should have readily accepted as reality instead of an option.

Sicat effectively captures a society crumbling not from natural or man-made disasters but from persisting norms and religion. The film’s landscape is bleak, one where reminders of an unforgotten desolation tower over empty fields and derelict forests. The ruins are themselves populated by shadows, men and women whose lives were salvaged but whose souls are permanently tainted. They desperately cling to religion, perhaps out of guilt for sins that gave way to their apocalypse. Woman of the Ruins visually captures suffocation.

In a twist laden with arresting irony, the film ends with its married couple drowning, physically suffocating. Gone are the ruins, its denizens and their pressures. There is no one else but them, enveloped by the sea and its unfamiliar sights. Dying, Pasyon and Maria embrace each other. Love exists, in another world, far and away from the society that seeks to cage it.

(First published in Rappler.)

Kabisera (2013)

Kabisera (Borgy Torre, 2013)

The bookends of Borgy Torre’s Kabisera are presented with such disarmingly romantic flair that they immediately stand out from the gritty reality that consumes most of the film. Andres (Joel Torre) sits in the head of the table, while the rest of his family are eating dinner. In both the opening and the ending, Andres is all smiles, delighted in seeing his family intact and sharing a meal together. The stark difference lies with Andres’ family, all of whom exchange their immaculate smiles in the film’s opening with the tears and gestures of resignation in the ending. Only Andres is left in a state of joy, obviously oblivious of tragedy.

Kabisera opens with a dream. It ends with a nightmare. Everything in between is a modern parable of skewed ambitions compromising traditional virtues. Torre has crafted a modern Faustian tale. The devil here is ambition, the dream that Andres wakes from in the start of the film. He realizes that dream, but at the price of his own humanity.

A humble fisherman who has contented himself to playing second fiddle to Jose (Art Acuna), his wealthy best friend, Andres is nonetheless the overly protective head of his family, controlling everything from his son’s college education to his daughter’s upcoming wedding. One morning, he finds two boxes of meth floating in the sea, opening for him an opportunity to keep his family within his watchful reach.

What happens next is nothing new in Philippine cinema, which has somewhat fetishized stories about virtuous men and women falling from grace. It comes natural in a country where class boundaries are vague, and the difference between being rich or poor is a single decision that compromises values. Torre aptly situates Andres’ dilemma within such a familiar circumstance. When Andres and his wife (Bing Pimentel) pursue the crooked path to easy riches, Torre affords no explanation, no intense characterization with a belief that their motivations are clearly spelled out by their dire straits. Morality simply takes the backseat in matters involving one’s family’s survival.

The tragedy of Kabisera is therefore not the loss of morality of Andres. He starts out as a man of ambition, dreaming only of good things for his family. Torre, both Borgy and Joel, portray him as a man with vague morals, grounded primarily by two things, his concern for his family and his loyalty to Jose. The tragedy therefore lies in the loss of Andres’ most utmost virtues. When pushed by criminal elements that he has not prepared himself for, he abandons friendship and unduly warps his position in the family.

Kabisera is inconsistently paced. Torre is gifted with creating tension out of quietude, as in Bonsai (2009), his short film about an obese man who is desperately in love with his neighbor, and prolonged conversations, as in Despedida (2010), his short film about a man and a woman who meet in a graveyard. Kabisera however feels like it lacks a certain balance, relishing in protracted moments of silence, or heated verbal exchanges between characters, before being distracted by rhythmic montages or listless sequences. It certainly drags in the middle, painstakingly addressing the process of Andres’ painful transformation via his dealings with drug dealers and corrupt cops, climaxing in the fruition of all his aggravating trespasses that is but inevitable.

Joel Torre carries the film through its lows. It is not only intensity that he brings to the role, but also a certain complexity. Andres is simply not just a stern or stubborn father or an ambitious criminal upstart, he is also a man torn between decades of accepted humility and an immediate future of being the boss. Torre inhabits Andres acknowledging that the transformation of the character is best revealed through subtle changes in gestures and behavior. Pimentel similarly inhabits the role of Andres’ wife with such surprising grace that only adds further layers to a role that could have been slight if portrayed by a less sensible actress.

Kabisera may be an imperfect film but it succeeds in dissecting the transformation of a fisherman who barters his soul with the devil for the sake not of his family but of his role in his family. Torre’s film, although deliberately bound by genre conventions, is delightfully complex. Laced with details, from the performances to Torre’s own directorial choices, the effects of its disturbing portraiture of Filipino patriarchy linger longer than the initial pleasures it immediately produces.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)