J. Pilapil Jacobo        

The cinematic articulation of the Philippine diaspora offers a historical opportunity to foreground the insertion of such an instance into the global narrative of migration. As a scopic device that maps out the economies of scale which retard the movements of Filipino migrant work, cinema, especially when it heralds itself as independent, can speed up the telling of the lives which have fallen out of the traffic. It can also report the coordinates of the displacement as well as the elliptical routes of engagement shot through the cartographic palimpsest. Diasporic cinema can then enliven the discourse, as, pace Edward W. Said, a counterpoint that syncopates the manner of the dispersion. A counterpoint elects interpretation into the order of contemporaneous histories across contemporary spheres. It is an indigene of critique.

Accomplishments in the diasporic imagination have been single-handedly modulated by Gil Portes, in ‘Merika (1984), Minsan May Isang Pangarap (1995), and Homecoming (2003). In all three, the right to take exception from the protocols of departure is paramount, as long as the individual assumes a position on the world-historical after engaging the “anti-conquest” in the contact zone. Efforts like Sana Maulit Muli (1995), Milan (2004), and In My Life (2009) have relegated the Filipino immigrant to a lachrymose figure that belabors the national melodrama of community and its concominant estrangements. Hannah Espia’s Transit (2013) is confident that it has proposed a counterpoint to the habits of diasporic cinema by situating the Philippine predicament in Israel, an originary locus of global migrancy that has troped itself into a translational zone despite its modern inception as a strategic neo-colony. Filipino migrant work, in various phases of documentation, is set to be told, for sure, with some degree of facility, within this milieu, and yet the fetishistic commitment to describe the ethnicity of this locale falters in engaging the trauma that besieges the Israeli state—the Palestinian question, a most peripheral but the least distant counterpoint to the Philippine predicament. The failure to determine the truth of this confluence accounts for a perspective on the diaspora drafted from the script of xenophobic neurosis.

The structure of the narrative masks such insipidity by repeating a short story of a rather single effect in five episodes, each one devoted to a character. The technique of recurrence is at times persuasive in visualizing a leitmotif of entrapment within the urgency to move in and out of quotidian intransigence, but the quintuple rhythm is incapable of building up resonances. The inclination toward an insight on sequence and simultaneity is detectable, but that aspiration remains within the realm of conjecture.  The story repeats but tension does not accumulate. Scenes are appended sometimes to extend an affect, and when that happens, the effect is less ironical than hyperbolic. A collective experience is diffracted into five vignettes, and yet, there is nothing contrapuntal in echoing denials of a single perspective. An errant thought that can be contested in the name of the multiple-argument never takes shape, because the point of view is not altered. The characters delineated after Janet (Irma Adlawan) must nonetheless discredit the feminine insight that somehow charges the Philippine presence in Israel with a certain deliberation. The paranoiac Moises (Ping Medina), the passive aggressive Tina (Mercedes Cabral), the depressive (Jasmine Curtis Smith), and the hyper-active (Marc Justine Alvarez) mark out the coordinates of despair that endangers Janet’s agency. The actress’s hysterical investment is arguably earned. Adlawan needed to compensate by aggregating a repertoire of shrill sentiments to overwrite that rather stentorian judgment on the futility of maternal suffering.

To excise the idea of Palestine from an image of Israel seen through Philippine eyes is to occlude the complex historical circumstances which have made possible the visibility of Transit as a Filipino film production shot in the Middle East. With “Palestine” entirely out of the picture, it becomes easy for the film to represent the Israeli state as dismissive of the possibility of a legal Filipino presence. And without a counterpoint to its precarity, the Philippine predicament fails to find a ground where a claim to relevance can be demarcated. We are not asking a rewriting of the screenplay. A moment where a metonym of  an “outer” space “within” appears should be enough to open up the film as a persuasively global engagement. A text must allow some scissions into its surface to allow a totality of traumas to emerge as vital to the analysis of a problematic.

Arising from the impasse are two risky figures of transnational subjectivity: Joshua (Justine Alvarez), the child who is interpellated into the rites of the Torah in Jerusalem and Haifa but is doomed to endure listening to monsoonal tales in Manila; and Yael (Jasmine Curtis Smith), the Filipino Israeli who is entitled to the Jewish homeland but rejects her entanglement with the Philippine post-colony. The racial consciousness nurtured by these enchantments can only breed a species of Filipino racism. Alienated from contrapuntality, neither Joshua nor Yael will think through the split in their identities through what W. E. B Du Bois calls as “double consciousness.” How does one respond to the cheer hanging upon Alvarez’s voice, and the incipient vacancy all over Curtis Smith’s face? There is hatred deep within them. Its particulate object is the Philippine.

J. Pilapil Jacobo

A world is imagined to be more shapely when the geometric configuration of the sphere takes over the idea of landscape. Or else terrain falls back into that ancient conceit of flatness. Of course this historicizing belongs to the colonial order, but the cartographic claim is enabling for those whose place on earth is threatened by the techne of, let’s say, geodesy. Such is the rift that needs to be resolved by the eponymous character played by Nora Aunor in Mes de Guzman’s Ang Kwento ni Mabuti.

The narrative pursues the labors of a peasant woman who forages what remains of the verdure of a piece of land that belongs to her clan but now needs to be ransomed from certain laws which demarcate the earth and expel those who have long nurtured it. Mabuti’s mother (Josephina Estabillo) dreads the day that would find them living in a hut suspended from a tree at the edge of a cliff, but Mabuti refuses to succumb to that banishment from a sphere they have already emplotted as sacred.

To anticipate the good that is to come, and to internalize this practice of patience, Mabuti assumes the role of the shaman: summoner of the spirits, interlocutor of the elements, Aeolian harp on Nueva Vizcayan earth that plays the music of the spheres. With saliva and stone, Mabuti converses with the pharmakon (poison) of venom as the pharmakon (antidote) of devotion, bargains with the universe to remove the contagion, and restitutes the order of benevolence. All shall be well, because the world is enfolded into a state of grace. It may not be visible, but the good, in God’s time, shall foreground itself. The figure that completes the sphere is an embrace from the firmaments. Mabuti is a widow, and her son (Arnold Reyes) and daughter (Mara Lopez) have been taken away from her by metropolitan commerce and diasporic exchange, but with crone-mother and four elfin girl-grandchildren, the shaman asserts the insurmountable place of sympathy in a world that must wax in fortitude when fortune is on the wane.

Mes de Guzman has crafted a film whose milieu musters the enclosures and the extensions of what could be the scope of a cinema of a considerable degree of independence: the sphere of a locality whose roots and rhizomes can only allow the cosmos to open itself up to both providence and peril, which includes a bridge that is never completed, and military checkpoints which must delay travel into the city. The agon that emerges out of the depths must tilt fate toward disaster or away from it. This cusp allows the hailstone to hold within its core a precipitate of insight on cosmic change and the swarm to hover above the ambivalence of an ethic. This “dialectical image” empowers the writing to pursue the mystique against all manner of mystifying. The crisis then is only fomented not to threaten the place of the good but to test the ground on which its matter could speak.

The money that Mabuti inherits from Nelia (Sue Prado), a woman summoned and surrendered by the local insurgency, is not so much a metaphor of corruption but a metonym of corruptibility. The spell around the cash stolen from possibly the same bank that is keeping the title of Mabuti’s ancestral land may enchant the shaman. It is her misrecognition of the sorcery that must be apprehended. The good is intimated in the promise of goods, but only after the fetish about capital decays. Hence, two prospects from within Mabuti’s sphere appeal as objects of the gift: the four girl-children’s collegiate education and the crone-mother’s recovery from metastasis. And yet, these options remain improvident. When Mabuti finally resolves the compromise, the categorical imperative divorces itself from any possible imperial category. Mabuti is not turned into a philanthropist. At that moment, the exchange value is hinged upon the girl-child Marife, the daughter of the insurgent who sneaks the money inside Mabuti’s bag before she is killed by the military. Marife’s term of ransom may be fiscalized by a known amount, but it can only be accounted for by an interminable capacity—Mabuti herself—the only sympathy that can correspond to the girl-child’s subaltern state.

The sanction of this ethic is suffered with an elegiac pace by the syntax of the sympathy, Nora Aunor. Her understanding of the pastoral is accurate, and almost exact in calibrating a sense of biome whose radii are aware of catastrophe and attentive to the fulfillment of the shamanic mandate. It is a range that understands both limit and infinity. Aunor’s formal attitude is most assured here, then. Her late style has become an archive of attunements that can relate with either primordial kernel or final foliage. Earthen is the range. Because she is comfortable treading the reed-path with swine, we forget the contempt we have attached to the animal, and our zootropy recuperates.

We have been instructed well on how Aunor enacts a moment of conviction to tell a truth or to release oneself from victimry, but the method of her act in this film homes in on crisis: the tentativity that surrounds its valences, the articulations of a dilemma that nonetheless electrifies the spirit, and that static moment where the only charge that matters is the epiphanic self.

Is anyone else capable of shifting into tenses of terror perfect and progressive upon finding out the excess in one’s baggage is money, money, money?

The ensemble of women that accompanies this performance must be celebrated for providing Aunor with formidable foils to her character’s predicament. Josephina Estabillo, the termagant, is such a levity. Sue Prado, the renegade, is imperturbable. Mara Lopez, the lovelorn, is by turns melancholic and sanguine. Not every seasoned performer knows the difference.

Ang Kwento ni Mabuti reveals to us that there are still stars, and the stars are still, in Nora’s eyes. Superstars, they remain. And we must gaze, gaze, gaze.

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Image source: http://www.interaksyon.com/entertainment/number-of-new-filipino-films-in-september-unprecedented-fdcp/

We, members of the Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle (YCC), denounce in the strongest possible terms the acts of plagiarism committed by film blogger Jojo Devera (also known as Vincent Joel Llamas Devera) in his blog Sari-Saring Sineng Pinoy.

Although Devera rendered his blog publicly inaccessible at about 10:00 PM last 3 November 2013 (Sunday) and has subsequently deleted it, we have been able to gather evidence showing that Devera copied passages of varying lengths, from single sentences to entire paragraphs, from texts written by YCC members without permission or acknowledgement and presented such as his own work. Where he did not simply substitute his name for that of the author—as in the case of the post on Nunal sa Tubig (1976), which is wholly drawn from an essay by Eulalio R. Guieb III—he went a reprehensible leap further by producing reviews on films that combined excerpts from materials contemplating or assessing completely different issues—as in the case of the post on I Love You Mama, I Love You Papa (1986), which patches together parts from essays by J. Pilapil Jacobo, Nonoy L. Lauzon, and Patrick D. Flores, none of which discuss the Maryo J. De Los Reyes picture. Other members whose essays were plagiarized include Eloisa May P. Hernandez and Jaime Oscar M. Salazar.

While we have thus far managed to identify only six posts containing material lifted from both print and digital sources put out by our group, we are convinced that such constitute the merest tip of the proverbial iceberg: Devera began his blog in 2006, and before he took it down, it had nearly 400 entries—all of which, by the way, he had the gall to assert copyright over, if a line that ran along the bottom of his now defunct blog is any indication: “Karapatang Magpalathala 2006-2013. SARI-SARING SINENG PINOY Lahat Ng Karapatan Ay Nakalaan. Disenyo Jojo Devera”. Moreover, the way that Devera put together the plagiarized posts, which are in places inevitably marked by schizophrenia of tone and thought, suggests not the creativity of the parodist or the inventiveness of the pasticheur—we are not unaware of the lively and meritorious debates surrounding the concepts of authorship and originality—but something that is, to our collective misfortune, becoming more and more banal at present: the calculation of one who seeks to establish and burnish a reputation as a commentator in as expedient a manner as possible, without putting in the necessary time and effort to organize one’s thoughts and to deliberate over one’s words, or to give credit to those who have done so.

Considering the sheer amount of data that is available in the world today, online or otherwise, and the concomitant difficulty of guarding against plagiarism, it is perhaps not astonishing, but certainly unfortunate, that Devera has been as successful as he has in building a degree of credibility within the film community by carving out a niche for himself as a kind of specialist in Philippine films from the 1970s and the 1980s. We trust that he realizes, at the very least, that he has done this community a signal disservice. Lover though Devera might be of Filipino films, a claim he announces in his online properties, he might be exceeding his zeal if it spurs him to abduct the texts of others rather than to arduously work through the experience of cinema with his own body and mind in conversation with others.

In view of the foregoing, we demand that Devera immediately issue a formal public apology for his detestable acts of plagiarism, not only to us but also to every other individual and organization from which he may have lifted material without proper attribution. Furthermore, we caution all parties who have published or are considering publishing anything that Devera professes to have written to examine whatever he has done according to the strictest editorial protocols, and to withdraw or reject his work as necessary. Finally, in light of the situation at hand, we call on all film enthusiasts, bloggers, reviewers, and critics, as well as on all members of the general public, to contribute toward cultivating an environment that encourages, if not expects, judiciousness and responsibility in the production, circulation, reception, and use of information. We must always strive to uphold intellectual honesty as we pursue, develop, and disseminate knowledge.

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J. Pilapil Jacobo

In Ecuadorian Demetrio Aguilera Malta’s  novel Siete serpientes y siete lunas (1970), the Christ of the crucifix refuses to yield to his own gravenness upon the moment of speech. At some point, he seems to threaten to abandon the figure that the sculptor had assigned to him. His wounds can no longer be sustained in a relief so high in their fatigue. Outside the church, creatures of the most enormous testicles spar to ravage Santorontón’s final virgin.

Such scenes returned to me at the screening of Bikol poet Kristian Sendon Cordero’s debut feature Angustia (2013).

Rinconada showed me “the lost steps” to Santorontón. While Cordero’s film does not possess the saturnalian fervor of Aguilera-Malta’s marvel, it succeeds in concatenating a version of the surrea lwithin the sacred, and proceeds to tackle the mélange with risky seriousness and unquizzical confidence. Somehow I did wish the mahogany Christ would interrupt the priest’s benedictions and that the shamaness’s stones would turn out to be vaginal holes shrieking currencies out of a certain Inca coinage, but Cordero’s sudamericanese is contemporary, lavishing its already piquant accent with a prominently sibilant mannerism.

The sacerdote Victorino’s crime is akin to Amaro’s, and Gael Garcia Bernal’s incarnate is the diabolically tormented Alex Vincent Medina. Quite a stretch, if truth be told, but Cordero’s charms have been previously persuasive elsewhere, and whoever springs from the root of Crispin should be given the vastest opportunity at grandiloquy. He seizes that chance so well at the end of Act Two. All of the fury at the failure to preserve a tableau tropicaux was directed at the nonchalant aloe vera. I wanted to scream: spare the succulent sabila!

Set in 16th-century Rinconada, that region of the Bikol peninsula located between the cabeceras of Nueva Caceres (Naga) and Legazpi and most populated by the aboriginal Agta, Angustia surveys a vignette of parochial life during the early history of the reduccion, during which ethnic enclaves started to vanish in light of Christianized pueblos arresting the mountains where the Agta would take shelter and forage. Angustia is all about the autochthonous trauma that remains after all that clearing of the native encampment.

The autochthone is Dunag (Michelle Smith). Her nubility can only be anticipated by the Aztec Malinalli. She possesses an attunement to the highland tropics that ranges from the locus of mollusks to the epicenter of a tone so brassy it makes the body gyrate and refuse a bracelet strewn from the salt-white corral by Sikaw (a Victor Loquias who masters both the naive and the macabre), a pursuer in the tribe. Such knowledge can only be torrid, and Michelle Smith parses out the epistemes of such a habituation with so much relish that the character becomes an anachronism in the script that is written all over her deshabille. It is this kind of acting that distinguishes the film’s contribution to ethnographic surrealist cinema. The juxtaposition of heedless foliage and Smith’s maroon gaze cantilevering the filigree of fern makes the floral and the faunal kindred but at the same time out of joint in terms of vertiginous seriality. That the eroticism of the bosom is transferred to a delectation that hangs over the eye’s promontory is testament to that temporality when the indigenal, when something more is incepted elsewhere even after the exotic becomes so sure of itself, is born out of the always already indigenous body. I desire, Dunag tells one, and no unnatural offense is assured leverage at that contagion: looking. When one becomes a conduit of each that cannot be inhibited by shame, one cannot necessarily careen into sheer libidinal license. With those unsentimented eyes, and the somber carnality around the iris, nothing less or more, especially if it concerns prejudice, can invade.

Born and raised in Zambales, Smith is Filipina and African American, and musters the right amount of intellection from this position to coordinate the autochthone’s global racial destiny out of the archaic and into the ideology critique of the change that syncresy subjects the miscegene to complete. There is something awry then when her transport to the convent denies her of any chance to figure out what it means to be strategically defiant. There is incalculable consent and unmediated delight in the utterance of  the Christian name “Josefina” when it is fundamentally a phonetic diminution of the fosterity of her rain: “Dunag.” Colleague José Mari Cuartero interjects: “Could the problem be an inarticulation of acoustic impression?” Michelle Smith performs an apparitional method, to a fault, that the error of the look must emerge by way of an vocable practice almost bereft of irony. Could this mistake be blessed?

That Dunag is murdered by her seductee, the sacerdote, is not so much a sensationalist gesture but a political act to mark out a historical incident the perfection of which, colleague Juan Ariel Goméz would intervene, is the neo-Europe that is the Argentine predicament. This is a second moment of the indigenal, plotting out emergent grooves in Guada (an indefatigably irreverent Jazmin Llana) and residual maneuvers in Natividad (a splendidly tremulous Maria Isabel Lopez). The indigene mediates between trickstery and shamanism and reveals the indifference.

The film is imperfect, for sure (a certain nostalgia lurks around the chromatic design that the palette seems almost incompetent if not for that raucous green), but to say that “[it] comes off as a very literary venture, the theories and frameworks fueling the narrative plain enough to see [sic]” is not only irresponsible, but also indolent. When the same automatic reviewer says “the movie just isn’t very good,” he surrenders to acknowledge some truths of the cinema that has failed him: the evil that resides in the colonial church. . .and the evil that debilitates critique and seeps into the writing of such a catastrophe. The filmmaker is said to be the most terrible child the literature of the Bikol peninsula has ever bred. One wished he would abandon the childhood, and forget the terror of this leave-taking, but with this text, there are growing pains, dealt with both recklessness and grace, which can be perceived. Cordero is no Aguilera Malta, well, not yet, but his Angustia is a frenetic assault to metropolitan tastes which, pace Montaigne, relent as a matter of habit, to screen barbarities.

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Image source: http://www.pep.ph/guide/indie/12858/alex-medina-starrer-angustia-gets-initial-x-rating-from-mtrcb

J. Pilapil Jacobo

Isinasalaysay ng pelikula ang buhay ni Mando (Paulo Avelino), isang deboto ng Birhen ng Peñafrancia, nang makilala niya si Saling (Mara Lopez), isang dalagang naninirahan sa paanan ng bulkan ng Mayon. Magkakapalagayang-loob silang dalawa. Matutuklasan ni Mando na ang iniibig niya palang babae ay si Oriol, ang bathalumang ahas ng epikong Ibalon. Labis na matatakot si Mando isang gabi nang ipakita ni Saling ang kanyang tunay na anyo, kaya’t lalayo siya. At labis ding malulumbay ang diyosa, malulugmok sa isang milenyal na kalaliman. Magbabalik lamang si Mando kay Saling/Oriol matapos siyang sumama sa prusisyon ng Birhen bilang isang voyador. At ipagtatapat niya kay Saling/Oriol na nakita niya sa mga mata ng imahen ni Maria ang mga mata ng kanyang sinisinta.

Sa ganang akin, makapangyarihan ang pelikula lalo na kapag ginagamit ito ng kanyang manlilikha upang minahin ang mga katutubo at kolonyal na pagmamalay gamit ang moderno nitong teknolohiya. Sa isang anyo tulad ng pelikula natin maaaring ilugar ang Panitikang Filipino sa popular, at ang popular maiuugat natin sa kayarian ng sining ng panitikan.  Sa pelikula, ang katutubo, ang kolonyal, at ang moderno ay kontemporanyo. Nananahan sila sa iisang panahon: ang panahong sinematograpiko, na inihuhudyat ng mga pinagtagni-tagning imahen (montage) at ng mga sandaling tinapyas-tapyas (diegesis).

Ano ang tagumpay ni Alvin B. Yapan sa Debosyon?  

Binabalikan niya ang epiko na itinuturing bilang pangunahing teksto ng sinaunang Panitikang Bikolano, ang “Ibalon.” Inilalarawan sa epiko ang paglilinang ng kabihasnan ng sinaunang Bikol ayon sa panahon ng tatlong mandirigma. Kasangkot sa paglilinang na ito ang bathaluman na si Oriol. Subalit lalansiin ng bawat mandirigma ang diyosa upang lubusang maitatag ang sibilisasyong papalit sa kaayusan ng kalikasang kinakatawan ng makapangyarihang babaeng ahas.

Subalit ang uri ng paggunitang ito ni Yapan ay masalimuot, sapagkat inilalangkap niya ito sa isa pang alaala sa kamalayang Bikolnon: ang debosyon sa Mahal na Birhen ng Peñafrancia. Ang mahihinuha sa hulagwayang ito ay isang malawak at malalim na pagsipat sa kayarian ng kultura na nakasuot sa malay ng tao. Marahas ang diwa na pinalitan ng debosyon kay Maria ang debosyon kay Oriol. Subalit higit na marahas ang diwa na, kung tutuusin, iisa ang nasabing debosyon. Ang mga puwersa ng pananakop lamang ang naggugumiit ng pagkakaiba.

Upang pahindian ang kolonyal na negasyon (the negation of negation), kailangang muling isaritwal ni Mando ang kanyang debosyon para sa dalawa niya innamorata na sina Maria at Saling. Kailangan niyang isabak ang kanyang katawan kasama ang iba pang katawang lalaki ng Kabikolan sa prusisyon ng imahen sa ilog Naga. At kailangan niya ring kilalanin ang katawang bathaluman-ahas ni Saling bilang katawang tao.

Ano ang kaisipan na magsasara sa pelikula?

Ang kasaysayan ng mithi ay hindi maaaring balangkasin sa isang linyar na paraan. Dahil sa masalimuot na ugnayan ng katutubo at ng kolonyal, ang anumang pagtatangka na taluntunin ang kasaysayan ng mga damdamin, tulad na nga ng pagnanasa at ng pangungulila, ay kailangang maisadula sa isang paraan kung saan masasaksihan ang sandali ng pag-aalinsabayan, ang sandali ng katiwalagan, at ang imposibilidad din ng lahat ng palakumpasang ito.

Iisa ang estatwa at bailarin sa ngalan ng debosyon.

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Image source: http://mymovieworld-coolman0304.blogspot.com/2013/07/debosyon-official-trailer-cinemalaya.html

Jaime Oscar M. Salazar

At the outset, Slumber Party (2012) establishes a situation that is not especially objectionable, and certainly contains within it the potential to be entertaining. On the eve of the Miss Universe pageant, which within the realm of the film coincides with a hostage crisis, Phi (RK Bagatsing) organizes a slumber party with Jhana (Archie Alemania), and Elle (Markki Stroem) to mark the occasion, as they have apparently not gotten together as a group since graduating from college. What looks set to be a night of companionable bitching and campy fun is interrupted when Jonel (Sef Cadayona), seeking to prove his worthiness to be admitted into a fraternity composed of neighborhood toughs, intrudes into Phi’s house in order to rob it.

The burly Jhana foils Jonel by knocking him unconscious, after which the frustrated burglar is tied to a chair with computer cables and muzzled with what appears to be a pair of frilly underwear. In spite of Elle’s initial protests, Phi, with the enthusiastic consent of Jhana, decides against turning Jonel over to the authorities, instead suggesting that showing the interloper hospitality and kindness for the duration of the night would make for a better lesson against committing crime than a jail stay. The fact that, generally, a suspect thrown behind bars would have neither been bound nor gagged occurs to exactly no one.

From here on, what could have been an interesting and enjoyable exploration of the dynamics of friendship between men who identify as bakla degenerates into a heated rivalry over the attractive trespasser, interspersed with bouts of collaborative toying with the same: Jonel is reduced to the status of a thing for the trio to compete over and amuse themselves with, his thoughts and feelings of little account as his captors subject him to assorted forms of humiliation. The only way to make sense of the affection that slowly develops between Jonel and Phi, therefore, is as a manifestation of Stockholm syndrome.

The maltreatment turns shocking when Jhana, taking advantage of the absence of his friends, forces himself upon Jonel. This act of sexual assault, presented as a joke and then glossed over for the remainder of the reel, is easily the nadir of Slumber Party. As if one portrayal of abuse were not sufficient, however, the film sees Elle attempting a similar, if less invasive, deed early the next morning, though he is aggressively thwarted by his would-be victim. Whatever monstrous sensibility was at work in the concoction of these scenes should not just have been left asleep; it should have been slaughtered.

Presuming that one could bracket out these utterly offensive moments of exploitation, the film still has little to recommend it. Apart from being bloated with hysterical melodrama and strained gags, it deals with the distressing realities of gay life using a hand that is at once despicably heavy and unbearably light: while it contrives conditions where the experiences of loneliness, self-loathing, and discrimination can be introduced, it never explores these with care or fluency, though two of its screenwriters, namely Troy Espiritu and Phillippe Salvador Palmos, are gay advocates. Even HIV—an urgent issue that, it must be emphasized, everyone, no matter what gender or sexual orientation, has to attend to—is treated with disgraceful superficiality in order to elicit a cheap titter or two.

That Slumber Party is referred to as a comedy at all points up a lamentable destitution in how the term is understood in these parts: it is not enough, and indeed, it will never be enough, for a work to involve rapid-fire barb-trading, slapstick antics, an apparently happy ending, and, particularly in the case of the present object of scrutiny, ostensibly straight male actors adopting what they believe to be the distinguishing behavioral traits of the bakla—insert the usual (and questionable) professions of “certified” masculinity, performatory difficulty, extensive research, and increased understanding of and admiration for gay men here—although there may well be a farcical aspect to the continued popularity and monetary success of such productions.

The absurdity is underscored several times over when one is reminded that the Emmanuel dela Cruz–directed feature not only closed the Cinema One Originals Festival this year—it was an entry in last year’s edition—but also had a brief commercial run with an R-13 rating from the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB), a classification that, according to the latest Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of the regulatory agency, applies to films that do not “gratuitously promote or encourage any dangerous, violent, discriminatory, or otherwise offensive behavior or attitude”. In what way, one wonders, does the representation of rape—here defined as forcing another to submit to a sex act against his or her will—as funny, unleavened by any trace of irony or self-awareness, fail to promote or encourage violence, sexual or otherwise?

None of the foregoing is to suggest that comedy is in any way obliged to comfort, to console, or even to provoke raucous laughter, or that it should avoid certain topics completely—some of the best examples in the genre are notable precisely because of how they are able to simultaneously amuse and disturb in their handling of challenging or taboo themes. The crucial ingredients in such literary, theatrical, and filmic texts are sensitivity and intelligence, of which Slumber Party exhibits an appalling and deplorable lack.

Much like Zombadings I: Patayin sa Shokot si Remington (2011), its sister film from Origin8 Media, Slumber Party may have laudable aspirations, but these are everywhere undermined and ultimately defeated by the effeminophobic and homophobic assumptions from which it proceeds; notwithstanding the claim of Dela Cruz that his film proffers “a chance not to laugh at gay characters but to laugh with them, to enter their world with lesser judgment and preconceptions”, Slumber Party merely reinforces and fortifies the ghettoes, both within and without cinema, to which the bakla has long been condemned to exist.

To those interlocutors who will aver that Slumber Party ought not to be taken this seriously, there is nothing to say. For better or for worse, the right to freedom of expression necessarily embraces the license to be vacuous.

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Image source: http://mymovieworld-coolman0304.blogspot.com/2013/11/slumber-party-showing-on-november-27.html

A critique of Porno (Adolfo Alix, Jr., 2013): First of two parts

J. Pilapil Jacobo

The key to understanding an apparent inconsistency in the cinema of Adolfo Borinaga Alix, Jr. is a  kind of almost vulgar unpredictability that does not allow a film in his oeuvre to proceed from the previous and augur what could be apprehended as sensible in the next.  What on earth can cathect the “prison-house of  actresses” (a colleague has quipped) in Presa to the aquarium drama that is Isda? And even within a piece, nothing is ever quite certain to be pursued in the same habit. When one is grudgingly convinced about the cellophane that stood in for water in Death March, the expressionism would revert to Capas, in full realist grain, but the incandescent angelology was there to stay!

The surprise in Porno is not so much the assault that teeters on the indulgences that will turn whoever toys with the genre tremulous with each step but on the thoughtful grace that persuades the viewer to grapple with the tightrope act from that voluptuous space between the wire and the net. Slyly, and almost too shrewdly, the film veers us away from the skills set of the sex-acrobat who is no longer so svelte to bend ligaments just to exceed the curvatures of the erotic. The pornography in Porno is frustrated every step of the way until what remains is a dimension of the surface one never expected to be there in the first place. The surface that is exploited in the mode is then relieved of its superficiality. The sex is never merely a matter of zooming in and out the skin in question, but a means to apportion to cinema in these parts in these so-called vanguard days a scale of inquiry it has not quite known to rehearse after exhausting, pace Bataille,  “visions of excess,” during a time of dictatorial duress. Some hard core of discourse should be banging on this sly surface.

Of course, various angulations of genitalia colonize Porno’s screen.  The penis and the vagina once again take over the face and the voice as loci of a primary cinematic articulation. And yet, these organs appear sans the orgasm that must complement them. Hence, the Titania of titillation’s mammaries are just those, lactating embarrassments; Rosanna Roces has got nothing left to conceal from hereon, except the forlorn memory of those years of relentless roses. And when the other characters are shown to be naked, their heads seem to have been severed from their own bodies. The picture of pleasure is incomplete; the harlot and the hustler are denied the chance to be seen with their faces. Outside sartorial sanction, and within bordello premises, an actress is obviously substituted with a body double whose corporeal proportions do not cohere with her optimal embodiment of prurience. And when a certain phallus imposes its amplitude upon most of the screen’s quadrants, its prosthetic tumescence cannot quite come to terms with the accuracy by which the pendulum swings of testosterone rage is portrayed. When the luridity of the exercise has been exhausted, so that things are reducible only to the tedium of technique, what can be magnified should be left as such, a body part that does not refer to the rest. Porno is no allegory of resistance, then, when the opportune metonymic moment is invalidated.  Nor is it spectacle of defeat, when hyberbole never quite appears to be bold enough to exhibit its convex effrontery.

The pornographic tradition is hailed from the literature on the lives of prostitutes and their purported métier, fornication itself. Pornography is the writing of sex. And further, sex writing itself.  What cinema has done to this premise is to disavow for the genre its intimacies with indeterminate erotique by removing the bar that seeks to signify pleasure incompletely, that is, again, through the synecdochic arc of metonymy.  Pornographic cinema promises to disclose the totality of the sexual act and remove the reluctance of the sexualized body. Every angle, even when marginal or posterior, is a frontal absolute. Nothing  is ever spared the violence of exposure. It is here where the prostitute becomes uninhibited. And the client who must face up to this figure demanding a reciprocal frontality. The writing that enables the vision of sex to gain the suppleness of flesh provides for a time to buy the prostitute out of the reifying conditions set in high relief by the obscene gaze. It is this time-lag of visibility that separates the pornographeme, the word that serves as signifying fundament of sex-writing, from the pornographic signified, the scene of sex summoned upon reading the sex-writing. For example, the reverie of silken neglect that would possibly be let loose after one reads “négligée” is no longer possible when the video forces its intended voyeur to see the tightest red spandex lingerie.

Alix deftly interprets the zeal that hovers above Ralston Jover’s screenplay by foregrounding within the mis-en-scène a mis-en-abîme. The scene encloses a version of itself that seeks to enlarge a discourse of the cinema through the ruse of the diminutive.  Pace Trinh T. Minh-ha, the framer is framed, and we catch him at a significant moment: framing. Alix has employed this trope in Chassis, to refute a supposed movement inherent in national progress, particularly when the subaltern is forced to reckon with scavenger ethic as the only way to apprehend the cusps of hunger and thirst. Porno departs from the kind of pornography that entitles itself to gain full scopic control over that kind of poverty by removing from the chassis the stasis that destitutes the political from the paradigmatic. The frame within the frame intrudes in the enclosure as it calculates a pace that would turn the picture to implode, and look the part of the disseminated. Porno is progressive in the sense that the mis-en-abîme is a true recursive. The frame acquits itself well as a vortex that can engineer iterations across vignettes in the diegesis. Turning to and fro into image onto narrative, the device pursues a counterintuition to one’s perspective of what a frame is.

There is something thoughtfully tropic in this Alix film.

Porno’s prelude takes us to a room in a motel where a closed-circuit television peeps into a couple engaging in the rigors of sadomasochistic practice. The role play draws an awful turn when a murder occurs off-screen and the murderer refuses to pull her gaze away from ours.  The blood in her hands is almost black in infrared light.

This scene serves as the zero degree of the pornographeme.

Such is the advance guard for a cinema whose diaphane between the erotic and death itself has become by turns porous and rigid.

Then, the ultraviolet in another motel scene provides us with the languorous milieu that entitles voluptuary non pareil Rosanna Roces to minister to the needs of a client (Yul Servo), who is paranoid about voyeurs in the adjacent room. After going through the motions of a rather awkward sex, they try to exchange post-coital pleasantries syncopated by existential meanderings until they have nothing left to say and we can no longer ignore the television frame above them whose depiction of ecstacies is infinite. Yul Servo, we discover, has failed to deliver death to an archbishop. When Rosanna leaves,the operative tasked to bring Yul back to jail kills him.

One less hitman to terminate this terminologist.

The vignette that proceeds brings the video of the coitus between Rosanna and Yul to the studio where voice talents like Aleks (Carlo Aquino) would substitute mournful sentences with euphoric vocal pyrotechniques. His director (Allan Paule) complains that his talent’s skills are limited to monotones; Carlo, it seems, can only be distracted. The mis-en-abîme tells us that a certain social script is attempting to write the pornographeme off the speech acts of sex by supplementing sounds which although are culled from a sensual syllabary are not allowed to make sense as ejaculatory passages. Words should not interrupt moans. They get in the way of the sex.

Pornophoneme is hazardous to pornographeme.

Aleks compensates his lack of energy at the studio in the social network. His chatbox is riddled with the signs of a consciousness both allured and alluring: jokes and puns drown the oohs and the aahs. Conversations extend to telephone calls of unlimited expense. His room is lit under the cool tinge of a lurid green. And it is this dark room of desire that makes up for the privations of an “excitable speech.” His desktop is a frame of the “society of the spectacle” where the self regains whatever aspect of it has been rendered as effete in the public sphere.  This savvy is undercut when Aleks witnesses before the screen the suicide of a jilted lover. As soon as Aleks leaves the dark room, he suffers a seizure.

Carlo Aquino offers a most attuned performance in his adult career by tackling a premier pornographer. His face possesses a vacancy of possibilities.The way he gives absolute licence to pleasure in a span of a third of minute sums up the totality of pain a body must deal with at various cusps of desire desiring itself and its alternate affects, including that irreducible life between enervation and rage.

And Carlo Aquino as Aleks is punctured by Angel Aquino as Alex.

Years after the seizure, he becomes the queen of Club Mwah, which runs the most fantabulous drag show in all of queer Manila. Alex keeps an Australian lover, and on the eve of the latter’s trip to Sydney, they watch the video of Rosanna and Yul that Aleks had dubbed at the studio.  Alex and the Australian dismiss the monotone. And then, we only see the hard core of movements  in the bedroom shot through a soft lens.

Aleks is father to a son. The mother calls up Alex from abroad, telling her the son wants to see Aleks on skype on the former’s birthday. That proxy self has long gone, so only Alex can show up

Could this be a scandal of the pornographeme?

One night, after missing out on an exotic  finale, Alex finds herself running toward a hall of mirrors: her face framed by her own, her tears wholeheartedly her own.

Angel Aquino is riveting as a trans-woman.

And Porno’s critical pornography is peerless.

The UP Diliman Department of Art Studies, through the Art Studies Foundation, and the Young Critics Circle present Gutierrez Mangansakan’s award-winning film Qiyamah on February 3, 2014 at the UP Diliman Cine Adarna, 3 and 6 PM.

The film chronicles the many signs that presage the apocalypse. Set in a remote village in the Philippine South, residents of a farming community confront the specter of doom and the seeming end of the world as foretold in the Koran. They struggle with fear and doubt and are forced to confront a complex web of moral choices: tainted pasts, fraught family ties and the sudden arrival of an evil stranger in the village. As tragedy unfolds with menacing slowness, they rediscover the bonds that kept them together. Upon the shattering glare of world’s end, they realize they are linked by mortality, dreams, absolution and nature’s inescapable revenge. Qiyamah foregrounds unwavering faith with inevitable demise in stark visual poetry and a well composed film narrative, a suitable piece for deep reflection on the precarious state of humanity in our time.

Qiyamah is YCC’s Best Film in 2012. It also won Best Editing and Best Sound and Aural Orchestration.

Mangansakan will be present for Q and A after each screening.

Tickets are available at P100. For ticket reservations, you may call 927 0581 or 981 8500 local 2115. You may also procure tickets at the venue itself.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdf-MSVD-tw

Porno, Adolfo Alix Jr.’s triptych film of individuals linked through pornography wins big at the Young Critics Circle’s 24^th Annual Citations, bagging five of the six main awards, including Best Film and Best Performance for Carlo Aquino who tied with Jhong Hilario for Badil.

Porno also took the prizes for Best Screenplay and Best Sound and Aural Orchestration, and tied with Frasco Mortiz’s Pagpag for Best Editing.

Mel Chionglo’s Lauriana is named Best Cinematography and Visual Design.

Porno was one of the entries to the 2013 Cinemalaya Film Festival but, due to its mature content, was only exhibited in the Cultural Center of the Philippines, unlike the rest of the entries that were screened in select commercial theaters.

Alix has now won three Best Film awards from YCC, previously winning in 2009 for Adela and in 2012 for Haruo. He has also previously won for his production design in Kalayaan (2012).

Both Aquino and Hilario have been previously nominated for Best Performance by the academe-based group: Aquino for Minsan May Isang Puso (1999) and Baler (2008), and Hilario for Muro-Ami (1999).

Having previously narrowed down the year’s cinematic output to a long list of 22 films, the group last night further reduced the list to 13, and, after more than six hours of intense deliberations, arrived at record-number nominations in most categories: Film (8), Performance (15), Screenplay (8), and Cinematography and Visual Design (11).

To encourage the growth of emerging filmmakers, YCC decided to introduce a new special category – Best First Features, to be given to the three most outstanding feature films of debuting filmmakers. This year, the recipients are Angustia (Kristian Sendon Cordero), Puti (Miguel Alcazaren), and Ang Turkey Man Ay Pabo Rin (Randolph Longjas).

The awards ceremony is set on the third week of March, with the specific date and venue to be announced soon.

Below is the list of nominees for all categories:

FILM

Winner: Porno, directed by Adolfo Alix Jr. (Cinemalaya Foundation, Phoenix Features, Deus Lux Mea Films, Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum, CMB Film Services, Inc.; Arleen Cuevas, producer)

Nominees:

Mga Anino ng Kahapon, directed by Alvin Yapan (VYAC Productions; Alemberg Ang, producer)

Babagwa, directed by Jason Paul Laxamana (Cinemalaya Foundation, Quantum Films, Kamaru Productions; Josabeth Alonso, executive producer; Ferdinand Lapuz, producer; Chad Angelic Cabigon, associate producer)

Badil, directed by Chito Roño (Film Development Council of the Philippines; Rafaela May Ocampo, executive producer; Han Salazar, producer)

Dukit, directed by Armando Lao (Centerstage Productions, Betis Galleria; Armando Lao, producer; Brillante Mendoza and Florentina Canasa Layug, executive producers; Sonny Dobles and City Heights Hotel, associate producers)

Ang Kwento ni Mabuti, directed by Mes de Guzman (CineFilipino, PLDT-Smart Foundation, Studio 5, Unitel Entertainment, Cinelarga, SampayBakod Productions; Rhea Operaña de Guzman, producer)

Pagpag, directed by Frasco Santos Mortiz (Star Cinema, Regal Films; Charo Santos-Concio, Malou Santos, Lily Monteverde, and Roselle Monteverde, executive producers; Enrico Santos and Marizel Samson-Martinez, supervising producers)

Quick Change, directed by Eduardo Roy Jr. (Cinemalaya Foundation, Found Films; Almond Derla, executive producer; Ferdinand Lapuz, producer)

PERFORMANCE

Winners: Carlo Aquino, Porno and Jhong Hilario, Badil

Nominees:

Angel Aquino, Porno

Nora Aunor, Ang Kwento ni Mabuti

Adrian Cabido, Lauriana

Carlo Cruz, Mga Anino ng Kahapon

Allen Dizon, Lauriana

Ensemble cast of Porno

Cherie Gil, Sonata

Dick Israel, Badil

Alex Vincent Medina, Babagwa

Daniel Padilla, Pagpag

Joey Paras, Babagwa

Sue Prado, Ang Kwento ni Mabuti

TJ Trinidad, Mga Anino ng Kahapon

SCREENPLAY

Winner: Porno, Ralston Jover

Nominees:

Mga Anino ng Kahapon, Alvin Yapan

Babagwa, Jason Paul Laxamana

Badil, Rodolfo Vera

Debosyon, Alvin Yapan

Dukit, Armando Lao and Mary Honeylyn Joy Alipio

Ang Kwento ni Mabuti, Mes de Guzman

Quick Change, Eduardo Roy Jr

EDITING

Winners: Pagpag, Jerrold Tarog and Porno, Aleks Castañeda

Nominees:

Badil, Carlo Francisco Manatad

Dukit, Diego Marx Dobles

CINEMATOGRAPHY AND VISUAL DESIGN

Winner: Lauriana, Nap Jamir (cinematography) and Edgar Martin Littaua (production design)

Nominees:

Mga Anino ng Kahapon, Dexter dela Peña and Jan Tristan Pandy (cinematography), Whammy Alcazaren (production design), Frances Grace Mortel and Rita Vargas (art direction), and Phyllis Grae Grande (set decoration)

Badil, Neil Daza (cinematography), Jayvee Taduran (production design), and Donald Camon (art direction)

Debosyon, Dexter dela Peña (cinematography), Dennis Corteza and Paolo Rey Mendoza Piaña (production design), Roy Dominguiano and Pat Noveno (art direction), and Omar Aguilar (visual effects)

Dukit, Triztan Garcia, Bruno Tiotuico, Jeffrey Icawat, and Diego Dobles (cinematography), Leo Abaya and Olga Marquez (production design)

The Guerilla Is a Poet, Kiri Dalena (cinematography) and Sari Dalena (production design)

Ang Kwento ni Mabuti, Albert Banzon (cinematography), Cesar Hernando and Mes de Guzman (production design)

Pagpag, David Diaz-Abaya (cinematography), Luis Custodio IV (production design), and Daren Francis Raña (visual effects)

Porno, Albert Banzon (cinematography), Adolfo Alix Jr. (production design), and Bobet Lopez (art direction)

Quick Change, Dan Villegas (cinematography) and Harley Alcasid (production design)

Sonata, Mark Gary (cinematography), Emilio Montelibano Jr. (production design), and Richard Francia (visual effects)

SOUND AND AURAL ORCHESTRATION

Winner: Porno, Albert Michael Idioma (sound design) and Ari Trofeo (sound)

Nominees:

Babagwa, Lucien Letaba and Joseph Lansang (music) and Addiss Tabong (sound design)

Badil, Carmina Cuya (music) and Addiss Tabong (sound design)

Debosyon, Teresa Barrozo and Jireh Pasano (music), Ray Andrew San Miguel and Andrew Millalos (sound design)

Dukit, Armando Lao (music and sound design)

Pagpag, Francis Concio (music) and Arnel Labayo (sound design)

FIRST FEATURE

Winners: Angustia (Kristian Sendon Cordero), Puti (Miguel Alcazaren), and Ang Turkey Man Ay Pabo Rin (Randolph Longjas)

The Young Critics Circle is composed of Skilty Labastilla (Chair), Aristotle Atienza, Patrick Flores, Tessa Maria Guazon, Lisa Ito, J. Pilapil Jacobo, Nonoy Lauzon, JPaul Manzanilla, Jema Pamintuan, and Jaime Oscar Salazar.

The awarding ceremony of the Young Critics Circle for the best in Philippine cinema for 2013 has been postponed indefinitely as a result of the shift of the academic calendar of the University of the Philippines. YCC awards rites are financially supported by UP’s Office of Initiatives for Culture and the Arts (OICA).

We will announce the new date of the ceremony as soon as the date is finalized.

By Nonoy L. Lauzon

Transgressing norms, mores, and the mindset of conventional society may be deemed the mark of a good film. When a film – that is a huge hit among vast viewing audiences – resorts to such transgression, one knows that it must be doubly good. This is the case for the horror feature Pagpag that by all means subscribes to the requisites of the genre only to subvert one’s expectations of the limits of popular cinema.

Promo still from the movie

What begins as a cautionary tale for the young that shun superstitious beliefs graduates to a far more foreboding treatise that poses a challenge to a way of life and view of the world on which much of social conventions to this day are founded.

In Pagpag, the real source of shock and the horror experience lies not in its elements as a slasher pic but in the very premise by which the diabolical in the film is evoked and unleashed. What drives humans to enact a pact with the Devil can after all be as seemingly innocuous as one’s heterosexual desire to perpetuate the human species and preserve one’s obsession with the nuclear family.

The film ridiculously appears to dramatize the sordid story of a couple compelled to go through lengths just to fulfill their dream of a complete social unit in the strict heterosexist sense. But it is on this account that the film departs from the usual path trodden by flicks of similar vein. It dares to be an allegory of a society that privileges the heterosexual paradigm and marginalizes what for it are all other deviant sexualities. In plain language, the film boldly posits that it is the heterosexual paradigm – and not its opposites and all else that runs counter or contrary to such — that can actually wreak much havoc for human and humane society.

Much people have been reared on the notion that procreation is the essence of human existence without being prodded to realize that this too can be the wellspring for unspeakable evil. How many crimes, acts of injustice, dastardly deeds of oppression and exploitation in the world have been committed in the name of the family ideal — of securing a future for one’s children’s children, of being a good husband to his dutiful wife, of being a loving father providing for his brood? The film in its own way claims that it must all be crap as it is precisely the foundation of the dangerous ideology that very well sows the seeds of stark horror. #

Image source: http://www.philstar.com/entertainment/2013/12/20/1270334/daniel-kathryn-give-horror-try-pagpag

By Nonoy L. Lauzon

Elections in the Philippines as depicted in the movies are a grand affair. Big crowd scenes of miting de avance are regulatory. Parades, marches and sequences of candidates for elective office on the campaign trail are perfunctory. The plot may center on an assassination or even a massacre – the better to allow for a smorgasbord of cinematic genres enough to arouse audience interest and thereby drive the film to make a killing at the box office.

Jhong Hilario as Lando

While Chito Roño’s Badil is a motion picture about Philippine elections, it does away in so many ways with the stereotypes of such a movie. Here the main character is not the politico running for a public post. The audience encounters him only with his face on mounted posters and similar campaign paraphernalia. Instead of the politico, the film foregrounds a protagonist principally tasked to ensure votes for his candidate in methods and mechanism unique to the country.

That there has to be such a person speaks volumes about Philippine electoral politics. Roño with his extensive filmography of slick and high-concept melodramas and big-budget adventure flicks has tackled the bizarre, the absurd and the surreal. It is no different in Badil as the director compels viewers to look at one country’s political system as the ultimate grotesquerie.

The rambunctious democracy that is often attributed to the Philippines assumes in the film a level of gritty manifestation. On this account, the film becomes Roño’s boldest, most vocal and most critical of the established socio-political order in the land of his birth. Yet it is not wanting in prescriptive program of action and platform for radical change. The film gets to tread on philosophical-thought territory finding an apt metaphor for proper conduct of revolutions akin to the concoction of a cup of cappuccino.

With the crucial run-up to national elections in a municipality that serves as microcosm for the entire archipelago as the locus of its narrative, the film consists of all-too banal and familiar scenes of people and situations that at the same time spell the very horrors the country’s populace contend with as they partake of the political exercise said to be among the greatest national passions of the Filipinos.

Precisely because the film elicits a powerful and profound message at its core, production values while toned down render the film forceful and effective. Cinematic elements in the film are orchestrated in such a manner that the attention or focus of viewers is directed at the development of the plot and the plight of the characters. This is unadulterated cinema – without empty fanfare, bereft of the trappings of cheap thrills, devoid of gimmickry. #

Image source: http://www.acrossasiaff.org/en/badil-dynamite-fishing/

Review of Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan (Lav Diaz, 2013)

JPaul S. Manzanilla

It is difficult to pass judgment on something that not only refuses to be judged but places the capacity for judgment on the Solomonic table to begin with. For all its (non)intents and purposes, Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan offers a much denser and perplexing take on the nature of reason and madness, crime and punishment, goodness and evil that lurk and, also, dwell within the human in all of us.

We follow the life of Fabian as he tries to get away from the burden of family and education. He intellectualizes on man’s existence and pontificates on the country’s politics and society along with his friends, fellow law students set to be future cogwheels of the nation’s legal bureaucratic machine. Parallel to his life’s movement is Joaquin, he who is a have-not trying with his wife to feed their family. Fabian tries to write a masterpiece but eventually surrenders to the incompatibility and the failure of this world to his mind’s design. Joaquin became victim of the justice system as he suffers from being blamed for a crime. Eliza, Joaquin’s wife traverses the difficult condition of making ends meet and understanding the ends of their lives.

Many of the scenes are standard, normal fares, passages that are too ordinary that they run against the mainstream blueprint of maximizing film’s precious time-space to show only the dramatic, the spectacular, the eye-popping. Yet for this viewer Fabian’s banter with his barkada, Eliza’s hawking of vegetables in the neighborhood, and the tedium of rural life are all necessary to bear out their living conditions before the story plunges us into the depths of their despicable lives, only to show that vileness is not the climax but their everyday. Herein lies Norte’s promise and disappointment and we need to examine our structure of feeling. If evil were just around the corner and suddenly arrives on our doorstep, we would be surprised. But evil dwells within, resting for a while, nurturing itself, and then it pounces us when we’re least defended because we thought that it is exterior to ourselves; only the dead is safe from its menacing victory. At times, one envies how the murdered ones are finally free from the devil’s grasp. A Dostoyevskyan theme is cogent in a Third World polity such as the Philippines since, like the great author’s environment, the nation is full of contemptible inequality, psycho-sexual because economic and political.

To our wonder, the film also views the setting from above, using a drone to capture the geography of its characters’ spaces, thereby complementing its probing of mind’s dark interiors. Somehow the vistas appear as flights of fancy, even a loss of consciousness, and then the camera takes us back to the rough grounds of living once again. Joaquin’s movement from the provincial prison cell to the national penitentiary is the height of injustice, which leads us to supreme irony: as Fabian continues to freely explore his psychosis, he is further entrapped inside his terrifying life-world as the guilt of non-punishment torments him; Joaquin then gradually liberates himself from anger and madness brought about by human oppression. This transcendence is utopian, but human, all too human.

Even religion is not safe, as it should, from the merciless hand of the filmmakers. Fabian could not find salvation from the Bible study group that offered transcendence while his sister became patently insane in her pastoral and ultra-religious dreamland. Diaz and co-writer Rody Vera are even playing Engels here in imagining the continuity of property accumulation, monogamous family, and state security on the verge of self-destruction. The child who robotically sings Pamulinawen spites the cruelty of her mother and the tender loving song holds a macabre quality: having genuine love, punishing one completely, and pining for the end of misery. Pairing wealth with wickedness and poverty with principle is dangerously Manichaean. It promotes the perpetuity of inequity.

Is the film a critique of the failures of the nation’s intelligentsia? Would life without this intellectual class be beneficial to the country? The reference to Marcos is not contrived, with the North as setting denoting the dictator’s bastion, and the would-be bar topnotcher/murderous law student drop-out in some way exemplifying the country’s most intelligent president. Just when we thought that we have recovered from the murder of Magda, Fabian later on rapes his sister, and kills his pet dog. Does reason exceeding “boundaries”—reason gone wrong and berserk—ultimately become fascistic and therefore lead to our collective destruction, the limits of history? Should we then favor the intelligence of the subaltern here, they from below who simply live and die and whose lives go unremarked? What we need to assail here is the messianic complex of Fabian and his lot first seen in Fabian who take the law into his own hands by killing Joaquin’s exploiter, thereby leading to the latter’s imprisonment, and second, in his buddies who try to revive the legal case of injustice, not knowing that it is one of them who caused Joaquin’s suffering in the first place. Joaquin’s fate has been determined by the depravity of Fabian. Amidst all these, the character of Eliza probes the limits of personal justice and temperance. Who will save him—and us—from the law?

Norte’s cynical take on humanity imaginably approaches the sophistication of cinematic production. The refusal of closure characteristic of recent and mainly independent filmmaking, is arguably a refusal of packaged solutions to complex problems. It is, however, an admission that, in this time, a resolution of contradictions is becoming more and more difficult, if not impossible, even within the ambitions of the filmic narrative.  We may learn productively from how it breaches the purpose, end, and death of a putative history.

JPaul S. Manzanilla teaches in the Department of History of the Ateneo de Manila University. He earned degrees in comparative literature and art history from the University of the Philippines and is engaged in research on the histories of photography, cinema, and television in the country.

Jema M. Pamintuan

Mapahahalagahan ang malinaw na pagbabalangkas ng pelikulang “Badil” hinggil sa buong kayarian, danas, at naratibo ng panahon ng halalan sa ating bansa. Nagbukas ang pelikula sa mga eksena ng pangangampanya: lumilibot na muli sa isang maliit na bayan si Ponso (Dick Israel), ang datihan nang tagasuporta ng isang kumakandidato para sa pagka-alkalde na si Del Mundo (Tonton Gutierrez). Alam na alam ni Ponso ang mapa ng bayang nakatatak na sa kaniyang gunita, ang mga katangian at pangangailangan ng mamamayang aabutan niya ng salapi kapalit ng pangakong iboboto ng mga ito si Del Mundo. Markado ang bawat tahanang bibisitahin pagkat nakasisiguro na si Ponso sa katapatan ng mga ito kay Del Mundo. at madalas ay positibo ang nakukuha niyang tugon mula sa mga naaabutan ng pera. Dahil kagagaling lamang sa sakit ni Ponso, ipinagkatiwala niya ang tungkulin sa kaniyang anak na si Lando (Jhong Hilario), na siyang lumibot sa iba’t ibang bahagi ng baryo para mag-abot ng salapi sa mga pinagkakatiwalaan at inaasahang botante. Tinalunton ng galaw ng kamera ang mapa ng maliit na baryong ito, at unti-unting ipinakabisa sa mga manonood ang kasuluk-sulukan ng bituka ng korupsyong nakabalabal na sa ating mga halalan, mula sa antas ng barangay at munisipyo, lunsod at lalawigan, at pambansa.

Isinalaysay ni Lando, sa pamamagitan ng kaniyang panaka-nakang pag-aalinlangan at tahimik na paninimbang sa trabahong inihabilin sa kaniya ng ama, ang hubog ng ligalig ng panahon ng halalan sa kanilang baryo. Mula sa pagiging tahimik at kiming anino ng kaniyang ama tungo sa higit na may tatag na disposisyon, mababakas na may ipinangangakong antas o istatus ang pagpapatuloy ng naumpisahan ng kaniyang ama. Batid ni Lando ang saklaw ng kapangyarihang ngayon ay hawak na niya; sa isang banda ay halos napasakamay na nga niya ang politikal na kapalaran ng kaniyang baryo, lalo pa dulot ng kaniya ring puwersadong pakikipagmabutihan sa iba pang politikong sangkot sa pandaraya. Sa bisa ng pagtatanghal ni Jhong Hilario, masasaksihan ang pag-usbong ng panibagong tuta sa pagmanipula ng pagpapaandar sa isang maruming halalan.

Iisa lamang ang pamilyar na mukha na magpapakampante at gagabay sa pagpapasya ng mga botante, ang salapi. Inilatag ng pelikula kung paano napupunan ang puwesto ng mga tauhang hindi man nakikita ay malinaw pa ring umiiral ang kanilang impluwensiya sa mga mamamayan ng baryo. Pawang naroon lamang ang mga larawan ng kumakandidatong si Del Mundo, sa mga t-shirt, sa mga streamer at poster, at sa istiker na may pangalan nitong idinidikit sa perang iniaabot sa mga botante. Naitaguyod pa rin ang impluwensiya nito na tila baga naroon pa rin siyang nakikipagkamay at nangangako. Ang katawan ng kandidato ay napalitan/nahalinhan ng monetaryong katumbas, depende kung sino ang kaharap nito. Ang presensiya ng kandidato ay katumbas ng ilang libong piso sa karaniwang mamamayan, at higit na malaking halaga para sa mga nangangasiwa ng kampanya nito, kagaya nina Ponso at Lando. At kagaya ng pahiwatig na iniwan ng huling bahagi ng pelikula, malinaw na rin kung sino ang hahalili, balang-araw, kay Lando.

Makabuluhan ang tunguhin ng pelikula sa pagpaparating ng mga konkretong katotohanang itinatanghal ng panahon ng eleksyon, lalo na sa aspekto kung paano pinagagana at pinaiikot ng pera ang buong istruktura ng halalan. Una, ang pera ay nakapagpapabago ng paninindigan, nakababali ng pangako, nakalilikha ng hidwaan sa mga ugnayan, tulad ng mga halimbawa sa ilang eksenang “na-dinamita” o “pinatay” ang boto. Pangalawa, nakapagpapatahimik ito, natutumbasan ang tinig at hininga ng mga indibidwal na kailangang tukuyin, pasunurin, o patayin. Pangatlo, pinagkukunwari nitong ang halalan ay panahon ng kasaganaan. Dahil umaapaw ang pera tuwing panahon ng kampanya, may ilusyon ng rangya at ginhawa na inaakalang naidudulot at ibinibigay ng kandidato para sa mga botante, nang hindi lubos ang pag-unawang ang “kasaganaan” at pondo ay mula sa mga mamamayan mismo. Kaakibat ito ng pangakong bitbit ng kumakandidato sa kaniyang mga plataporma, na kapag ibinoto ang kandidato, anumang oras ay maaari kang mabiyayaan ng salapi. Ito kung gayon ang malaking delusyon na ipinaiiral ng paggamit ng pera sa panahon ng halalan. Ang kabuuan ng eleksyon, simula pa sa pangangampanya, pagpasya kung sino ang iboboto, hanggang sa mismong proseso ng pagboto, at paglabas ng resulta ng nanalo, ay hinuhulma ng halaga at tagatanggap ng salaping sangkot rito.

Sinasalungguhitan ng “Badil” ang katotohanan na ang nagtatamasa ng seguridad (salapi at tiyak na maginhawang posisyon sa lipunan), sa huling pagsusuri, ay ang mga kandidato lamang, sa pamamagitan ng mamamayang nagsisilbing impukan ng kanilang boto sa panahon ng eleksyon.

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Jema M. Pamintuan is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Filipino, Ateneo de Manila University. She has recently completed her fellowship under the United Board Program at Tunghai University (2012-2013) and Georgetown University (2013-2014). She created the musical scores for the independent films “Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe” (2009), “Gayuma” (2011), “Ang Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa” (co-scored with Christine Muyco), and “Bwakaw” (2012).

The Young Critics Circle Film Desk picks the duo performance of Eula Valdes and Nonie Buencamino in Giancarlo Abrahan V’s Dagitab as Best Performance for its 25th Annual Citations. Valdes and Buencamino play university professors striving to revive their marriage on the verge of collapse. Dagitab is also named Best Cinematography and Visual Design.

Milo Sogueco’s Mariquina is named Best Editing, while Bagane Fiola’s Sonata Maria is picked as Best Sound and Aural Orchestration.

For the first time in YCC’s history, no winner or nominee was named for both the Best Film and Best Screenplay categories.

Three films share the award for Best First Feature: Dagitab, Sonata Maria, and Nick and Chai.

YCC considered 123 films released in 2014. The critics group narrowed the films down to a long list of seven films, and, after a thorough discussion of the long list, reduced it further to a shortlist of five films. The group does not confer any nomination to a film that does not qualify for the shortlist.

Aside from Dagitab, Mariquina, Sonata Maria, and Nick and Chai, Sundalong Kanin was also shortlisted. Mana and Magkakabaung were the two additional films that formed the long list.

The awarding ceremony for the 2013 and 2014 winners will be held on April 23rd, 4pm, at the West Wing of Vargas Museum, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City.

Below is the full list of winners and nominees for all categories:



FILM

No winner and nominees

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SCREENPLAY

No winner and nominees

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PERFORMANCE

Winner: Eula Valdes and Nonie Buencamino, Dagitab (duo performance)

Nominees:

Nonie Buencamino, Dagitab

Krigi Hager, Sonata Maria

Bing Pimentel, Mariquina

Eula Valdes, Dagitab

Ensemble lead cast of Sundalong Kanin (Isaac Cain Aguirre, Nathaniel Britt, Elijah Canlas, and Akira Morishita)



EDITING

Winner: Mariquina (Benjamin Tolentino)

Nominees:

Dagitab (Benjamin Tolentino)

Nick and Chai (Cha Escala and Bam Luneta)

Sonata Maria (Bagane Fiola)



CINEMATOGRAPHY AND VISUAL DESIGN

Winner: Dagitab, Rommel Sales (cinematography) and Whammy Alcazaren and Tessa Tang (production design)

Nominees:

Mariquina, Sasha Palomares (cinematography) and Aped Santos (production design)

Sonata Maria, Wrap Meting and Mark Limbaga (cinematography) and Bagane Fiola, Orvil Bantayan, Mandy Velasco, Lulu Amorado, and Louie Daniel (production design)



SOUND AND AURAL ORCHESTRATION

Winner: Sonata Maria, Maki Serapio, Wrap Meting, and Mark Limbaga (production sound) and Jad Montenegro (music)

Nominee:

Dagitab, Adam Newns and Mikko Quizon (sound design) and Mon Espia (music)



FIRST FEATURE

Winners: Dagitab (Giancarlo Abrahan V), Nick and Chai (Cha Escala and Wena Sanchez), and Sonata Maria (Bagane Fiola)



The YCC members who took part in the selection process and in the deliberations are Jaime Oscar Salazar (Chair), Aristotle Atienza, Patrick Flores, Tessa Maria Guazon, J. Pilapil Jacobo, Skilty Labastilla, Nonoy Lauzon, and JPaul Manzanilla.

Review of Lauriana (Mel Chionglo, 2013)

JPaul S. Manzanilla

Lauriana hitches us into a world where a man’s “love” is the supreme arbiter of a woman’s fate. Samuel is a member of the Philippine Constabulary who fell in love with Lauriana, a barrio dancer. He made her his common law-wife and, along with the boy Carding whom he got fond of, formed a semblance of a family. Soon enough, Lauriana and Carding experience the cruelty of Samuel, as the soldier tellingly surnamed Corazon became obsessed with the woman and beats her whenever he suspects that she’s having dalliances with other men. Lauriana tries to understand him, having learned of Samuel’s painful past—of a father who abused his adulterous mother, committed suicide, which then led his mother to take her own life as well.

The film successfully recreates the physical setting of its true-to-life subject, the postwar Huk-populated province of Quezon. What in fact brought the three characters together is Samuel’s task to track and arrest rebels, which brought him to the town where he met Lauriana, and got him close to Carding who is fascinated with the action-filled life of an army man. Carding’s eye is central to the apprehension of the sexual as the man he idolizes and the woman he adores become entangled in a violent cycle of libidinal and temporal investment and release we are wont to witness. Yet lumping together the traumas of insurgency and adultery (the first one of Samuel’s mother presumably true, the second one of Lauriana patently false) becomes untenable as the sins of the past and of the human are displaced to an elsewhere that is difficult to retrieve. Memory becomes an arena of struggle in this regard and it falls prey to the ravages of personhood. So when we are transported to the 1970s of the adult Carding – renamed Ric – equally tormented by memories of Samuel’s brutality as the latter was pained by his father’s sin, the trauma goes on and on. And so we need to go back in order to heal the primal wound that hurts not only the person but his society as well.

Having to live with this trauma has become the life not only of Samuel but also Carding and Lauriana. It has become insufferable not only for the characters but for the viewers as well. Sometimes the camera is limpid in catching tender moments, drawing us into the private world of two lovers and a child defying matrimony. Equally, it razes our affections because such moments develop into brutal ones that exceed our capacity to understand and forgive. Where does the fault lie? A traumatized man coupled by a “loose” woman and joined by an orphaned child is an arrangement for a tragedy.

The question of the two revolutions, postwar Huk and 70s communism, is never addressed. They are simply used as backdrop in the film that it has become simplistic to assume that Samuel’s brutality is brought about by his serving in the army and that being a soldier provides one a venue to release one’s aggression. This is dangerous because the political is reduced to the purely personal. No account is given as to why Ric’s cousin has become an activist; he is simply assumed to be a product of his time. The beauty of this argument is that one may substitute soldiers for activists and hence it will be clear that the solution is merely that of arming oneself to the teeth just to be able to vanquish a violent personal history.

When, in the end, Ric is finally able to see Samuel, blind—really, vision denigrated—he could not muster the courage to kill him. And so we are given the fantastic scene of Lauriana, prior to the traumatic events, alluring us. Repression lasts forever.

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JPaul S. Manzanilla is engaged in research on the histories of photography, cinema, and television in the country. He studied comparative literature and art history at the University of the Philippines and has taught at the University of the Philippines Manila and Ateneo de Manila University.

Editor’s Note: This review is part of a series of reviews of outstanding films of 2013 and 2014 that we will feature here in the run-up to the YCC Citations Ceremony on April 23rd. Earlier reviews have been featured for Badil (here and here), Porno (here and here), Pagpag, and Norte: Hangganan ng Kasaysayan.

Rebyu ng Quick Change (Eduardo Roy, Jr., 2013)

Aristotle Atienza

Kalat na sa lipunan ang pagtinging kulang ang buhay kung walang pagdurusa.  Para sa iba, ang sakit, medikal man ito o kabiguan sa pag-ibig, ang nagpapakahulugan sa buhay.  Kung tutuusin, nagiging mas malay na humihinga pa rin sa oras na maramdaman ng mismong balat ang init ng apoy o lamig ng yelo.  Kaya nga’t lalayuan o iiwasan.  Hindi natin niyayayang lapitan tayo ng pagdurusa.  Hindi natin ipinagdarasal na bigyan tayo ng drama.  Pero paano kung imbitahang papasukin ito sa buhay natin?  Bakit sa kabila ng init ng apoy ay magpapakapaso pa rin?  Paano ang buhay na ikinasisiya ang sakit?  Sa pelikulang Quick Change, dadanasin ang pagdurusa sa ngalan ng kagandahan.

Nakasentro ang pelikula kay Dorina (Mimi Juareza), isang relihiyosang retokadang transgender na babae na hanapbuhay ang pagturok ng collagen sa mga kapwa transgender.  Tulad ng nanay at asawa, inaalagaan niya ang pamangking si Hiro (Miggs Cuaderno) at si Uno (Jun-jun Quintana), ang kasintahang lalaki na performer naman sa The Amazing Theater Show.  Kagaya nila ang nakasanayang pamilya: naghahanda ng almusal at baon si Dorina, hinahatid ni Uno sa eskuwelahan si Hiro at susunduin naman ito ni Dorina, tinutulungan ni Hiro si Dorina sa kaniyang trabaho.  Pero may lamat ang inaakalang masayang pamilya.  Pinagdududahan ni Dorina ang kasintahan, at hindi masaya si Uno sa natitirang pagkalalaki na mayroon ang nobya.  Unti-unting masisira pa ang nakapanghihinayang na alternatibong pamilya nang mabilanggo ang mentor na si Mamu (Felipe Ronnie Martinez) dahil sa “pagkakamali” nito sa isa nitong kustomer.  Sunud-sunod na pangyayari ang yayanig sa buhay ni Dorina pagkatapos.  Madidiskubre niyang walang ipinagkaiba ang itinuturok na collagen sa tire black.  Gayundin, tuluyan na siyang iiwan ni Uno.  Pero sa kabila ng lahat, magpapatuloy pa rin siya hanggang mangyari sa harapan niya ang kinatatakutan.

Pero bagama’t nakasentro sa buhay ni Dorina, nakafokus naman ang pelikula sa mga nasa komunidad na nagpapaturok ng collagen.  Masinop na ikakahon ng pelikula ang naratibo ni Dorina sa dalawang magkaibang eksena ng pagtuturok sa umpisa at pagtatapos nito, at sa pagtatangkang ihanda hindi lamang ang mga nagpapaturok, kundi ang manonood mismo.  Inuulit ang pagpapakita kung paano ang pangako ng transpormasyon, ng biglang-ganda, ay isang pangangailangang nararapat tanggapin dahil makabuluhang bahagi ng produksiyon ng mga transgender.  Binubuksan ng pelikula ang diskurso ng kagandahan bilang isang uri ng paggawa (labor) na pinaghihirapan at pinupuhunan.  Dito, ang kagandahan ay mobilidad.

At samantalang nagawa mang bigyang-pansin ang ekonomiya ng kagandahan, narito rin ang kahinaang hindi naiwasang harapin ng liberal na pag-iisip ng pelikula.  Sa paghahandang isinasagawa nito sa manonood upang maitanghal ang hindi nakikita sa trabaho ng pagpapaganda, ikinukuwento ng pag-iilaw ang praktis ng pagtuturok bilang gawaing hindi katanggap-tanggap.  Sinasabi ng pelikula na hindi sila mga doktor at mapanganib sa mga kustomer ang kanilang ginagawa lalo pa’t kung ilulugar ito sa mas legal na transpormasyong pinagdaanan ng ibang transgender sa pelikula.  Ang hindi ipinapakita ay kinukuha ng ibang transgender ang serbisyo nina Dorina hindi dahil sa makukuha ito sa murang halaga (kumpara sa mga Belo at Calayan) kundi dahil na rin sa tagumpay ng mga proyektong ito sa kabila ng panganib na maaaring idulot ng pagtuturok.  Tumutulong din ang sirkulasyon ng tagumpay ng praktis na ito upang tanggapin ang pagdurusa sa pagpapaganda, kung kaya’t pinag-isipan at pinagdadaanan, at hindi simpleng adiksyon lamang.  Naiiba ito sa kuwento ng transpormasyon na sasapitin ng ibang transgender sa pelikula na nagbabayad ng mas malaking halaga, at kung gayon, mas nagtatagumpay.  Halimbawa, sa kabila ng pangako ng kagandahan sa dalawang trans na sasali sa byukon (beauty contest) na tinurukan ni Dorina, hindi pa rin sila mananalo kay Hazel, na beteranang Japanera, at kahit maging itong si Dorina, na produkto rin ng Japan ay mabibigo nang iwan siya ni Uno para dito.  Ganito rin ang kasasapitan ni Rica na epektibong naisagawa ang pagpapaganda sa tulong ng nobyo sa Inglatera na nakilala niya sa chat na dahil lamang sa pagtatangkang magtipid ay buhay naman niya ang magiging kapalit.  Nasa puwang ng pelikula ang ideya na kumita ng malaki para maayos na makapagpagawa sa mas lehitimong klinika ng pagpaparetoke kahit na umiiral din naman ang mga kuwento ng kabiguan sa mga lugar na ito.

Pero interesanteng tinatahak ng pelikula na malaki ring pagkakamali na tingnan ang gawaing ito sa konteksto lamang ng mga paggalaw ng bakla sa kanilang pagdanas ng sakit at saya sa pagpapaganda.  Sa pagkuha ng macho dancer sa serbisyo ni Dorina, ang kagandahan ay hindi na lamang kuwento ng mga transgender.  Kahit na masasaksihan ang lugar na hinihintuan ni Dorina bilang daigdig na nagiging posibilidad ang bakla, ang mga daang nilalakbayan niya ay hindi rin naman.  Naaapektuhan ang lahat sa pamamayani ng makapangyarihang rehimen ng kagandahan sa lipunan.  Pero para sa mga transgender sa pelikula, hindi sapat na mabago lamang ang sarili, ang maging babae, ang magtaglay ng pagkababae.  Kinakailangang makita at makilala ang kagandahan, si Mama Mary o si Anne Curtis man ito, masakit man para sa iba ang piniling daang lalakbayin para makamit ito.  Naipakita ng pelikulang Quick Change ang trahedya ng pagpapaganda, pero higit pang trahedya ang makikita nang masaksihan nating wala rito ang daan kung saan patungo para sa ibang narito pa ang mga buhay na nawala sa ngalan ng kagandahan.

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Aristotle J. Atienza teaches language, literature, and popular culture in the Filipino Department at the Ateneo de Manila University.

Editor’s Note: This review is part of a series of reviews of outstanding films of 2013 and 2014 that we will feature here in the run-up to the YCC Citations Ceremony on April 23rd. Earlier reviews have been featured for Badil (here and here), Porno (here and here), Pagpag, Norte: Hangganan ng Kasaysayan, and Lauriana.