Till My Heartaches End (Philippines, 2010)

Dour, desperate, and painful to watch in some parts, Till My Heartaches End is Star Cinema's Halloween offering to Kimeralds: a 2-hour humorless drama about a relationship going through the motions of a breakup. And I loved it.

Film imitates the gossip headlines that have infested the grapevine for months, and if one were to read between the sobs during the movie's press conference, then this is the goodbye, the long last look of a couple that most of us watched grow up on national TV.

Jose Javier Reyes's bare, if sometimes lazy, direction fits the lifeless narrative. It's as if he is hesitant to tell the story of a man who wants more out of life and a woman who is content to stay quietly still. Kim Chiu's Agnes is fragile and neurotic; her slight frame trembles with every troubled tic, while Gerald Anderson is every bit the dashing lead whose looks equal his ambition. I sometimes wince at their sweetness in the various teleserye that they have starred in, but there's none of that here. Till My Heartaches End is a quiet, slow dissection. The excruciating repetition of arguments makes the impending crumble gloomier. Sadder. And as a fan of status quos, I felt for Agnes. (I'll understand if you un-Friend me from your Facebook.) The non-commercial end to such a commercial couple's movie could possibly be Star Cinema's bravest move this year.

There's no fast-forward button to a relationship whether it's beginning or ending. And Till My Heartaches End wallows in the uncertainty that keeps us up at night. Excuse me while I sob in the corner. 3/5

When Timawa Meets Delgado (Philippines, 2007)

Thanks to The Tioseco-Bohinc Film Series, which "picks up where Alexis Tioseco left off with his Fully Booked Screenings," we are once again given the rare opportunity to see and experience independent movies that Alexis believed showcased the best of Filipino film-making. Thanks too (with waving flags and fireworks) to TBFS curators Dodo Dayao, Oggs Cruz and Richard Bolisay for carrying on with the program and all the (selfless) hard work that went and will go into it. The least we can do is to attend the FREE screenings every second Sunday of the month. A full theater means this will go on. Forever. Or until independent cinema is shown in theaters to a full house. Or, forever.

Ray Gibraltar's When Timawa Meets Delgado is unconventionally nosy and furiously questioning as it investigates the boom of the nursing or health care profession in the Philippines. We are all too familiar with the whys (to escape poverty, to earn dollars) but it's the roundabout way of Gibraltar's narrative that slowly reveals the heart, the funnies, the pain of having a dream.

Following the film is a bit of a challenge at first; there are too many things going on, the quality (of the film) and point of views jump with an impatient itch. The movie itself is a patchwork of audio-visual presentations, documentaries, random footage and performance art.

This is where you stand back and tell yourself to relax. And trust the filmmaker.

In the Q & A that followed last Sunday's screening, Gibraltar humbly admitted that he put the film together as if he were cooking, instinctively. But there is obviously order in his madness.

When Timawa Meets Delgado are fragments of confessions that by the film's end reflects our own curious and desperate nature, with a healthy pinch of humor. It is everything (political, experimental, slice of life) and one thing (Delgado and Timawa's journey). It is jumping in on an ongoing dialogue. It is oftentimes how we think in our noisy worlds. And it is the uncomfortable silence when the noise dies down and the question that we tried to drown out is demanding an answer. *****

Kinatay (Philippines, 2009)

Like Joseph Garcin in Jean Paul-Sartre's No Exit, Peping didn't realize that the room he was about to enter was hell. And when it dawned on him somewhere between buying balut and the ragged butchering, he couldn't---didn't---want to leave the safety of being in the dark.

Geography and malice are indiscernibles; the mind is in equal footing with matter. The dark, chaotic streets of Manila may as well be purgatory, twisting and squeezing the morality out of the film.

There are no surprises in Brillante Mendoza's parable of a young man's descent to something less human, but it is hypnotic. It is an experience, more than anything else.

This was supposed to be my shelter from the storm. Trapped in a mall while a typhoon drowned and destroyed Metro Manila, Kinatay became the dangerously perfect metaphor to the (perceived) pointlessness of it all.

Its blanket nihilism makes the film susceptible to both severe criticism and blind praises. It is an empty canvas.

A negative space.

Politics. Censorship. Arthouse experiment. A heart of darkness.

You decide.

Independencia (Philippines, 2009)

Independencia plays like Cocteau Twins' Blue Bell Knoll, form and pattern are forefront while the rest---actors, dialogue, chickens---drift like ambient noise, the swirling layers of synthesizers if you will that wall the experience within the confines of cinema. Independencia aims to capture the cinematic style of the period it depicts, here, the 35 mm films shot entirely in sound stages during the American occupation in the 1900s.

Free Form: A short rambling on history and why Jose Nepomuceno and co. are probably throwing a party in filmmaker heaven

The first picture with sound reached the Philippines in 1910, and in 1912, New York and Hollywood film companies started putting up offices in Manila to distribute films. The lukewarm reception led two American entrepreneurs to make a film about Jose Rizal's execution. With the curiosity of the Filipino audience piqued, Jose Nepomuceno produced the first Filipino movie, Dalagang Bukid, in 1919, which was based on a highly popular zarzuela piece by Hermogenes Ilagan and Leon Ignacio.

The U.S. colonial government then had already been using films for propaganda (in the guise of education and information dissemination) and locally-produced films---early film producers included American businessmen and local politicians---were only allowed to tackle "safe" issues of reconciliation among classes, religiosity and repentance, themes that prevailed in zarzuelas and theater. Ironically, the people who encouraged the Filipino film industry to grow were also the same people who limited its growth by setting rigid rules on expression.

The 35 mm film was a haunting reminder of our colonial past.

Independencia took that format, and the history that came along with it, and squashed the years of silence that the 35 mm format represented. Premiering in the Philippines on Independence Day makes the realization even more poignant.

I have only seen Japanese World War II propaganda films shot in 35 mm (courtesy of the Filipinas Heritage Library) but I could deduct that director Raya Martin celebrated and challenged both format and form. Independencia is stunning, a black and white magic eye that draws you with hypnotic visuals---look closely and details surface. And just as you get used to the shadowy reverie, Martin slaps you with sex and that clever bit of dialogue spoken to the audience. Apichatpongian in the dreamy texture of the jungle, and in the reveal of the darker side of nature reminescent of the tiger shaman in Tropical Malady, what Independencia lacks in momentum it makes up for with seductive mystery.

Raya Martin, whether consciously or not, has handed the 35 mm film back to the hands of early film makers Julian Manansala, Nepumoceno and everyone else who attempted to say something, say anything, but weren't given the chance to capture it on film. Pretty heroic stuff in my book.

Prisoners of Pattern: Thoreau and why that Robots in Disguise song never left my head.

A mother and son run to the woods to live deliberately, to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. The struggle for independence from the American colonial government is mere context to a romantic existential exploration of the absurdity of the concept of freedom. The family (along with the viewers) is plucked from everything familiar and is thrown into a disorienting tangle of trees, shrubs and rivers where they thrive in an illusion of freedom---the jungle itself is a prison of patterns and cycles, the world outside it more so.

Martin seems to say that freedom is not liberum arbitium where we can do as we please even if we are isolated from the rest of society and where values are insignificant to decisions made. In the jungle, there are no societal norms existing, but the values the family holds dear from folklore to, yes, their concept of freedom, is immutable, cultivated from the society of which they were a part of.

The crucial decision that the child makes at the end was dictated by the values he learned from his brief life with his parents.

Could our own values restrict our freedom? (Yes. Hello, Board of Censors.) Or does it dictate what we are free to do? Freedom and responsibility seem to be entwined; there is no freedom from being responsible for one's action. It's a cycle.

Keep moving, keep doing, keep breathing, stay living. Robots in Disguise's Cycle Song in a loop in my head while I am writing this. The mechanical absurdity of patterns, the "unfairness" of the world. Independencia is unabashedly arthouse in form but its thoughtful encounter with the absurd, whether mustached or veined leaf, is all too candidly angsty.

And just because I am free to declare this: It is fucking brilliant.

Rating: 5

Independencia (2009) Directed by Raya Martin
Produced by Arleen Cuevas
Starring Tetchie Agbayani, Sid Lucero, Assunta de Rossi, Mika Aguilos

Links consulted on history of Philippine cinema:

• History of Philippine Cinema by Arsenio Boots Bautista via National Commission for Culture and the Arts
• Philippine Journeys: History of Philippine Cinema
  

Kaleldo (Philippines, 2006)

Directed by Brillante Mendoza
Starring Johnny Delgado, Cherry Pie Picache, Angel Aquino, Juliana Palermo, Criselda Volks, Alan Paule

Rating: 4

Where Pampanga in Brillante Mendoza's first full-length feature, Masahista, is parched and metallic in its visual aftertaste, here in Kaleldo, it is magic realistic, the landscape and the elements anchored to the passion and secrets of three women. Set ten years after the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo which buried the province of Pampanga under lahar, Kaleldo (Summer Heat) follows the lives of sisters Jesusa (Picache), Lourdes (Aquino) and Grace (Palermo) under the watchful eyes of patriarch Mang Rudy (Delgado) who is struggling to revive the family's woodcarving business. The names of the sisters establish the kind of religiosity that Mang Rudy observes, reflected in the way he demands obedience from his children who are ruled by emotional motivations which the movie reveals through snippets spanning three summers, pinned down by three elements as metaphors: Wind, Fire, Water.

Angin (wind) is Grace, the newly-wed and the youngest of the three who follows her whims to wherever it takes her as long as it takes her far from her mama's boy husband, Conrad. She detests having to leave her ancestral home for her in-laws' plastic-covered living room but tradition forces her to tame her rebellion as she slowly, against her will, settles down. Api (fire) is Lourdes, the middle child who appears to keep it all together. She is married to Andy (Paule) who on the surface is a meek, spineless man but is a sadist in bed and even more violently monstrous when angered. Lourdes sleeps with a bank manager to get her father's loan approved, to catastrophic repercussions. Andy beats her and Mang Rudy suffers a stroke. Danum (water) is Jess, quietly-serving, self-sacrificing, silently-drowning. As tradition dictates, being the eldest has appointed Jess as her father's caretaker but her taking on various jobs to help make ends meet for the family has prompted her to ask her lover Rowena (Volks) to watch over Mang Rudy. Jess and Lourdes argue over Rowena's contribution to the household; Mang Rudy puts his mighty foot down and declares that if Rowena is the reason for the tension between the sisters then she has to leave.

The parallelisms are sometimes too obvious: the wind as fickle temperament, fire as destructive rage and the sexuality of water when superimposed against lesbian lovemaking. Mendoza cuts his narratives with graceful shots of these elements---his arthouse leanings a little too contrived---but when it does work, the result is a brilliant cohesion of atmosphere and narrative.

The chapter on Fire is the richest of the three because it explores not just the element's destructive nature but also its cleansing and transforming attributes. Andy, to show his remorse with what he had done to Lourdes and as an act of repentance, takes part in the self-flagellation ritual held during maleldo (Mahal na Araw or Holy Week) while Lourdes who is secretly watching from a tricycle gets a spattering of (repentent) blood. Right from the start of the chapter, Mendoza has been showing us droplets of blood staining and blooming in water and he neatly ties this up with a scene of Lourdes washing the bloodied shirt of Andy, the final act of forgiving and forgiveness between the married couple.

Kaleldo continues Mendoza's ode to Pampanga and the families struggling within its dying soil. His love for the culture is palpable, the language and the food, the industries and the deeply-rooted cultural tics are framed against wildly vibrant skies, tangible worship at its most picturesque. On the surface, Kaleldo is a beautifully-shot family drama. Mendoza's storytelling can be confusing at first as he purposely veers away from conventional melodrama, and his visual metaphors have the tendency to distract. But once you get used to the movie's rhythm, then, just like the change of seasons, you'll welcome the varying textures and colors of the passing of time.

Batanes (Philippines, 2007)

RATING: 3

Batanes is a cinematographer's movie and Monchie Redoble has a carefully wandering eye. In Masahista, his camera sweeps above a series of boxy rooms like a predator surveying a landscape of twisted bodies, here, it contemplates, detached. Batanes itself is overwhelmingly rich and Redoble does a great job of letting the intimate details of the vast landscape surface. The depth is felt more than seen; the sea always threatens to flood, the land sharp and jagged. Glorious, yes, but also untouchable. And the characters caught in a cycle of love and loss seem insignificant against the force of nature, which, in its heart, is what Batanes is all about.

Batanes is at the tip of the Philippine peninsula and is regularly rocked by storms which limits the flights that enter the province. Up to the present, there are only hints of modernity in the Philippines' smallest province, electricity continues to be intermitent, and its locals, the Ivatan, are at the constant mercy of nature's temper. Coming from the outside, Pam (Iza Calzado) is at first thrilled at the quaintness of life in Batanes when she moves in with her husband Rico (Joem Bascon) who spends most of his screen time lecturing Pam about the sea and her moods. When the sea does begin acting like the jealous lover that Rico portrayed it to be and claims Rico's life, Pam begins to open herself up to nature's incalculable pattern. Redoble consistently frames the actors as small counterpoints to the landscape or the sore thumb sticking out from the encompassing palm of the ocean.

Directors Adolfo Alix Jr. and John David Hukom also look to the weather for storytelling beats; the plot moves along as nature changes colors, which is a little too obvious for my taste. The sea taketh and giveth, and oh how it giveth in the form of Ken Zhu, my favorite F4 from the Taiwanese TV drama Meteor Garden. Unfortunately, this is when the movie drastically stumbles.

As a character study, the film does succeed in creating an engaging albeit sullen lead. The movie is at its best when it is following Pam around the island as she struggles to accept the fate of her husband by understanding the random jurisdiction of the sea to the point where she almost drowns in her desire to fathom what her husband's last thoughts were. The very pagan approach to mourning---conversing with nature instead of praying to God; nature's will instead of God's will---is a welcome point of view that's quite far from the conventions of popular cinema. This thoughtfully-paced introspective journey is cut short when the sea washes ashore an unconsciousness and wounded Taiwanese man who will ignite once more Pam's darkening heart. I get it, love is a force of nature in itself, so powerful that it punctures the movie's delicate atmosphere as it rushes clumsily to a happy ending. The relationship isn't given enough time to blossom considering that both Pam and Kao (Ken Zhu) are still in the process of coping with huge losses, a husband for Pam, and a family left behind in Taiwan for Kao.

Directors Alix Jr. and Hukom seem to be more interested in telling the story of Pam and the sea more than Pam and Kao's which feels more going-through-the-motions than a possibly more provocative love-among-the-ruined angle (which, years later, Alix Jr. brilliantly achieves with the incandescently heartbreaking Daybreak).

Or maybe, by glossing over the romance, Batanes acknowledges how insignificantly small we all are, how petty our heartbreaks, how trite our daily rituals, compared to the divine madness of nature's whim.


Directed by Adolfo Alix Jr. and John David Hukom
Written by Arah Badayos
Starring Iza Calzado, Ken Zhu, Sid Lucero, Joem Bascon

Cannes Surfing: Kinatay, Independencia, stunning Shu Qi

Kinatay movie still via indieWIRE

Wise Kwai of Thai Film Journal recently posted updates on the growing buzz surrounding some of the Asian films in the Cannes Film Festival, which includes a link to Asian Alliance, a feature on Brillante Mendoza among others. Here's a snippet:

But with the three movies going to the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, it's not hard to argue that filmmakers from the Philippines occupy the vanguard of a new wave of Southeast Asian moviemaking.

Director Brillante Mendoza's dark drama "Kinatay" (the word means "butchered" in Tagalog) is one of 20 movies chosen to compete for the Palme d'Or, making "Dante" (his nickname) the first Filipino director ever to descend on the Croissette two years in a row.

Next, "Manila" -- co-directed by Adolfo Alix, Jr., and Raya Martin -- is one of just six movies chosen for a Cannes special screening. And Martin's "Independencia" fills out the Filipino trifecta as one of 20 movies included in the festival's Un Certain Regard section celebrating "young talent, innovative and audacious works."

Mendoza's encore at Cannes is all the more remarkable for the speed with which he pulled it off. Just as with "Serbis" -- which he shot digitally starting last March 21 and finished in time for Cannes 2008 -- "Kinatay" (a.k.a. "The Execution of P" and "Chop Chop") also was shot in no time at all; and for under $100,000.

"I work best when I'm under pressure and doing everything at once," Mendoza told The Hollywood Reporter over the phone from just outside a Manila editing room the day after he learned he'd been invited back to Cannes.

Though the story had been brewing ever since a ghastly murder by ex-military killers hit Filipino newspapers in 2004, Mendoza and "Serbis" writer Armando Lao didn't finish the "Kinatay" script until late January and began shooting "early," at the end of February. "It feels great to be doing it again," Mendoza said.

Producer Ferdinand Lapuz, Mendoza and French executive producer Didier Costet (who also backed "Serbis") always planned to take the film -- which stars former Miss Philippines, Maria Isabel Lopez -- to Cannes; but the morning after the film was accepted, Lapuz admitted: "I didn't even know it was finished!"

Focused, lean and mean is the Mendoza message. No actor on his set is allowed to take up bread-and-butter work on TV soaps until Mendoza's finished with him or her.

"With these films, we can't make back our money in the home market, so I don't encourage my directors to transfer to 35 millimeter from digital until we have the festival invitation in hand," Lapuz said on the phone from Manila, thrilled to be a part of the experiment.

To compare with the guerrilla production of Kinatay, the article also discusses a Thai film outfit's approach to producing Ong Bak.

More good news for Kinatay from THR. The film has been picked up by German sales outfit The Match Factory for international sales/release. Learn more about it here.

Independencia director Raya Martin posted on his twitpic three poster studies of his film. To see the official international poster, head on to sister-blog KOREAN BUG or visit the director's visual blog Mr. Madlangbayan. You may follow him on twitter here.

Both Brillante Mendoza and Raya Martin were also mentioned in New York magazine's article Cannes 2009: Your Questions Answered. Here's question #3:

3. Where will the next new wave come from?

Cannes is invariably ground zero for tomorrow’s world-cinema hot spot. Two years ago, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days won the Palme d’Or, solidifying a Romanian film renaissance that began two years before that with The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. This year could well herald an international breakthrough for Filipino cinema. Brillante Mendoza, who provoked more than a few walkouts last year with Serbis, about a family-run porn theater, is back with the serial-killer film Kinatay, and there are two other movies from the Philippines in the official selection, one directed by and the other co-directed by a 25-year-old prodigy named Raya Martin.

Festival de Cannes has officialy opened and its official site has a video showing the highlights of the opening ceremony. Taiwanese actress Shu Qui is a part of this year's jury and she is just STUNNING.

Via Zimbio

Here's hoping our films do well at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Say it with me now: Yes, we Cannes! (Argh. Sorry, couldn't help it.)

Review: Ded na Si Lolo (2009)

Rating: 4

Three hundred years as a Spanish colony followed by roughly 40 years under American rule then World War II, which obliterated the physical monuments of a struggling national identity and almost crushed the spirit of a revolution-fatigued people shouldn't leave us wondering why we Filipinos have a fractured culture. Where else can you find devout Christianity and paganism co-exist in a meta-religion that equally believes in the Sto. Nino and the superstitions that dictate luck or misfortune?

Make mine a fractured culture, I say, and Ded na si Lolo is a testament to the perfection of the imperfection of Filipino culture.

Director Soxie Topacio wears his love for theater on his sleeves giving Ded na Si Lolo a cohesive structure that resembles a play. The first act introduces the five siblings and how they deal with their father's death: with over-the-top melodrama flair until one reaches (the ecstasy of) asphyxia. Joonee, the second youngest, played by the invincible Roderick Paulate, casually explains to his confused nephew that they are a family for tele-drama. Dramatics as expression. Out loud is the new loud, the only loud the family knows.

The melodrama comes into full play during the week-long wake as the siblings confront long-buried issues of rivalry and family secrets but always wisely rolling with the funny. If there's one thing that truly defines us Filipinos, it's our extraordinary sense of humor. We laugh-at and laugh-with instinctively; whatever the circumstances. Coping mechanism would be the cliche. A mutated funny gene would be cool.

A huge part of the comedy in Ded na Si Lolo is the long list of superstitions observed during a wake. No bathing. No sweeping the floors. Snipping the rosary that is wrapped around the dead's hand to break the cycle of deaths in the family. No soup-based food during the wake. And the list goes on and on. More than the superstitions, it was absurdly amusing how the family rationalized the traditions and worked their way around them.

The cast's comedic timing were spot on and one could expect nothing less from such an insanely talented cast. Old-schoolers Manilyn Reynes and Roderick Paulate effortlessly deliver most of the laughs; Paulate's baklang parlorista is greatly missed and just watching him deliver his trademark comedy already makes the movie worth watching.

Ded na Si Lolo is furiously loud, and is unashamed to be. It's simply how we celebrate life. It's how we pay tribute to love among family; it's how we tell stories of our dearly departed. It's how we say hello and say goodbye, with a chuckle under our beaths.

It's who we are, fractures and all.

Ded na Si Lolo
Directed by Soxie Topacio
Starring Dick Israel, Elizabeth Oropesa, Gina Alajar, Manilyn Reynes, Roderick Paulate, Perla Bautista, Rainier Castillo

Review: Pssst...T.2. (2009)

Pssst...T.2.
Directed by Chito Roño
Starring Maricel Soriano

Rating: 2.5

Roño pulls a Shyamalan in the last installment of his horror trilogy. What T2 lacks in scare, it makes up for with ambition.

I'm rarely surprised by commercial Filipino movies mostly because of its penchant to play it safe. T.2. stands out from the rest of the recent releases mainly because it took a huge risk with its portrayal of two worlds colliding---our reality and one more fantastic---and though it stumbles in the end, the movie does represent something of importance and that which is sorely lacking in commercial cinema: ambition.

T2 opens grandly. A boy is out in the field looking for his pet goat when all of a sudden an aircraft appears from above and the field dissolves into a runway as the distant mountains transform into a majestic city, something similar to the cityscape in Fritz Lang's Metropolis. The movie then follows determined Save an Orphan volunteer Claire, played by the invincible Maricel Soriano, protect a child who appears to be chased by a group of engkanto (elementals). The showdown takes place in T.2., a dilapidated tenement whose center is the gateway to the world of the elementals.

Chito Roño is at his best setting up genuinely creepy scenes in the superstitious-heavy air of the countryside, more effectively displayed in his previous effort, Sukob. Without the glaring lights and noises of the city, the elementals felt more menacing. I was also hoping that T.2. would dwell more on the intriguing occurrences that took place when the elementals' world overlapped with ours; a shipping liner (?) cruising down a tiny river is one of the movie's visual coup.

But even before the screams are delivered, T.2. reveals its secret: the child Claire is protecting is a half-breed (half-faerie, half-human) and the elementals are rallying their (stoic, rotting green) troops to help convince the child to choose to live in the Elemental City. I felt duped that I was misled to believe that this was a horror movie; it's the Shyamalan syndrome, when the dénouement makes everything less spectacular, like turning on the fluorescent lamp in a dark room, all the shadows disappear and the phantom you suspected standing in the corner was just a play of light.

Still, I admire Roño for going where no other local horror movie has gone before and for going against the expectations set by his previous movies. Hopefully, his ambitions will lead to better reveals in the future.

TRAILERS: Sabongero and Manila

SABONGERO
a Project Kaleidoscope Production
© Cebu, Philippines 2009
Official Selection to the Short Film Corner - Film Festival de Cannes 2009

Written and Directed by Janice Y. Perez
Produced by Ruel Antipuesto and Janice Y. Perez
Director of Photography: Ruel Antipuesto
Starring: Patskie Abing, Anbern Rodis, Reo Felia, Ranz Andri Medina, Frank Tagalog
Official Site: http://sabongeromovie.multiply.com/



MANILA
Film Festival de Cannes 2009

Directed by Adolfo Alix, Jr. and Raya Martin
Bicycle Pictures and MJM Production
Written by Ramon Sarmiento and Adolfo Alix, Jr.
Executive Producers: Piolo Jose Pascual and Edgar Mangahas
Producer: Arleen Cuevas
Associate Line Producer: Maxie Evangelista III
Director of Photography: Albert Banzon
Production Designer: Digo Ricio
Editors: Jay Halili and Aleks Castaneda
Music: Radioactive Sago Project
Sound Design: Ditoy Aguila

Cast: Piolo Pascual, Rosanna Roces, Jay Manalo, Alessandra de Rossi



Manila trailer via Pixelated Popcorn

Four Filipino Films at Cannes 2009

This is definitely great news for the flailing Philippine cinema. Here's hoping that our government takes notice and starts supporting local film makers, heading toward something similar to what the Koreans have accomplished. (Go read Kim Hyung-jin's speech at the Audiovisual Industry Seminar held in Geneva for some insight on the Korean Wave.)

And that the big two (Star Cinema and GMA Films) begin producing actual movies.

*Slaps face awake*

Here's an excerpt from an article that came out in the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

Four Filipino films have been included in the official lineup of the 62nd Cannes International Film Festival, a first for the country.

This “historic” development was confirmed by three filmmakers whose films were chosen as entries in the world’s premier movie festival that will take place on May 13-14 in the French coastal city.

Three independent films made it to the Official Selection, in three different categories: Brillante Mendoza’s “Kinatay (The Execution of P)” in the Main Competition; Raya Martin’s “Independencia” in the Un Certain Regard section; and Raya Martin and Adolfo Alix Jr.’s “Manila” in the Special Screenings category.

“Sabongero,” by Filipino-American Janice Y. Perez, was selected for the Short Film Corner.

There were unconfirmed reports that Filipino films would also compete in the fest’s parallel section, the Directors’ Fortnight, as in the past two years.

“It’s an exciting year for the Philippines,” said Mendoza, who added that the inclusion of the four entries bode well for local cinema.

Mendoza is staging a comeback in the Main Competition, after his entry “Serbis” stirred controversy last year.

“Kinatay,” his entry this year is “equally controversial” and delves into the world of hitmen who cut up the bodies of their victims, said Mendoza. The film features Coco Martin, John Regala, Julio Diaz, Jhong Hilario, Lauren Novero and Maria Isabel Lopez.

“I believe it’s the first time for an Asian filmmaker to submit entries in the Main Competition for two consecutive years. US filmmaker Joel Coen also had back-to-back entries in the competition in 2000 and 2001,” Mendoza told the Inquirer.

Does Mendoza consider his return to the competition a way to vindicate himself after last year’s intrigues and negative reviews?

“I feel no pressure. I try not to worry about those things and I only focus on making my film,” he said.

Also of interest are Park Chan-Wook's vampire movie, Thirst, Bong Joon-ho's Mother, which also marks the comeback of actor Won Bin, and Pen-Ek Rathanurang's Nymph, the latter two both up for Un Certain Regard.

Trailers:







Via Philippine Daily Inquirer, Korean Bug

Review: The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela (2008)

The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela
Directed by Olaf de Fleur Johannesson
Starring Raquela Rios, Stefan Schaefer

Rating: 4.5

A bittersweet heroic journey of a Filipino transvestite from the slums of Cebu to the streets of Paris that cleverly blurs fantasy and biting reality.

Raquela personifies the stereotypical Filipino transvestite: excessively made-up, amusingly flirty, dangerously promiscuous, with a brightly shining heart of gold. She earns money for her family and dreams of visiting Paris one day. It was painful to watch all the cliché come to play in the first part of the movie. Director Olaf de Fleur Johannesson's point of view is unapologetic; there is no escape from the third world poverty (resources, ignorance) that barricades Raquela's world, vivid in her thoughts and shaky on the screen. But it is this Western eye that would later on transform Raquela's experiences into a modern myth. With a news-feature documentary style, the plot that is mostly fiction achingly breathes with a stubborn but tired heart, a heart that's all too familiar for the local audience that it makes it nearly impossible to tell apart which is real and which is not. Raquela is real and the journey she goes through, from zero to hero, might as well be.

In laying out the monomyth, Joseph Campbell, in The Hero of a Thousand Faces, studies the fundamental structure of a hero's journey: A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. Raquela's call to adventure---"A blunder–apparently the merest chance–reveals an unsuspected world, and the individual is drawn into a relationship with forces that are not rightly understood"---happens when she joins an internet porn site that specializes on lady boys, which is owned by Michael Ardilo (Stefan Schaefer), an American staying in New York. Raquela, who is lively and witty in speech, exceeds the company's expectation so much so that even the site's Thai counterpart have heard of her success.

Raquela's supernatural aid comes when she befriends Valerie on the internet, a lady boy who is based in Iceland who offers Raquela the opportunity to work in Reykjavik. When Michael hears about this, he promises her a rendezvous in Paris. The first threshold Raquela had to cross was the HIV test. Here, she begins her transformation into someone more self-aware, which equips her with the necessary "inner strength" to survive the cold landscape of Iceland.

Valerie brings Raquela to the fish factory where she works; for Raquela it meant the opportunity to permanently stay in Iceland. It is in her small apartment in Reykjavik, among her new flea market clothes, where she changes. A butterfly emerging from her cocoon, so to speak, more flamboyant and stylish than ever but also more cautious. In a very intimate scene, as her visa expires and Raquela prepares to meet Michael in Paris, she confesses to the camera, with her mascara smeared down her cheeks, that she is not a gold-digger and merely wants an alternate way to improving her life.

In Paris, Raquela discovers that Michael (woman, or in this case, man as temptation) was not the man who would sweep her off her feet. Michael, a stereotype of the ugly American in philosophy and manners, was ominously demanding but did rightfully blurt out (before leaving for Amsterdam) that Raquela, it seemed, would enjoy Paris more if she were by herself. And she did.

At once apotheosis and ultimate boon, Raquela---she who used to desperately wait for some phantom knight-in-shining-armor in airports---relished in her independence, sashaying down the streets, sipping coffee in cafes, watching an Audrey Hepburn movie, in the city of her dreams.

Back in Cebu, she reveals the amazing truth about Queen Raquela: that she was borne of royal blood but a jealous stepmother had given her away to a poor farming family and now that she is aware of her royal lineage, she is doing everything in her power to reclaim the life she was supposed to lead.

The really amazing thing is that the fairy tale she tells herself is no grander than her own journey from the slums to Paris. She may have left a queen but came back a Queen, as master of two worlds ("Because of the boon or due to his experience, the hero may now perceive both the divine and human worlds.") who has conquered armies of discrimination. In the movie's end, as Raquela and her friends gossip the night away with a sprawling view of the city below them, I would like to imagine that she is surveying her kingdom. And that she is dreaming where to go to next.

Links:

• Official movie website: queenraquelathemovie.com
• Alternative Film Guide interview with Olaf de Fleur Johannesson
• Wikipedia: The Hero with a Thousand Faces
  

Review: Sundo (2009)

Sundo
Directed by Topel Lee
Starring Robin Padilla, Rhian Ramos, Sunshine Dizon

You can feel the cold creeping in and squeezing your windpipes. You are Louella (Sunshine Dizon) getting soaked in the rain, shoes sticky with mud, as you watch your father's skeleton stumble out of its coffin clumsily dropped by cemetery caretakers. You are Baguio, sprawling, eternally cold and gray like a blanket hiding a corpse.

Director Topel Lee and cinematographer J. A. Tadena transform the usually cheery Baguio into a brooding, opaque hell where houses seem to shiver in the cold. Bathed in muted palettes of browns and steel, the fluorescent light seems alien, a fragile glow that the dark is hungry to devour, while the ghosts, ang mga sundo, lurk in the mist-like shadows.

The noun "sundo" has no direct English translation: it is a person---a close relative, a sweetheart---who picks you up from school or work with the specific purpose of making sure you get home safely, ie. My sundo (boyfriend or parent) has arrived. As a verb, sundo means to pick someone up (from school or work). In the movie, Romano (Robin Padilla) sees dead people, but these are ghosts with a mission, to be the sundo, the guide of the dying from this life to the after life. In effect, every appearance of a ghost is an omen of death.

Romano and childhood friend Louella drive down to the city with his sister, the blind Isabel (Rhian Ramos), to find a cure for her ailment, along with a few companions. Romano dreams about an accident that kills them all but wakes up in time to prevent it from happening. He suddenly hears a baby crying and as he steps out of the vehicle, he realizes that they are surrounded by ghosts. They were meant to die and now their sundo have arrived.

Sundo is a movie severely split in two. The first half is moody, atmospheric, and genuinely dead cold; its claustrophobic static can be felt at the back of the neck. The second half, which begins right after the should-have-been accident, is commercial Hollywood that is too reminscent of Final Destination.

What a damn shame.

There could be higher forces at work here and Lee does his best to keep the brooding tone, but the gimicky accidents (being blinded by flying embers from your favorite isaw stand) are laughably scripted and clumsily executed with not enough B-movie gusto that they turn out flat. And boring.

There's a twist in the movie's last few minutes that almost saves the movie from predictability but it is carried out in exactly the same way that Ouija (Topel's previous horror genre effort) ended, with someone being pulled into the darkness.

Is it just me or was that last echoing scream a cry of frustration?

3/5

Kinda Review: When i Met U (2009)

I guess the movie is really called, "And it all began...When i met u," because that's what appears in the opening credit. When a movie title is the entire line of a song, you half expect it to be derivative.

But not this derivative. It begins with a familiar twist---"Six Days, Seven Nights" comes to mind though I wish it wouldn't---and ends with a "Bridges of Madison County" moment, that bit in the passenger seat. The middle is so generic that no amount of beauty shots can keep my interest.

First off, utter miscast. Richard Guiterrez has turned out to be a competent actor but can't seem to shed off his poster-boy gait to truly become the working-class carrier pilot who is burdened with a father who gambles. KC Concepcion is the movie's joie de vivre, easily lighting up the screen with her breezy casualness and open face. Though likable in her role as a food court promodizer, Concepcion is too refined in gesture and speech to be jologs. Hindi niya talaga keri. And it does get in the way of believability. The actors are just too far removed from the material being more bourgeois than the bourgeois.

Another complaint, which is not solely found in this movie, is the continued demonizing of the affluent and the educated. It's one of the trappings that our commercial movies (and soap operas but that's more of a universal theme) can't seem to shake loose or can't seem to offer a different point of view to.

But what really sinks this dull romantic comedy is Joel Lamangan's direction or lack thereof. Static. Derivative. Lazy. There's no spark in the romance; no timing in the comedy.

Watch if you're a fan of the loveteam. Otherwise, you can has headache.