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Amok
Additional Language: Cebuano
Year of Release: 2011
Director: Lawrence Fajardo
Screenwriters: John Paul Bedia & Lawrence Fajardo
(From a story by Lawrence Fajardo)
Producers: Cinemalaya Foundation, Pelikulaw, Wild Coyote Pictures
Cast: Mark Gil, Dido de la Paz, Garry Lim, Spanky Manikan, Nonie Buencamino, Efren Reyes Jr., Archi Adamos, Lui Manansala, Ermie Concepcion, Suzette Ranillo, John Arceo, Rolando Inocencio, Acey Aguilar, Nico Antonio, Patricia Ismael, Ku Aquino, Tuxqs Rutaquio, Akira Sapla, Wovi Villanueva, Xavi Hemady, Bryan Cabase, Ivy Rivero, Lowell Conales, Michelle Nollora, Amante Pulido, JM Bermudez, Nino Verbida, Angel Pasiderio, Noel Taylo, Annaluz Cornelio, Gary Gonzales, Dina Ofrancia
At the intersection of Metro Manila’s circumferential Epifanio de los Santos Avenue and arterial Taft Avenue, denizens who live and/or work in the vicinity or pass through it are forced to make major adjustments because of a series of gunshots. Manuel meets his son Samuel so they can return to their hometown and plan the young man’s sports plans. Belen watches over her unruly daughter Mai Mai, who’s momentarily distracted by young street rappers, while roasting and selling street food. Efren’s helping his nephew Makoy apply for a job then discovers that the latter’s application materials are forged. An elderly woman agrees to commit arson in her slum neighborhood in exchange for payment by Sarge, a corrupt police officer. A former stuntman fucks a streetwalker he picked up but when he discovers her Adam’s apple, he realizes she was transgender and refuses to pay her. A middle-aged man is driving his wealthier sister while arguing with her about his life choices. A gay pimp is taking a handsome youth he picked up to a party of wealthy queers but the cabbie refuses to drive them there because of the distance he has to cover. A former police officer takes leave from his pregnant wife, a clothes seller, to play the native variation on billiards where chips are used instead of balls; when a younger player wins the old man’s money and teases him, the latter pulls out a gun, points it at the player menacingly, and walks away. The traumatized younger man throws up, his mood darkening despite his companion comforting him, and he seeks out the ex-policeman, knife in hand.
Despite the absence of any photographic evidence of a traffic circle having once been located at the intersection, Pasay Rotonda maintains its attraction and indispensability as the juncture of tradition (the old government buildings and churches of Quiapo and Baclaran along Taft Avenue) and modernity (the business district, now city, of Makati and the Manila Bay Reclamation Project along EDSA). Featuring, among other distinctions, four barangays (districts) located at each of its four corners, the area understandably remains congested at all hours of the day and night, with nearly everyone on their way to or from major destinations. More than most films that feature multiple characters, Amok requires intensive familiarity with its circumscribed locale as well as its dramatis personae. The fact that it was made by a filmmaker who migrated from the Visayas to the metropolitan capital provides the first clue to its sharply observed yet carefully measured approach: the further the character perceives her distance from the center, the more articulate she is about the manner in which the city (via some middleperson or other) mistreats her. One might readily remark, upon an initial viewing, that the plot’s cynicism is revealed when the few characters who benefit from a happy ending do so by claiming some reward that they believe is owed them. Yet the one reflexive representative, a bitter has-been stuntman (genially embodied by Mark Gil), ironically and comically finds an opportunity for high-profile visibility in being shot. The larger impression of a community brought together by an unexpected crisis makes Amok the closest that Philippine cinema has come to replicating the achievement of Ishmael Bernal’s Manila by Night (1980), a revelation that signifies great promise in its filmmaker’s forthcoming output.
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Posas
English Title: Shackled
Additional Language: Cebuano
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Lawrence Fajardo
Screenwriter: Zig Madamba Dulay
Producers: Quantum Films & Cinemalaya Foundation
Cast: Nico Antonio, Bangs Garcia, Arthur Acuña, Nor Domingo, Jake Macapagal, Hector Macaso, John Lapus, Wendy Valdez, Susan Africa, Jelson Bay, Raul Morit, CJ Ramos, Jonathan Tadioan, Andy Bais, Ermie Concepcion, Phillip Nolasco, Ofelia Fernandez, Nino Verbida, Honorio Santiago, Rain Robles, Michael Bautista, Raul dela Cruz, James Jaime, Cris Garrido, Ricky Tangco, Dodie Baingan, Philip John Buena
Jess is a pickpocket who works the busy lower-class district of Quiapo to support his mother and send his sister to school. When he spots a new iPhone model owned by well-off Bangs, he stalks her in a busy mall and lifts the item. After selling it to Musngi, his regular fence, and getting told off by his girlfriend because she has work to attend to, he’s spotted on the street by Bangs, who flags some police officers to chase Jess. Bangs promises to reward the police when she gets the phone back because it contains important business information, but in reality she’d recorded a fuck session with her boyfriend on it. Led by Inspector Domingo, the police take Jess to a private room to torture him until he admits to the larceny. Jess leads the police to Musngi, and they also try to convince Bangs to drop her charges because of the hassle that a trial process will entail.
Posas, in a sense, resumes the exploration of the squalid urban milieu initiated the previous year in Amok, but over a wider geographical area and with the number of major characters reduced to basics. The creative challenge consequently shifts to attaining a reality effect, especially considering how the narrative elements appear to replicate those of standard procedural thrillers. The film conditions a readily progressive perspective by focalizing the plot on the least significant entity, that of the petty thief who slips up once and pays the same price that big-time hardened criminals acquiesce to as a matter of course. In a manner of speaking, the police officials who extract a pledge from him to accept their protection (in exchange for sharing half his profits, of course) may be regarded as allies who encourage him to upgrade his hooliganism so as not to be left behind in the criminality profession. The manner in which they begin to instruct him though will prove distressing to any casual observer, more so to informed subjects: the water cure, introduced to Philippine constables and applied to anticolonial resistance fighters by the US military as part of their subjugation campaign. The variation depicted in Posas is a streamlined and less potentially fatal procedure, but (as attested by the performer) it was still traumatizing enough in efficiently rendering the drowning experience. Yet this merely constitutes the gateway to an even more terrifying process, one that crystallizes the commitment to a life of crime as a step into a point of no return. All the nonsensical commentary about how Posas sold itself short by attempting to revive a genre that had already spent itself only wound up revealing the hypocrisy of its premise: as an indie production, Posas worked out its contribution not by adopting an anti-genre stance, but by expanding on the limits of the genre’s conventions.
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The Strangers
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Lawrence Fajardo
Screenwriters: John Paul Bedia, John Paul Egalin Abellera, Enrico C. Santos
(From a story by John Paul Bedia, Henry Burgos, John Roque, Armando Lao)
Producers: Quantum Films, MJM Productions, Star Cinema
Cast: Enchong Dee, Julia Montes, Enrique Gil, JM de Guzman, Janice de Belen, Cherry Pie Picache, Jaime Fabregas, Johnny Revilla, Nico Antonio, Spanky Manikan, Arthur Acuña, Garry Lim, Tanya Gomez, Rita Daniela, Mark Gil, Dante Balois, Mark Bautista, Ermie Concepcion, Willy Concepcion, Jojo Flores, Cris Garrido, Rolando Inocencio, Erlinda Villalobos, Jibb Llansang, Anthony Macapulay, Hector Macaso, Raul Morit, Abel Napuran, Charles Pantia, Amante Pulido, Marti San Juan, Akira Sapla, Vic Tiro, Carlo Olmeda, Marx Topacio, Franz Co, Kimmy Maclang, Jello Antonio
A curmudgeonly grandfather takes his daughter and her family to his distant rural hometown, along with their superstitious maid. Along the way, their vehicle breaks down and they send their driver ahead to look for help. Residents from a small forest-dwelling community say that they’re in danger and offer them shelter for the night. The father who searches for the driver and the grandfather who tries to call them back never return. The residents, who constitute a vigilante group, narrate the story of a hunter whose family was killed by aswangs or native flesh-eating monsters, and who turned into one himself. When the family arrives at the house, however, a dotty elderly lady who’s locked up in a room, warns the outsiders that they’re in danger from the folks who claim to be saving them.
Despite its ability to depict social interactions without the need to resort to symbolizing clusters of characters (thereby flattening or even ignoring the plight of individual members of the subcollective), the multicharacter film’s political potential remains theoretical, dependent on its filmmaker’s capability to imbue the work with sociological insight to match the complexities that the format enables. For this reason, all of its practitioners weary of it after the fulfilling period of discovering its merits, with millennial-era specialist Lawrence Fajardo attempting to explore its commercial appeal and applicability for genre exercises with his horror entry The Strangers. Its popular orientation readily accounts for the indifference with which critical responders responded to it, compared for example to Posas in the same year. Yet Strangers appears to be the Fajardo film that has fomented repeat viewing—a distinction that can be claimed by only a few other multicharacter titles, all of them from the Second Golden Age: Ishmael Bernal’s Aliw (1979), Joey Gosiengfiao’s Underage (1980), Celso Ad. Castillo’s Virgin People (1984), Maryo J. de los Reyes’s Bagets (1984). What unifies these samples from diverse genres is the fact that they reward the effort of tracking several overlapping, sometimes conflicting, storylines, with the pleasure of ideological insight arising from a literal form of social realism. That is, the proliferation of dramatis personae replicates everyday social encounters, so their interactions can be the direct source of sociological observability (an insight I developed at length in my 2017 Arsenal Pulp Press publication Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic). No need to marvel that a casual genre exercise such as Strangers can demonstrate this claim, since the film might be easy to access, except for the usual pestilence of censorship on open-access websites.
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Imbisibol
English Translation: Invisible
Additional Language: Japanese
Year of Release: 2015
Director: Lawrence Fajardo
Screenwriters: Herlyn Gail Alegre & John Paul Bedia
(Adapted from the play by Herlyn Gail Alegre)
Producers: Sinag Maynila, Solar Entertainment
Cast: Allen Dizon, Ces Quesada, Bernardo Bernardo, JM de Guzman, JC Santos, Onyl Torres, Angelina Kanapi, Ricky Davao, Fred Lo, Naoki Takai, Shinpei Suzuki, May Alleman, Kaz Sawamura, Masaharu Imamoto, Oyee Barro, Cynthia Luster
Four Filipino migrants in Japan, acquaintaces of one another, attempt to seek more fulfilling personal and professional options while continuing to support their families back home. Linda attempts to help undocumented migrant Pinoys by providing them with loans and rented spaces despite her Japanese salaryman husband’s insistence on evicting them to avoid trouble with the government. Benjie, an illegal resident, works on two jobs to support his family at home but has been wearied down, affecting his relationship with his long-term same-sex partner. Manuel, an aging male entertainer who services elderly women and performs in pornography productions, has to face the prospect of aging as well as his addiction to gambling. Rodel, a naïve and idealistic newcomer, has been encountering friction and rivalry with his supervisor, another Filipino, at work. Their difficulties come to a head and threaten their survival strategy of remaining invisible in a foreign land.
Among the dozens of new directorial talents to have emerged since the new millennium, Lawrence Fajardo is the one who opted to specialize in multiple-protagonist narratives—a challenge so overwhelming that only a few filmmakers have been able to pull it off, much less focus on it for most of their projects. After a series of noteworthy attempts, highlighted by the impressively staged Amok (2011), where the trajectories of several bullets fired by the same gun disrupt several characters’ lives, he confronted the essentially literary challenge of the format and returned to theater, where he had trained. He utilized the same skills deployed by the local master of multicharacter filmmaking, Ishmael Bernal, in allowing for improvisation and revision in accordance with his performers’ strengths. Not surprisingly, although Imbisibol is set in wintry Japan, delineating the difficulties of overseas workers who need to make themselves inconspicuous so that government authorities would not suspect their illegal-residence status, the movie manages to luxuriate in the warmth of its charcters’ occasional camaraderie and concern for fellow expats’ well-being. It also holds the possibly unnoticed distinction of being the best local adaptation of a stage play. The movie builds up to a devastating conclusion, but allows the glow from one particular character, a gay TNT (tago-ng-tago, or constantly hiding migrant), to suffuse what would have been a chilly resolution. Bernardo Bernardo draws from his own personal history, as former US migrant and, earlier, as an actor who portrayed Bernal’s alter-ego in Manila by Night (1980), before his own career was cut short by terminal illness.
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