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Area
Language: Kapampangan
Additional Languages: Filipino, English
Year of Release: 2016
Director: Louie Ignacio [as Luisito Lagdameo Ignacio]
Screenwriter: Robby Tantingco
From a story by Ferdinand Lapuz
Producer: BG Productions International
Cast: AiAi delas Alas, Allen Dizon, Sue Prado, Sancho delas Alas, Ireen Cervantes, Sarah Pagcaliwagan, Tabs Sumulong, Eufrocina Peña, Cecile Yumul, Bambalito Lacap, Francisco Guinto, Rein Gutierrez, Eugene Garrett C. Euperio, Geraldo Dizon, Kim Duenas, Tin Velasco, Elizabeth Masangcay, Johnny Cabanlig, Tony Cabanlig, Dylan Ray Talon, Bong Ramos, Hernand Timoteo Tulud, Jennifer Cimagala, Vicky Vega-Cabigting, Boy Cayetano, Rustom Agustin, Christian Aquino, Bongjon Jose, Gerald Torrejs, Arnel Avila, Baby Go, Romeo Lindain
What used to be the most successful brothel north of Manila, set up for servicemen at Clark Air Base when it was still operated by the US Army, has now been reduced to a pitiful joint, its family owners earning their keep from a more reliable neighborhood convenience store. Eldest son Bren manages the hookers, assigning johns to them and ensuring they abide by the law. Hillary, who lost her son when she fled the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, is saving money so she can travel to the US to see him via his American father. Julie, whose looks make her the favorite of many customers, cannot afford to leave because she has to raise three children, with the older two acting as procurers. Bren’s mother, a former guerrilla fighter with the Hukbong Magpapalaya ng Bayan or People’s Liberation Army, had also seen better days as a sex worker and relates how rebel and counterinsurgency forces would observe a truce whenever they encountered each other in the brothel district, called Area. The approach of Holy Week brings about a decline in customers, so Bren focuses on soliciting residents and neighboring workers as well as taking the women to a clinic for their Pap smear test, and prepares for his annual vow of penance as a self-flagellant.
The mix of insurrectionist history, religious folk practice, and indigent sex work attains a surprising coherence in Area. Then again the element that brought everything together—American imperialist interest in the Southeast Asian region circa the Cold War—still overhangs Area’s area like the mushroom cloud that would have materialized if one of the military base’s nukes detonated for some reason or other. The Philippine government’s takeover of Clark Air Base in 1991 (after the eruption of the volcano that also led to one of the working girls seeking employment in the brothel) resulted in a decline in the businesses that originally sprouted to cater to American soldiers, now only a distant memory for folks old enough to have lived through it. The film relieves the pathos that inescapably suffuses the brothel’s shoddy, cramped, inadequately lit spaces, with walls so thin that children can hear their mother at work despite her co-workers’ efforts at maintaining sufficient prudence, by providing credible moments of levity, mostly centered on frank exchanges among the characters on the conditions of and hindrances to effective sex work. Even more fascinating is the brothel owners’ justification of insurrectionist activity, including their support for rebel militias, effectively pardoned since their leaders obtained clemency from Ferdinand Marcos Sr. The sex workers’ individual narratives though evince that the liberation their predecessors fought and died for never really materialized, although the film provides an unexpected personal culmination for Hillary, the most downtrodden among them. She’s also furnished with a revelation, a way by which human psychology copes with deep sorrow by reconfiguring it as passion. The shock of recognition when it arrives invites an entire host of responses, although the ultimate question of why such irrational processes are so rarely realized in film and literature guarantees that Area will always possess evidence that confronting discomforting questions, while generally useful in opening up new avenues for exploration, sometimes yields answers that everyday existence would be too opaque to grant.
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