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Wanted: Border
Additional Language: Hiligaynon
Year of Release: 2009
Director: Ray Gibraltar [as Ray Defante Gibraltar]
Screenwriters: Ray Gibraltar & John Iremil E. Teodoro
(With poetry credit for John Iremil E. Teodoro)
Producer: Cinema One Originals
Cast: Rosanna Roces, Joy Louise Evidente, Kristoffer Rhys Grabato, Publio Briones III, Raffy Tejada, Edward Divinagracia, Dante Amaguin, Joan Paulette Libo-on, Edgrado Amar, Rheno Mar Soqueño, Boyet Zuluaga, Kukok Piconcillo, Nemia Guinabo, Farida Kabayao, Edgar Gayorgor, Sol Alquizar, Dennis Ascalon, Mona Pico, Pamela Falcis, Alf Alacapa, Rick Roco, The Boys, A.J. Aurelio, Faith Javellana, Edrelita Sebio, Audie Barbasa, Arnel Sumpay, Sunshine Teodoro, Peter Paul Deocos, Teatro Busilak (University of Iloilo), Western Institute of Technology, USA Little Theater
Mama Saleng is a religious enthusiast who wants to be crucified for Holy Week as part of her devotion to “Gino-o” or Lord, a strangely attired deity that apparently only she sees. She runs a dormitory with an eatery on the ground floor that has attained local fame for its specialization in kansi, a sour soup traditionally made from beef shanks. Her secret is that she uses human meat, usually from boarders she slaughters when she thinks that no one will come looking for them. Her familiarity with violence arises from a childhood trauma, when she witnessed her family fatally attacked by townspeople for allegedly being aswang or flesh-eating monsters. Her unhinged assistant Andres volunteers to perform the killings, while her foodie neighbor Shine develops an appetite for her cooking. A video filmmaker requests permission to document her establishment while an abused young girl believes she has found refuge in Mama Saleng’s place. A visitor unexpectedly drops by who reminds her of the time she fell in love with a military official whose mission was to hunt down antigovernment rebels.
A single viewing will instantly make understandable why Wanted: Border earned positive notices but faded as soon as the next indie cause célèbre came along. It starts with horror-film atmospherics premised on the penny-dreadful serial narratives that gave rise to a figure most famously embodied in Sweeney Todd. The violation of the taboo of cannibalism unsurprisingly recurs in times and places of desperate poverty, although never directly in terms of the consumption of human flesh but rather in the availability of animals as food—usually from piggeries adjacent to morgues, although reports of fish that may have fed on the bodies of murdered gamblers dumped in Taal Lake nearly triggered social panic in the more recent past. Yet the practice remains more intimate and regular than we like to assume, as Sigmund Freud reminded his readers of the ritual of partaking of a divine being’s blood and body during Communion. WB, titular misspelling and all, sets itself distantly enough, by locating the narrative in rural terrain separated from the capital as much by water as by language, and by refusing to allow horror to dominate the proceedings. The strategy succeeds primarily because of the presence of Rosanna Roces as Mama Saleng, one of the rare actors who retains an earthiness no matter what register she performs in, and enables the characters who interact with her to exhibit contradictions despite the emergence of distinguishing qualities: the comic devourer, the scarily psychotic butcher, the melodramatic abuse survivor, the amoral media professional. These properties come to a head in the military officer, whose love affair with Saleng provided her with the opportunity to embark on the adventure that would define her for us. The material of WB may be repulsive in the telling and the recollection, but it’s also capable of satisfying an appetite for the insightfully twisted, if one is fortunate enough to be seized by such a tendency.
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