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February 24, 2026

Cracked Mirrors

Greatest Performance
Directed & written by Joselito Altarejos

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Filmmakers aware of their development constantly set for themselves new challenges, in the hope that they’ll be able to meet these goals and possibly set new, more difficult ones. These stages could be detected in all the outstanding directors of the past, although with the advent of the age of digital production in the present millennium, a new type of goal-setting has emerged: one where the community of filmmakers, consciously or otherwise, embarks on attaining certain ideals as a collective. So far two primary objectives can be tracked. The first, condoned and rewarded by prestige-granting critical groups, where the directors create conscienticizing works focused on poverty, packaged in self-consciously high-art treatments for foreign film festivals, preferably in Europe.

Left: anxiety-ridden Yvonne Rivera (Sunshine Cruz) takes a public ride to the set of her comeback film project. Right: she arrives at her movie set, wears sunglasses, and projects a happy and confident aura. [Screen caps by the author.]

11011The second, more directly in line with the ideals of filmmakers in the Second Golden Age, involves the aspiration of directors to convey their film statements directly with the local mass audience using strategies such as genres, star vehicles, topical materials, and commercially available franchise assignments. Weirdly enough, it’s the critical elite that seeks to downgrade these efforts, based apparently on a twisted perception of the career trajectory of Lino Brocka, the country’s most internationally recognized filmmaker. Contrary to most prevailing accounts, Brocka eventually broke away from his European discoverer and focused primarily on developing projects that combined political statements in mostly successful popular formats, before a vehicular accident cut short his still-thriving productivity.

Left: Katrina (Ahlyxon Leyva), the director’s current squeeze, flusters Yvonne when she asks if she needs to have her breasts enhanced. Right: Katrina dances for the film crew but mainly for Mar Alvarez (Soliman Cruz), Yvonne’s director. [Screen caps by the author]

11011Joselito Altarejos, by apprenticing with Ishmael Bernal, Brocka’s contemporary (and for many, his superior) and commencing his filmmaking career the year after Bernal died, may be counted as one of the country’s few direct links with celluloid-era cinema. As such, he managed to stand apart from the aforementioned collective trends, although he also figured in the specialized branch of queer film production that flourished during the early years of digital filmmaking, when inexpensively produced projects could be screened in old-style movie theaters, where gay male audiences could use darkness as an opportunity for cruising. Unlike the average queer filmmaker, though, he worked with mainstream studios and, in a manner of speaking, prepared Viva Films for its successful recent foray into soft-core sex-film production.

Left: after shaming Yvonne in front of the film crew and causing her to walk out, her director Mar visits her in private to supposedly coach her alone, an offer that she resists. Right: at the end of Yvonne’s story, a similar, indeterminate event is recapitulated. [Screen caps by the author]

11011Greatest Performance arrives after he made one more turn, into politically pointed film statements during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, burning a few bridges in the process.[1] His latest film will surprise anyone who closely followed his last few exertions. It has no overtly queer character except for the lead female character’s cross-dressed maid, and no connection to political discourse except for an instance of extrajudicial killing. Yet, reminiscent of his previous peak achievement, Jino to Mari (Gino and Marie, 2019), the situation is sufficiently queer without requiring anyone to state it outright, and the power play exercised by one of its male protagonists, as well as the pushback by women characters, will confirm to any viewer that patriarchy continues to exercise its unearned privilege in any corner of the planet. The Jino to Mari setting, a contemporary film production, is also where the major events of GP unfold.

Left: Yvonne goes on live cam to sing “Paru-Parong Bukid,” as requested by her fans.[2] Right: Drew, Yvonne’s younger lover, uses her live appearance as an opportunity to fantasize over her. [Screen caps by the author]

11011Yet GP proffers something that no Altarejos work has foregrounded before, although it might take a second viewing to confirm it beyond the shadow of a doubt: the entire scenario is a throwback to Bernal, Altarejos’s mentor, in the sense that the proceedings unfold unmistakably as a comedy in tragic clothing. Yvonne Rivera, a once-popular performer who put her career on hold for the sake of her marriage, has to return to production when her union fails, ironically with the same abusive director, Mar Alvarez, who launched her to stardom. On the set she meets Drew, a younger soundperson with whom she occasionally enjoys a quickie, who like her has to endure Mar’s temperamental outbursts (in one instance, Mar berates Drew for insisting on noise-free ambient sound, but in their next take the noises accumulate to the point of nearly drowning out the performers’ lines and Mar has to pretend he doesn’t mind). Mar openly flirts with Katrina, a bit player who fearlessly displays her skimpy attire and coquettish teasing, determined to attain fame at any cost.

Left: After a publicity interview (conducted by the real-life director), Yvonne descends her apartment’s staircase in a state of panic over her comeback prospect. Right: unable to sympathize with Drew’s serious financial troubles during her film’s premiere, Yvonne looks for an opportunity for one last fling with her lover. [Screen caps by the author]

11011The reflexive touches accumulate over the course of the plot, with the film’s production company acknowledged as the producer behind Ang Lihim ni Teresa, Yvonne’s comeback project. When Drew idly watches a talk program, it happens to feature Altarejos himself, providing tips for a couple of industry aspirants. Yvonne treats Drew as her personal stress-reliever, but when she shows up to address her fans on a public video exchange, Drew reverses their dynamic by using her image as an object of lust. A Bernalesque take of a troubled woman descending a staircase shows up in the film-within-a-film,[3] and in a coda after Yvonne’s happy ending, dead characters return: was this from Yvonne’s past, or another of her many nightmares, or an event in a parallel universe? Altarejos, in a (real-life) message, resists from providing a definite reply, except to mention that the film’s producers are exploring opportunities beyond a Philippine release.

Notes

Previously published February 24, 2026, in The FilAm as “How Director Joselito Altarejos Sets Himself Apart as a Bernal Protégé.” Greatest Performance is produced by 2076 Kolektib, Pelikula Indiopendent, & StudioX. Many thanks to Joselito Altarejos for providing access and clarifying several crucial questions.

[1] In one of my exchanges with the director, he clarified that the use of the same title of an unfinished 1989 film by Nora Aunor (listed in Canon Decampment) is strictly incidental. A sequence breakdown that I made of the earlier film is posted here.

[2] “Paru-parong Bukid (Field Butterfly)” is a traditional folk song originally known as “Mariposa Bella (Beautiful Butterfly).” The Tagalog version, used twice as a movie title and theme song (first directed by Octavio Silos in 1938, then by Armando Garces two decades later), is necessarily kid-friendly; a parodic variation, titled Mga Paru-Parong Buking (The Outed Butterflies, dir. J. Erastheo Navoa, 1985), about four queer male professors of whom three are closeted, played only on the title and contained its own theme song. The nearly forgotten Spanish-language “Mariposa Bella” though is a more mature number, since it makes explicit the comparison of the butterfly with the native “Malay” maiden, uses richer descriptive imagery, and directly references mi tierra immortal or my immortal land, as befits a song that became popular during the anticolonial resistance against American occupation. See Pepe (José Mario Alas), “‘Paru-Parong Bukid’ Is Actually a Poor Translation of ‘Mariposa Bella’” in Filipino eScribbles: Online Jottings of a Filipino Out of Time (October 14, 2009).

[3] The opening shot of Ang Lihim ni Teresa, Yvonne’s comeback project, is taken directly from her post-interview conversation with her maid, the only instance when a plot moment directly shows up in the fiction that the characters are creating. The shot an is an homage to Ishmael Bernal, who occasionally depicted distressed or giddy women by showing them unsteadily climbing up or down staircases, most famously in his first credited work, Pagdating sa Dulo (Near the End, 1971).

Leave a comment | tags: Commentaries | posted in Film Criticism

February 21, 2026

Canon Decampment: Rory B. Quintos

By Joel David

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Kailangan Kita

English Translation: I Need You
Additional Language: Bicolano
Year of Release: 2002
Director: Rory B. Quintos
Screenwriters: Shaira Mella Salvador & Moira Lang
(From a story by Shaira Mella Salvador, Moira Lang, Emmanuel Dela Cruz)
Producer: Star Cinema

Cast: Aga Muhlach, Claudine Barretto, Johnny Delgado, Liza Lorena, Jericho Rosales, Dante Rivero, Cholo Escaño, Nicole Judalena, Igi Boy Flores, Cris Villanueva, Rissa Mananquil, Gerald Madrid, Ces Quesada, Madeleine Nicolas, Jon Achaval, Fonz Deza, Farrah Florer, Jessette Prospero, Albert Zialcita, Randy Gamier, Idda Yaneza, Edgardo Pascua, Cyrus Balinguit, Rocky Martinez, Morten Bremelhoej, Florante Tagulo, Carl Rosales, Anthony Ranguani, Lowell Conales, Rheylord Camacho

Carl Diesta, a successful chef in the US, goes to his bride-to-be Giselle Duran’s Bicol hometown to help prepare for their forthcoming wedding. Giselle however keeps finding reasons to delay her arrival while Carl observes that her sister Lena shares his passion for food and extends a hand to insurgent fighters, despite the objection of Carl and her family. Carl realizes that Lena had to break up with the man she loved after he joined the rebel army. She convinces him to relish spicy preparations in coconut milk, a specialty of Bicol cuisine which he initially resisted. As Carl starts doubting whether marrying Giselle was a wise decision, Lena tells him that she knows the town’s best cook of laing (taro leaves cooked in coconut milk) and takes him to the old man’s hut. Carl realizes that the cook was someone he knew in the past, before he moved abroad.

The reality of Filipinos returning from overseas sojourns has always been a source of vital narratives on national identity and global engagement, ever since the native ilustrados of the nineteenth century brought over the Enlightenment ideals that Spanish colonizers strove to keep at bay from the native population. The Philippines’s long-enduring labor-export policy has made the influx of returnees, whether staying temporarily or for good, a permanent certainty in the country’s national imaginary. The reality has become so commonplace that Star Cinema, which once had to depict a Philippine character in a foreign setting in Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s May Nagmamahal sa Iyo (Madonna and Child, 1996) to affirm her status as an Overseas Filipino Worker returnee, could now endow a character with enough foreign-voyage markers and occasional long-distance phone calls to establish the authenticity of said character’s alienation from local cultural phenomena. Kailangan Kita coasts along satisfactorily enough on its lead male character’s classically inflected dilemma—the way that, say, Newland Archer realizes that Countess Ellen Olenska incites his nostalgic imagination more than his betrothed does in The Age of Innocence (1920 novel by Edith Wharton, 1993 film by Martin Scorsese). But the net it casts is woven from sturdier fabric than the usual flimsy premises of popular romances. The incursion of an insurgent movement, whose origin can be tracked to the country’s anticolonial revolutionaries, is only the first of a series of direct challenges to the central family’s conflictive existence. Other prognosticators of even more inescapable social shifts show up, sometimes without warning, necessitating in one instance a generational conciliation that could devastate unprepared viewers. The representation of nation is expertly divided between a rational, First World-residing male, and a subservient, neglected, but constantly appraising daughter; KK decisively triumphs in its casting of Claudine Barretto in peak form, as a woman resigned to her own fate who yet realizes self-fulfillment in clandestine relationships that she maintains with as much discretion as she can get away with.

Á!

Leave a comment | tags: canon | posted in Book

February 19, 2026

Canon Decampment: Mae Cruz-Alviar

By Joel David

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Bride for Rent

Additional Language: Cebuano
Year of Release: 2014
Director: Mae Cruz-Alviar [as Mae Czarina Cruz]
Screenwriters: Charlene Grace Bernardo & Carmi Raymundo
Producers: ABS-CBN Film Productions & Star Cinema

Cast: Kim Chiu, Xian Lim, Empoy Marquez, Martin del Rosario, Pilita Corrales, Tirso Cruz III, Dennis Padilla, Matt Evans, Lloyd Zaragoza, Zeppi Borromeo, Eda Nolan, Gerald Pesigan, Santino Espinoza, Leo Rialp, Marlann Flores, Anita Linda, Tony Mabesa, RJ Ledesma, Jackie Aquino, Roden Araneta, Alex Castro, Artemio Abad, Bodie Cruz, Ivan Asuncion, Arlene Muhlach, Helga Krapf, Loven Canon, Patricia Prieto, Regine “Apan” T. Agra, Mark McMahon, Amelia Villaruel, Olive Isidro, Hersey Gonzales Gregorio, Edgar Allan Yu

High-living scion Roderico “Rocco” Espiritu Jr. is anticipating prosperity when he turns 25, since he’ll be able to collect from his trust fund, so he drunkenly gambles away the money allotted for a major company project. Since he’s estranged from his father Roderico Sr., his grandma Lala oversees his affairs, but then she’s abroad for a health procedure. On the day he expects his long-awaited windfall, his lawyer says that Lala appended a condition for the release of money: he should first prove that he’s married. Since he already dismissed his long-term girlfriend and his work partners are asking him for results, he concocts a fake audition to pick a woman to pose as his wife. The aspirant who wins the role is Racquelita “Rocky” dela Cruz, breadwinner for a large family on the verge of losing the small space whose rent they’ve been unable to cover for half a year already. Rocky soon discovers that she can’t stand Rocco’s heartless and cynical treatment and confesses the deception to the recently returned Lala, whose worrying over Rocco’s immaturity overrides her annoyance over the little trick that she already expected him to pull. She conscripts Rocky to participate in her own scheme to help him realize the error of his ways.

Possibly the closest to a conventional entry in this entire canon list, Bride for Rent nevertheless manages to execute the ordinarily objectionable class-conciliatory trick via a combination of plot reversals and clever casting choices. Allotting the narrative’s decision-making processes to strong-women protagonists has been Philippine cinema’s strong suit ever since local history affirmed its feasibility in countering the excesses of military dictatorship nearly half a century ago. The aspect that required careful treading was in setting up the collusion between a grande dame and a hard-working slum dweller, who first meet as allies-to-be when the latter is evicted by her landlady in the pouring rain. The project certainly benefited from casting Xian Lim and Kim Chiu, love-team actors who then had minimal social baggage of their own and could commit to tragicomic role-playing without much difficulty. But the unexpected coup was in the selection of a performer whose classy-mestiza projection was always complemented with camp, of a sort that cut across classes, genders, and nationalities. A long list of contemporaries could certainly outperform her without much effort, but Pilita Corrales’s benign and self-amused presence, anchored on several marks of Otherness starting with her halting delivery of Tagalog lines, arrives at just the point when the story required the intervention of the equivalent of a fairy godmother. All that BfR had to do after Corrales shows up is ensure that Chiu’s working-class character never loses her moral ascendancy and avoids the usual pitfall of turning a slum resident into a princess-in-waiting. BfR facilitates this by configuring its male object’s status as a popular media figure and endowing the woman with the immediately recognizable dignity derived from a life of hardship. Proof that genre elements can still be faithfully observed yet yield rewards that art cinema could only aspire toward at the risk of losing its own dignity.

Á!

Leave a comment | tags: canon | posted in Book

February 2, 2026

Greatest Performance (1989) Sequence Breakdown

By Joel David

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BACKGROUND

In the early 2010s, a few months before President “Pnoy” Aquino’s rejection of the endorsement of Nora Aunor for the Order of the National Artist of the Philippines, Kritika Kultura published the call for papers I drafted for a special forum on Nora Aunor. Despite enthusiastic responses and a number of submissions, almost none of the contributors responded to my requests to revise their articles to conform to the latest relevant issues in star studies, no matter if I provided possible topics and readings. I realized later that I had to continue developing the introduction I was drafting, in order to turn it into one more Nora Aunor article. With a number of other scholarly acquaintances mentioning that they had material on other stars, I informed the editors of the paucity of authors prepared to tackle the challenge of star discourse focused on one entity, and suggested expanding the forum’s coverage to the entirety of Philippine movie stardom.

11011A second predicament then presented itself. I targeted certain specific performers and identified scholars who’d written on them in the past, to request new or updated studies. In particular, I sent out requests to appreciators of Aunor’s rival, Vilma Santos, to academics outside Metro Manila and eventually outside the country. The few that responded expressed regrets, and I realized the possible reasons only recently, when a purportedly scholarly book on Santos was published by a private university press: it seemed to want to be many things, but scholarly it was not, at least by updated screen-cultural studies standards. In more painfully specific terms, the earnest exertions were there, but not the familiarization with recent discourse, engagement with new theory, even the basic exercise of deconstruction that would have elevated it from the obsolescent celebration of empirical markers, primarily supposedly Santos’s “record” numbers of trophies. The even more worrisome aspect is that the volume was announced in late 2024 and came out just a few months later, possibly in time for National Artist deliberations—but then we cannot presume such bad faith on the part of the project’s movers, only the observation that it seemed extremely hastily finalized.

11011Regarding the Aunor article I was writing, I’d long heard about an attempt she made to create a traditionally auteurist project, producing Greatest Performance, an unprocessed semi-autobiographical film that she had written, directed, and starred and sang in; one of the Metro Manila Film Festival’s major failures, even arguably its biggest one, was in rejecting the inclusion of the film in their 1989 edition, for reasons that only their profit-oriented mentalities could understand. Fortunately I’d made the acquaintance of the Aunor confidant who happened to be the most important rare-film archivist in Pinas pop culture. Jojo Devera disclosed that Aunor did not want even the degraded video transfer that he owned to exist. I requested Aunor’s permission to view it for strictly scholarly purposes, conveyed to her via another of her confidants, Ricky Lee. Her recognition of the importance of academic inquiry worked in my favor. Later, this circle of acquaintances (including me) misrecognized her approval as a change of heart regarding GP, so Devera arranged a video conference to seek her permission to work on finalizing the work. Here she held fast with her prior rejection and said she’d prefer that it disappear for good.

11011Consonant with the other films I evaluated closely, I attempted to transcribe the video copy but it was too dilapidated and would have inordinately delayed my writing. The best I came up with was an unsatisfactory sequence list—that I also set aside as soon as I completed the article. With the recent possibility that some Noranian artists might attempt to work on GP once more, I looked over the listing I completed and realized I’d never even uploaded it, unlike the other research materials I compiled from other films. Here it is then.

OPENING TITLE CARDS
[with characters’ names in brackets]

Onscreen:

* NCV Films presents
* Nora Aunor [Laura]
* Tirso Cruz III [Briccio Ledesma]
* Julio Diaz [Pocholo or Cholo]
* Kristoffer Ian de Leon [Boyet]
* in Greatest Performance
* Starring Rez Cortez [Orbac]
* Lara Melissa de Leon [Melissa]
* Introducing Jet Montelibano [Bogs], Fe de los Reyes [Shirley], Butch Elizalde [Tisoy]
* Special Guests: German Moreno [Direk or Desi], Michael de Mesa [Mr. Agaton], Tony Carreon, Miguel Tanciangco, and Bella Flores [Laura’s landlady]
* Nonoy Zuniga [Briccio’s psychotherapist], Bobby Taylo
* Sound Supervision—Rolly Ruta
* Film Editor—Ike Jarlego, Jr. (FEGP)
* Musical Director—Danny Tan
* In-Charge of Production—Vivian C. Recio
* Line Producer—Ricardo Osorio
* Associate Producers—Tita Villamayor / Oscar Villamayor / Eddie Villamayor
* Executive Producer—Christopher Strauss de Leon
* Producer—NCV
* Written and Directed by Guy

Additional credits from the Internet Movie Database:

* Year of Release—1989
* Cinematography—Johnny Araojo
* Production Design—Len Santos

Unlisted:

* Lucy Quinto [Briccio’s mother]

SEQUENCE LIST

Int., concert hall, night. Over opening credits, Laura’s body is taken out of auditorium on a stretcher. Boyet, a young male fan, wanders backstage and sits in front.
Int., concert hall, night. Boyet remembers watching Laura perform “Ikaw Pa Lang ang Tangi Kong Minahal.” Briccio Ledesma also watches, along with Desi, the director. Briccio’s wife Shirley notices Briccio’s interest, gets jealous. Her partner and manager Cholo’s in the wings. Laura falters because she’s drunk, so Desi orders her offstage despite her protestations, replacing her with dancers. Briccio exits. Cholo quarrels with Desi but he’s restrained by Laura.
Int., Briccio’s bedroom, night. Briccio asks Shirley who’s Pocholo, she says he’s Laura’s manager. Briccio remarks how Laura’s still gifted and deserves a second chance but Shirley disagrees.
Ext.-int., Laura’s garage & living room, night. Laura arrives home with groceries. Cholo asks her to watch TV, where Desi’s interviewed criticizing her. The couple quarrel about her having to work; she starts smoking and drinking.
Int., concert hall, day. Laura asks direction from Boyet to find Desi, who’s rehearsing dancers onstage. Laura apologizes to Desi.
Ext., concert hall, day. Laura finds Boyet at building ledge and converses with him. Boyet has note for her from “Mr. B.”
Int., Laura’s stairs and living room in her home, night. Cholo’s three bandmates arrive at Laura’s home. He asks Laura for drinks. She starts drinking but wants out from band rehearsal. Band member proposes concert. Cholo asks Laura to plead with producer.
Int., Mr. Agaton’s receiving area, day. Laura awaits at producer Mr. Enriquez’s office. Manager brings his dancer, secretary lets them into office but she refuses Laura, who barges in. Secretary escorts her outside because he refuses to see her.
Int., Laura’s living room, day. Cholo tries to write a composition on the piano.
Int., folk-music bar, day. Laura’s drinking at folk-music bar where male singer croons “You’ve Got a Friend.” Two strangers ply her with spiked drink.
Int., motel, day. Laura’s taken to a room where they rape her. She’s unable to get away.
Ext., motel, day. Laura alights from taxi to get to her parked car.
Int., Laura’s bedroom, day. When she arrives home, Cholo quarrels with her. She says her car broke down. Cholo becomes violent with her and gets gun. She hides behind stuffed toy. He caresses gun phallically. Laura kisses him and he smiles. He kisses bruises on her face.
Int., Laura’s bedroom, night. With Cholo fast asleep, Laura gets his gun.
Int., folk-music bar, night. Laura returns to bar where same singer plays “Danny’s Song.” She sees gang with more friends take a table. Threatens them with gun, they apologize (they know her name), she uses argument about respect for women in their family. Laura cries, couldn’t shoot them, they run away.
Ext., bayside, night. Laura’s depressed and drunk. Cholo tries to get her to leave, she brings up her breadwinner role. She starts weeping, asking why they’re that way, throws up. Cholo doesn’t get her.
Int., Mr. Agaton’s office, day. She’s with producer Mr. Agaton, who wonders why she left him despite giving her her first break. He tries getting close, she takes leave.
Int., dressing room, night. Cholo complains about playing during a fashion floor show. Laura tells him off then is called onstage.
Int., fashion floor, night. Fashion models on runway. After they leave, Laura and band get onstage but drunk customers complain about the presence of men and heckle them, asking her to strip. Briccio shows up to observe. Cholo beats up rowdy customers. Briccio leaves. Laura apologizes to Mr. Agaton.
Int., Mr. Agaton’s office, night. Mr. Agaton berates band members. Cholo fistfights with him.
Back to top
Ext., bayside, night. Cholo curses at the open water as Laura waits in her car. She teases him about timing his anger with radio music. He tells her to forget the incident with her producer.
Int., Laura’s bedroom, night-day. Cholo and Laura make out. Later, Cholo wakes up next morning alone, reads her letter apologizing because she left him early. He gets mad and gets his gun.
Int., Mr. Agaton’s office, day. Laura’s back in her producer’s office. She defends Cholo and asks for another chance. He stares at her lasciviously. She tries to leave but he tries to take advantage. Cholo barges in with his gun and shoots him.
Int., jail, day. Laura visits Cholo in jail. He’s philosophical about setting free or escaping, and expresses his love for her.
Int., Laura’s living room, day. Cholo’s band members comfort Laura in her home. Bogs invites her to live in his home but she refuses. Orbac suggests she live with his sister or with Tisoy’s family. She’s anxious about band’s musical equipment getting stolen. Band members leave to visit Cholo. Tisoy gives her sleeping tablet before they go.
Int., Laura’s living room, night. Bogs visits Laura with weed for smoking session. He invites her to his birthday party but she’s hesitant. He tries playing footsies with her but she rejects him.
Int., jail, day. Cholo gets a tattoo. He tells tattoo artist Laura hasn’t visited in a while.
Ext.-int.-ext., Bogs’s residence, night. Tisoy tells Cholo’s bandmates that Laura’s drug habits are getting worse. His girlfriend Michelle arrives. Bogs shows up with a new girlfriend, Melissa. They enter Bogs’s house for the party. He asks Tisoy to attend to Melissa when Laura arrives so she won’t suspect he’s got a new partner. Laura arrives, stoned. Tisoy shows her in. Melissa starts quarreling with Bogs for not being home, then remarks on Laura’s condition. Tisoy calls Bogs over to attend to Laura. Melissa goes to kitchen where Bogs is checking on Laura and slaps Laura out of jealousy when she sees her. Bogs apologizes to Laura. In Bogs’s driveway, Tisoy asks Orbac to handle Melissa. Tisoy goes to Bogs to tell him to lay off Laura.
Ext., Tisoy’s car, day. Tisoy takes Laura home but she refuses and asks him to drive around. Exasperated because she kept asking to be taken to several destinations, he decides to bring her home.
Int., jail, day. Wordless take of Cholo brooding by himself.
Int., Laura’s stairway, day. Landlady scolds Laura for delay in paying rent, gives her an ultimatum.
Int., Laura’s living room, day. Sheriff orders assistants to confiscate Cholo’s band instruments. Laura pleads for something to be left behind but their orders are strict. After they leave, she drinks alone on floor.
Int., Laura’s bedroom, night. Laura wakes up at night, runs out of liquor. She sees pic of her with Cholo on her night table, pops a pill but can’t sleep.
Ext.-int., Bogs’s house, night. Laura arrives stoned, Bogs takes her in and gives her a drink. In his living room, he apologizes about Melissa’s outburst and says they split. He tries to draw her out but she keeps quiet. They share a joint. Laura falls asleep while he talks. He messes with her while she’s unconscious. Orbac arrives but no one answers at the door. He enters, sees what Bogs is doing, and quarrels with him. Laura tells Orbac to stop
Int., jail, day. Orbac reluctantly tells Cholo what happened with Bogs, exonerates Laura and blames Bogs for plying Laura with stuff.
Ext., isolated spot, day. Laura cries outdoors at sunrise.
Int., Bogs’s residence, day. Bogs sees Laura in his home, tells her he came from Orbac. He tells her a story about Melissa’s desperation to get married to him. Laura gets kitchen knife. Tisoy is able to stop her from attacking Bogs.
Ext., Tisoy’s car, day. Laura keeps crying in car until morning. Laura gets out of car, walks alone, rejects Tisoy, kicks his car, walks away.
Ext., Laura’s fence, night. Cholo enters Laura’s house by jumping over the fence. He waits for her inside but she doesn’t arrive.
Ext., bar, night. Laura, undergoing cold turkey, goes to a bar.
Ext.-int., Orbac’s residence, night. Melissa tells band members she’ll be resting. Cholo calls Orbac through window. Orbac lets him in, says he escaped but Laura wasn’t home. Orbac says he heard she shacked up wtih Bogs. Cholo wants to leave to find them but Orbac stops him.
Back to top
Ext., bar, night. Bouncers expel Laura from bar. She continues quarreling with them outside. Briccio drives up and picks her up.
Int., clinic, night. Medics discuss Laura’s condition with Briccio. Doctor sedates her, tells Briccio she needs to be brought to rehab hospital.
Int., drug rehab dormitory, night. Laura awakens to swinging feet, realizes windows are steel-barred. Inmates inform her she’s in “Bicutan” (Department of Health Treatment and Rehabilitation Center). She lashes out but they laugh. Medics are called in to restrain her.
Int., drug rehab isolation cell, night. In an isolation cell, she undergoes cold turkey, calling for Cholo. Attendants arrive to calm her down.
Int., Laura’s bedroom, night. Alone at home and holding gun, Cholo dwells on knowledge that Bogs took Laura from him.
Int., Bogs’s garden, night. Bogs, drunk, arrives at his home with Melissa. She leaves him to prepare something inside. Cholo chokes him and escapes.
Ext., rehab yard, day. Inmates train Laura to jog. She wears out too quickly so they have to force her. They’re subsequently punished by being forced to duckwalk.
Int., rehab dining hall, day. They line up for lunch, then have grace before meals.
Int., Laura’s bedroom, day. At home and alone, Cholo broods.
Int., doctor’s office, day. Briccio asks doc about Laura. Doc asks for her chart and reports that she’s doing well. Doc says it will take 2-3 months to complete her treatment.
Ext., rehab yard, day. Laura continues outdoor regimen and training with rehab inmates. As they rest, she receives a gift from Briccio. In a black bag is a cap, which she wears.
Ext., rehab work area, day. She hums song that an inmate recognizes. Attendant fetches her to receive a visitor.
Ext., visiting area, day. She and attendant walk to visitng area. Briccio introduces himself to Laura. She remarks that his face is familiar to her. She remembers him as Shirley’s companion.
Ext.-int., Briccio’s residence, day. After her rehab, Briccio brings her to his home, introduces his four domestic helpers. Laura’s overwhelmed by size of his house but he tells her to get used to it because it’s where she’ll be living.
Int., Laura’s bedroom in Briccio’s residence, day. When she enters her bedroom, she finds flowers with a note from him. She’s delighted by the luxuries he provided. His maid brings her more flowers with note from him. She overhears Shirley quarreling with Briccio
Int.-ext., Briccio’s living room & garden, day. Shirley quarrels with Briccio because of Laura’s presence in his life. She calls Laura addict, drunkard, skanky. He doesn’t answer while their argument spills over into the garden and Shirley eventually walks out. Laura keeps observing them from a distance.
Int., Briccio’s living room, night. Psychotherapist calls on Briccio, who says his nightmares are starting to recur along with violent moods. Doc tells him not to skip his meds.
Int., nightclub, night. Briccio has dinner with Laura, offers her a major concert. She’s hesitant but he encourages her. While slow-dancing, he says he doesn’t want to intrude between her and Cholo. When seated again, he confesses that he rarely lavishes attention on people unless he finds them special. She calls herself lucky. He tries to kiss her but she doesn’t seem responsive.
Int., Briccio’s living room, night. Laura vocalizes with pianist trainer Dennis, then practices his song, with lyrics “Takot na muling malito, pagod na ring magtampo.” Briccio asks for her to relax.
Int., Laura’s bedroom in Briccio’s residence, night. In bed, Laura requests Briccio by phone if she can include two members of her band, Orbac and Tisoy.
Int., Briccio’s bedroom & living room, night. Laura fetches doc, who finds Briccio crying in depressive state in his bedroom. Laura brings his medication, doc tells him to relax. She and doc move to living room, away from Briccio’s hearing range, and she asks doc what exactly is his illness. Doc says Briccio doesn’t want her to know but she insists. Doc says Briccio has violent psychotic tendencies. In his bedroom, Briccio dreams.
Back to top
Ext.-int., Briccio’s childhood home, day. While he was a kid, his sister brings him a surprise. She gifts him with a harmonica. He pushes his father who dies from falling. His mother blames him for his father’s death.
Int., Briccio’s bedroom, night. Briccio awakens, asks for Sara.
Ext., Briccio’s gate, night. Cholo arrives at night at Briccio’s residence, rings bell and asks guard for Laura but is told there’s no person by that name there. Briccio climbs fence but is told to leave.
Int., Laura’s bedroom in Briccio’s residence, night. Laura answers Cholo’s phone call, where he confesses he escaped from jail. Briccio enters and asks who called, Laura says it’s just a band member. Briccio says guard reported someone who insisted on entering but Laura says she never instructed anyone to visit her. She resumes talking with Cholo and arranges an assignation.
Ext.-int., Laura’s residence, night. Briccio and henchmen arrive by car and enter Laura’s living room. Cholo’s harassing Laura but Briccio and his men show up to retrieve her by gunpoint.
Int., Briccio’s living room, night. Briccio hits Laura and demands to know if she loves Cholo and how she escaped his home.
Ext., Briccio’s yard, night. Briccio beats up man he suspects didn’t guard Laura from escaping. Sheryl shows up and pleads for another chance but he gets mad and shoots her as Laura watches from a window.
Int.-ext., Laura’s bedroom in Briccio’s residence & Briccio’s family’s garden, night & day. Briccio watches Laura sleeping and associates Laura with his sister Sara, with whom he’s incestuously obsessed. He remembers hitting Sara in the family garden for planning to marry someone else but she now looks like Laura. As Sara leaves, he pleads with her but she refuses him. In present time, his anger mounts and he nearly shoots Laura in bed but she stirs and he moves away.
Int., Laura’s living room, Laura’s bedroom in Briccio’s residence, and Briccio’s bedroom, night. Cholo calls Laura saying he loves her and asking if she still needs him. He winds up cursing himself. He asks her to be with him but she tells him it’s not possible. Cholo threatens to kill himself and her. Briccio listens in to their conversation.
Int., beauty-parlor lobby, day. Laura meets Cholo. They attempt to elope in a cab.
Ext., Briccio’s car, day. Briccio and his men follows the taxi they took. His car blocks their way and he abducts them.
Ext., isolated lot, night. Briccioo’s henchmen bring Cholo to edge of a pit. Laura pleads with Briccio but he hits her unconscious. Cholo spits at Briccio, who affixes silencer to his gun then shoots Cholo.
Ext., Briccio’s garden, day. Briccio asks Laura to rehearse but she refuses. She demands to have her freedom but he also refuses and tells her she has no choice except to perform in the concert for her that he’ll be producing.
Int., concert hall, night. Laura sings “Iisa Pa Lamang” (music Danny Tan, lyrics Joey Reyes). Briccio’s seated but Boyet in the wings notices man with suspicious bag. Boyet hurries to warn someone. Briccio walks out before her song ends and the assassin’s shotgun is aimed at her.
Ext.-int., concert hall, night. Police arrive, shoot it out with Briccio’s gang. As audience applauds, she’s shot and audience panics. Someone turns off the lights.
Int., concert hall, night. Assassin exchanges shots with police.
Int., concert hall backstage, Briccio’s family’s garden, night. Briccio sees Laura wounded in the dark and caresses her face. He remembers Sara, whom he killed in the family garden. He promises to keep her safe, hears gunfire as police close in, lifts Laura’s body, lifts her to move her.
Int., dressing room, night. Briccio hides Laura in dressing room closet. He sees Laura wounded and struggling, pleads with her to stay, gives her his jacket to keep her warm, and calls her Sara during a breakdown. Laura realizes he’s gone crazy as Boyet sees what’s happening.
Int.-ext., dressing room and Briccio’s family’s residence, night & day. Briccio remembers incestuous and playful moments with Sara in his family’s home and garden. Boyet witnesses his confession and Briccio’s mounting rage. He aims gun at her. Boyet stops him from shooting her, police hit him as Laura screams.
Ext., concert hall exit, night. Medics take out Laura to an ambulance as in opening, leaving Boyet behind.

Á!

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January 24, 2026

Canon Decampment: Veronica Velasco

By Joel David

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Nuuk

Additional Language: Greenlandic
Year of Release: 2019
Director: Veronica Velasco [as Veronica B. Velasco]
Screenwriters: Aileen Alcampado, Veronica Velasco, Jinky Laurel
(From a story by Erwin Blanco & Aileen Alcampado)
Producers: Viva Films, OctoArts Films, Mavx Productions

Cast: Aga Muhlach, Alice Dixson, Ujarneq Fleischer, Elaine Yu, Amisuna Berthelsen, Ane Marie Ottosen, Cherisa Chy Dupitas, Maja Thomsen, Giard Paul Dupitas, Kim Kimsen, Jennifer Baquit, Ann Cortez, Stephen Bonotan, Jemina Sørensen, Mikkel R. Sørensen, Geraldine Lontac Lastein, Kevin Dalugdug, Tom Lynge, Ike Giroy, Bertha Lynge, Tuperna Kristiansen, Silvia Olsen, Angel Calmiag Teran, Junie Ducay, Jovanie Ducay, Harold Ducay, Marlouis Ducay, Hugh Ducay, Henrik de Leon, Jason Jensen, Mario Castillo, Irwin Lee Dupitas, Jesper Øraker, Nukakkuluk Kreutzmann

Elaisa Svendsen, a recently widowed overseas Filipina, needs Prozac for her insomnia, but the pharmacist refuses her request unless she can get a renewed prescription from her still-vacationing doctor. Mark Alvarez, a fellow Filipino whom she doesn’t know, overhears her predicament and offers her some of the tablets he just purchased. He asks for her number in case he might get into trouble for violating the law. When she gets home, she takes too many pills and dials her phone for help. She wakes up next morning to find Mark attending to her, saying she dialed his number and he had to break her window to be able to get to her. She tells him about her situation, including her problem with her rebellious son Karl: she identified his girlfriend using a rival girl’s name and the depressive woman, consumed with jealousy, wrangled with Karl and killed herself. Karl arrives during Mark’s later visit but runs away that night after quarreling with Elaisa, just as Mark’s driving away and almost hits him. The two of them have a conversation about their difficulty coping with Greenland culture and Karl admits that he prefers to stay in the Philippines, which he’d visited once with his parents. Mark tells him and, later, Elaisa that he thinks it’s a great idea, since she plans to set up a business in the home country. Right before boarding the plane for their trip, Karl discovers that he forgot his passport and has to retrieve it at home. Elaisa tells him to take a later flight but he tells her a blizzard began and flights have been canceled. Elaisa though encounters a few more surprises when she arrives in Pinas.

Greenland has assumed increasing significance since the relase of Nuuk, titled after the country’s capital city. Under the second presidency of Donald Trump, it has become an object of colonial contention between the continentally co-located US and European leaders responding in support of Denmark, its postcolonial administrator in a still-evolving conflicted relationship. More relevant to the Philippine condition are two matters: first, overseas Filipino workers constitute the biggest number of foreign residents in Greenland, poetically apposite for a population with a history of both European and American occupations; and second, another local film, also woman-directed and set in the margins of Western Europe, came out the same year by the same producer. Sigrid Andrea Bernardo’s UnTrue, set in the Republic of Georgia, would stand tall on its own terms and would therefore be an unfair basis for comparison. Nevertheless, certain similarities between it and Nuuk, as well as with other celebrated works from 2022 where the OFW presence looms later in the narratives, Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness and Lorcan Finnegan’s Nocebo, raise cautionary issues recognizable to any outsider who ventures to reside in cold countries: any excitement or romanticism will eventually be subsumed under issues of sustenance, if not survival. As in UnTrue, these get formulated in terms of heterosexual gender conflicts, linked to incidents in the home country. Nuuk distinguishes itself by turning on the tragedy of a pursuit of retribution that overrides any possibility of remorse on the part of the wrongdoer, although the more unexplored aspect of the narrative lies in the cause of conflict between the protagonists—their offsprings’ thorough immersion in a culture (signified by their fluency in the local language) that their parents are too alienated from handling, and therefore understandably helpless in intermediating. Nuuk justifies the treatment it presents in order to provide a handle for the audience in figuring out, along with the parents, what their children are undergoing. A forthcoming wave in the OFW saga would be works where second-generation Filipinos in foreign places narrate their own stories, on their own terms, already evident in a limited number of hyphenated works (mostly Fil-Am) but insufficiently global enough to acknowledge the presence of fellow nationals in every part of the world.

Á!

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January 19, 2026

Canon Decampment: Monti Parungao

By Joel David

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1—Bayaw

English Title: Brothers in Law
Year of Release: 2009
Director & Screenwriter: Monti Parungao [as Monti Puno Parungao]
(From a story by Danio Caw)
Producer: Climax Films

Cast: Danilo Vergara, Janvier Daily, Andrew Miguel, Kaye Alipio, Tina Agregado, Daniel Magbanua Jr., Noel Cabuhat, Cleo Muparanum, Jun Austria, Danilo Arayde Jr., Benedict Flores, Manny Pahaub, Rizaldi “Saysay” Rodriguez, Rolly Fundales, Hazel, Dhang Macapagal, Monti Parungao, Don Marion Mariring, Sany Chua, Onin Lara, Johnrex Espinosa, Alvin Agoncillo, Jeff Almazan

Danilo Vergara is taken out of his jail cell to be interviewed by a police investigator. He narrated how he had difficulty making ends meet as an entry-level police officer, forced to engage in petty corruption but finally targeted in a buy-bust operation. His brother-in-law Rhenan Jacinto is a neighborhood layabout, betting on spider combats and earning playing money by selling himself to queer onlookers. Danilo’s wife gets increasingly antagonistic with her hubby and brother, since she has to act as sole earner from nightclub work. When Danilo gets fed up with her insults, the couple quarrel over his gun—which accidentally discharges and kills her. He and Rhenan flee to a distant town where they use up the money they brought to stay in a motel and snatch valuables from unsuspecting pedestrians. Eric, another sidewalk denizen, makes their acquaintance and offers the use of a small room where he squats. Whenever Danilo feels stressed and needs to find relief, he makes use of Rhenan, with Eric becoming an additional option. Eric though seeks to split the alliance between the fugitives, which Rhenan is too naïve to notice but which Danilo readily realizes.

2—The Escort

Year of Release: 2011
Director: Monti Parungao [as Monti Puno Parungao]
Screenwriter: Lex Bonife
(From a story by Lance D. Collins)
Producers: Lexuality Entertainment & Treemount Pictures

Cast: Miko Pasamonte, Danniel Derramyo, Jommel Idulan, Bryal Legaspi, Katleen Borbon, Franklin Jundak, Dennis Diwa, Lance D. Collins, Bien Rivera, Edward Sanggalang, Hart Thiel Pascual, Joseph Daoang, Alan Dimaano, Clifford Coloma, R.J. Naguit

Karlo barely earns enough to cover his rent and has to contend with prospective clients who renege on their appointments. At the bar where he makes himself available to johns on the prowl, Yuri introduces himself and confesses an attraction to him. Karlo takes him home for a night together, where Yuri also narrates how he has to live with a congenital ailment. Karlo agrees to a second meetup, a rarity for him, and has to blow off a lucrative date with an eager client. He discovers that his other sources have avoided him, pressured by the client angered by his turnaround. When Yuri also seems to have canceled him, he tries to determine his new pal’s whereabouts and encounters unwelcome news.

During the decidedly transitional period, roughly the first decade of the current millennium, when video production was low-end enough to enable mall screenings without threatening celluloid releases, the resulting niche was immediately occupied by soft-core gay-male material, inasmuch as it attracted the kind of audience who could use darkened spaces as an opportunity to cruise for prospective partners. Monti Parungao was one of the names associated with the trend, although his output was less prolific than most. Typical of the spell in Pinas “queer” cinema, the releases were short and traded on romantic tales intended for distracted consumption. Bayaw and The Escort complement each other for being two-hander quest narratives premised on the aspirations of underprivileged individuals. The fugitives in Bayaw define their interactions as situational occurrences—i.e., they make use of available warm bodies to satisfy their carnal needs, and only arrive at a realization of an emotional attachment ironically when imprisonment stops them from fleeing further. In The Escorts, an older hustler is surprised to realize how the love he dispenses is precisely what he had been depriving himself of, awakened to this reality by a younger practitioner who happens to admire him. The epiphany occurs early enough, so the story should conclude when it happens, were it not for the intrusion of complications induced by the characters’ destitution. Film critic Jojo Devera points out in his review how hope and despair collide in the characters’ crossroads, where they “coexist in a contemporary world of excess and absurdity normalized amidst the chaos of it all, while dismantling social boundaries” (“Everybody Hustles,” Sari-Saring Sineng Pinoy, November 2024). Parungao’s presentations deliver on the promise of significance and poignancy in a much-abused and unfairly derided subgenre.

Á!

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January 18, 2026

Canon Decampment: Nora Aunor

By Joel David

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Greatest Performance [unfinished]

Year of Intended Release: 1989
Director & Screenwriter: Nora Aunor [as Guy]
Producer: NCV Films

Cast: Nora Aunor, Tirso Cruz III; Julio Diaz; Kristoffer Ian de Leon; Fe de los Reyes; Rez Cortez; Lara Melissa de Leon, Jet Montelibano, Butch Elizalde, German Moreno, Michael de Mesa, Tony Carreon, Miguel Tanciangco, Bella Flores, Nonoy Zuñiga, Bobby Taylo

Laura’s body is carried out of an auditorium where a young unnamed fan wanders backstage to dwell on his memory of her. Laura’s life unfolds as her success as a singer enables a lifestyle of decadence and dissipation, which people in her social orbit exploit. She lives with Cholo, a violence-prone musician who turns to drugs out of frustration from his lack of success in managing her career. Her propensity to get stoned by herself results in a traumatic incident where a gang of men invite her to their table and drug her in order to gang-rape her; she attempts to gun them down afterward but gives up and intensifies her addictive behavior. After her attempt to stage a concert at a small-time fashion venue results in her band members brawling with unruly audience members, she pleads with an amorous producer. But when the latter attempts to sexually assault her, Cholo shows up and shoots him dead. With Cholo in jail and a sheriff confiscates her band’s musical instruments because of their inability to cover their bank loan, she binges out on liquor and drugs, with Briccio picking her up and taking her to a rehab clinic. Briccio convinces her to stage an anniversary concert as her way of announcing her intention to turn over a new leaf, but Cholo escapes from jail and hooks up with her, inciting Briccio’s psychotic condition.

Possibly the most irregular entry in this entire canon listing, Greatest Performance underwent the exceptional journey of embodying Nora Aunor’s ultimate auteurist aspiration: she was producer, director, writer, lead actor, and singer. Exasperated by the creative pressures weighing on the project, she encountered rejection from the Metro Manila Film Festival, which had always been receptive to her proposals in the past and even after this case. Having already spent around ₱3 million, a significant fortune that time, she decided to scrap the entire undertaking—easier to accomplish then because of the celluloid nature of the footage. Film critic-archivist Jojo Devera, one of her confidants, managed to secure a low-end video transfer, which she also wished to destroy when she learned of its existence. With her demise in March 2025, the film may now be counted as public-domain material, with the implicit acknowledgment that Aunor did not wish for its persistence.[1] As it is, the transferred copy still requires sound effects, some dubbing and trimming, editorial transitions, and closing credits (a clear signal not just of its provisional nature but also of Aunor’s well-known timidity is her director-writer credit, which uses her nickname “Guy,” as well as her producer’s credit designated with only her initials). Nevertheless it tracks a Todesroman (a coming-of-death story, as opposed to the coming-of-age Bildungsroman) in a performing artist’s life, using a fictionalization of experiences that she acknowledged as part of her personal history in a series of interviews that she granted upon her return in 2011 from her extended US sabbatical. In fact her store of first-person narratives was capable of yielding even more controversial material, but the undeniable intertext for which GP could serve as corrective was an earlier MMFF project that purported to depict the life of a successful singer, but which proceeded from the preposterously hoary, not to mention sexist, perspective that a female pop-culture figure’s success is less worthy than the life of a male doctoral candidate. GP does not reject the moralistic premise, a decision that potentially weakens its ideological position, but it does show an insider’s intimate familiarity with the extremes and dangers that a dissipated star’s life could sink to, and configures the men in the central character’s life as destructive forces. Moreover, it furnishes the singular element that Aunor insisted on acknowledging, all the way to the end of her existence: the support of her fans. In GP only one admirer (played by her biological child) interacts with the singer’s life, but the fan’s loyalty, helplessness, and insistence on being present during her career peaks speaks volumes about the high regard Aunor placed on her followers. GP might yet reemerge as a closer-to-finalized sample, especially with forthcoming developments in artifical-intelligence solutions, but even in its present damaged condition, its embodiment of the Noranian predicament will prove rewarding to any appreciator of Philippine film stardom. Almost needless to add, astute directorial judgments are literally evident in her setups and cutting points, with even the most minor performers carefully coached for the roles they assume. The dialogues are borderline-démodé, but then nearly her entire performance is either reactive or silent—an acknowledgment of the strength that her directors admired: hard to believe, considering Aunor’s formidable track record, but the film’s “greatest performance” title is fully earned, even in terms of the final number she sings. If the MMFF authorities had an inkling of the historical document that they so casually dismissed, they would have realized that all the later accolades they granted Aunor could never compensate for the near-loss suffered by GP.

Note

[1] For a special issue of Kritika Kultura devoted to Philippine film stardom, for which I was preparing an article on Nora Aunor, I learned about the existence of Jojo Devera’s video copy of Greatest Performance and asked permission from Aunor, via Ricky Lee, to conduct a close reading of the material, with the assurance that the resultant study would be strictly academic; she granted her permission. (The KK article is titled “Firmament Occupation: The Philippine Star System” and appeared in the August 2015 issue, pages 248–84, with DOI:10.13185/1656-152×1653.) A few years later, Devera organized an informal group comprising critics and tech experts to request, via video conferencing, that she allow the completion of the film, even without her participation. Here she drew the line and made it clear that as far as she was concerned, she was over the project and that she did not wish any further work to be done on it. With Aunor’s death in March 2025, Devera has been overseeing possibilities for readying GP for public consumption, with the participation of Adolfo Alix Jr., who directed her last few film projects.

Á!

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January 9, 2026

Canon Decampment: Bagane Fiola

By Joel David

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Baboy Halas: Wailings in the Forest

English Translation of Primary Title: Wild Boar
Language: Matigsalug
Year of Release: 2016
Director: Bagane Fiola
Screenwriters: Bagane Fiola, Bem Di Lera, Janna Moya
(From a story by Bagane Fiola)
Producers: QCinema International Film Festival, Origane Films, CoolLab Studios

Cast: Omeles Laglagan, Ailyn Laglagan, Vangelyn Panihao, Jhea Mae Laglagan, Danilo Casig, Sadam Dagsil, Rolly Panihao, Henyo Panihao, Ernesto Capal, Daniel Adang, Daniel Naran, Elvie Magwana, Imelda Lascuña, Jasmen Flores, Jessa Jaime, Lita Lantong, Merlie Lantong, Sheryl Arendain, Daniel Dagsil, Araiz Panihao, April Laglagan, Beah Maguana, Emily Dagsil, Felepe Lantong, Felix Laglagan, Janeth Lantong, John Philip Laglagan, Julius Laglagan, Lita Casig, Lolita Lantong, Mad Laglagan, Marcelino Singkianon, Mercy Laglagan, Nena Singkianon, Nenita Gordo, Nueme Panihao, Pepe Laglagan, Renato Lumin, Ruben Lantong, Taisan Panihao

[Note: spoilers provided] Despite the supplication of his datu (tribal chieftain) to their god Manama, Mampog has difficulty catching a wild boar, which his family relies on for their supply of meat. Du, another tribe member, convinces a woman from another tribe to live with him, in defiance of her commitment to another man. Her angered husband attacks Du and succeeds in killing him, resulting in a pangayaw or tribal war. In order to wage for peace, the man who killed Du agrees to provide Du’s tribespeople with five horses, although he pleads that two pieces of metal treasures be substituted for the fifth. The aggrieved tribe’s datu accepts the offer and the tribe members celebrate their husay or restoration of order. Meanwhile, Mampog takes leave of his two wives in order to hunt but, after performing a ritual in a cave, finds instead a fantastically white-colored wild sow. He brings it home but refuses to slaughter it. At night, he sees the sow in the form of a white diwata or nymph and follows it through the forest, then loses track of it. He kills a group of young drinkers and leaps into the river by a waterfall; when he surfaces, he finds several wailing nymphs surrounding him. Next day, one of his wives searches for him, bringing her hunting weapon. She asks the drinkers where he went and they answer. When she nears the falls, she finds a black boar and aims her arrow at it.

In ethnographic cinema, feature films on indigenous societies made by well-intentioned practitioners are always in danger of succumbing to the artist’s bias, with the subjects subjugated to the filmmaker’s vision. One such approach intended to minimize this problem, Jean Rouch’s cinéma vérité, proved useful enough to be appropriated as one of the new devices in the toolbox of the French New Wave. An even more subject-responsive method, described as the “filmmaker-initiated mode of intercultural filmmaking” by Katrina Ross A. Tan in her article titled “Lumad Image-Making in Baboy Halas (2016) through Intercultural Filmmaking” (published in Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance), suffuses the entrancing execution of Baboy Halas. As such, the film also requires more advanced prep than usual—one reason why its synopsis here is extensive, to the point of including plot twists, though any possible matriarchal influence is no longer apparent. Bagane Fiola’s purpose is entirely laudable: to create a work whose primary audience would be the Matigsalug audience, witnessing themselves and hearing their language in film for the first time. As such, the film-viewing experience would place the rest of the global audience in a quandary, since the film eschews the use of a narrator and, admittedly admirably, deploys sophisticated storytelling devices. The film’s several incidents, premised on the parallel narratives of two tribesmen, are filled with nuances, implications, and interrelations, drawn from Fiola’s constant consultation with the datu and other members of the tribe, and explicated satisfactorily in Tan’s article. The rewards of responsible readiness provide extra benefits for the outside appreciator, as befits the best samples of ethnofiction: Who hasn’t wondered, for example, whether overfamiliar scenes of seduction, elopement, and bloody revenge in Westernized movies can incite the same level of suspense alongside amusement when played out by indigenous actors (who’ll incidentally always stand out by their physical beauty and graceful movements in lush forests, where the sounds of nature provide a unique kind of accompaniment)? Will the enchantment of forces that refuse to conform to our rational understanding prove as terrifying to these people as they undoubtedly would to us? The answers lie in securing a copy of Baboy Halas and stepping into a world that even an ordinary Philippine audience would find enthralling.

Á!

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December 28, 2025

Canon Decampment: Sigrid Andrea Bernardo

By Joel David

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Ang Huling Cha-Cha ni Anita (Anita’s Last Cha-Cha)

Alternate Title: Ang Huling Cha-Cha ni Anita
Year of Release: 2013
Director & Screenwriter: Sigrid Andrea Bernardo [as Sigrid Andrea P. Bernardo]
Producers: Ekweytormc, Pixeleyes Multimedia, Quiapost Productions

Cast: Angel Aquino, Therese Malvar, Jay Bordon, Lenlen Frial, Solomon Mark de Guzman, Marcus Madrigal, Lui Manansala, Gigi Columna, Star Orjaliza, Sarah Pagcaliwagan, Rhea Medina, Leo Salazar, Jim Bergado, Sang Pascual, Fudge de Leon, Marjorie Lorico, Joel Ian Pagcaliwagan, Yano Escueta

As a military officer, Anita makes sure her cadets observe strict discipline, but when one of them admits that she’s distracted because she fell for an enlisted man, Anita smiles inwardly and recalls the time when she was still a child hanging out with her chums Carmen and Goying. The two playact the rituals of courtship and flirtation expected of normal children, but Anita’s attention is focused on a new arrival, the grownup Pilar. All the townspeople ostracize Pilar and she accepts their judgment, but Anita eventually realizes that this stemmed from an earlier time when Pilar was not just an abortionist but also a homewrecker. Anita realizes that her early stirrings of desire are for Pilar, and the latter similarly welcomes her as another outcast because of her masculine comportment and choice of clothes. When the past that Pilar left behind catches up with her, Anita realizes that Pilar will have no one else to look after her, just as Pilar also finds ways to nurture Anita in her own way. The looming feast-day celebration of Santa Clara imposes religion-induced conservative values on the townsfolk but also, inasmuch as their icon is famed for fertility, an awareness of the necessity for sexual fulfillment.

Same-sex desire had been around in Philippine cinema since the sexual-libertarian period of the early 1970s (actually 1969, with the first male kiss in Armando Garces’s Eric). It took lesbianism, however, over a decade, in the 1990s, before non-negative imaging could begin. The emergence of low-budget digital production in the present millennium also once more neglected the women’s option, since queer male audiences could use soft-core film presentations as an opportunity for cruising in film theaters, a too-risky activity for women. Hence the serendipitous emergence of Ang Huling Cha-Cha ni Anita was more than just an instance of “better late than never”—which, in the wiser formulation of Geoffrey Chaucer, was originally expressed as “better than never is late”: local so-called queer films, replicating premillennial US practice, were essentially gay-male rom-com stories with lots of skin, with departures from middle-class romances comprising the exceptions that proved the rule. AHCCA triumphed partly by proffering some of the charms that inhered in Aureus Solito’s Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, 2005), with its cross-gender-identified innocent awakening to the insurmountable summons of same-sex attraction. True to her 21st-century habitation, Anita, like Maxie before her, finds nothing anomalous about her baby-butch crush on a near-perfect specimen who just arrived in her community, although their immediate family members, for different reasons, find cause for worry in their respective objects of desire. AHCCA proceeds from a more conservative context because of its religiously inflected rural setting, but then Anita and her beau ideal manage to spend intimate though chaste moments together, a near-impossible situation in Maxie’s slum residence. The framing device, where Anita’s childhood is recollected by her older self, is dispensable for the most part, and fortunately the storytelling aptly makes light use of it, to set the mood of humor in the beginning and nostalgia in the end.

Lorna

Additional Language: Hiligaynon
Year of Release: 2014
Director & Screenwriter: Sigrid Andrea Bernardo [as Sigrid Andrea P. Bernardo]
Producer: Creative Programs

Cast: Shamaine Buencamino, Maria Isabel Lopez, Raquel Villavicencio, Lav Diaz, Felix Roco, Jim Paredes, Juan Rodrigo, Angel Aquino, Miguel Faustmann, Karl Medina, Alex Medina, Lui Manansala, Mackie Galvez, Lem Lorca, Lilit Reyes, Mao Mao, Nesta, Chinky V. Tan, Jona Ballaran, Sarah Pagcaliwagan, Ethel Fernandez, Lexter Capilia, Nicole Benzon, Moisel Apon, Rinald Derosario, Ronald Oliveros, Mayumi Gonzales

Single mother Lorna hangs out and contrasts with her high-school batchmates Miriam and Elvie. While all three were badly treated by their spouses, Miriam uses her hubby’s money to splurge on herself and treat her friends, while Elvie devotes her time and resources to the welfare of her descendants. Lorna admits that her ex-partner never reciprocated the love she had for him, and when she meets the younger woman he decided to marry, she treats her with civility. Their son Ardie, a band player, also deals with a turbulent love life; but while preparing for a reunion on the occasion of Miriam’s birthday, the friends discover that their campus heartthrob, a musician now named Rocky, is Ardie’s social-network acquaintance. Lorna and Rocky almost became a number way back when. Since she was really ghosted by a long-distance prospect, Lorna finds herself vulnerable to Rocky’s courtship. The two of them talk about their past apart from each other and discover that they have more in common now than they used to as HS classmates.

Sigrid Andrea Bernardo announced that her next major film, after Ang Huling Cha-Cha ni Anita (Anita’s Last Cha-Cha, 2013), was going to be a tribute to her mother, although her first choice for the title role, Nora Aunor, was unavailable when production began. One can see how Aunor could have introduced elements that would have elevated Lorna beyond the romantic comedies that she had mastered for most of her film career, but Bernardo had enough perspicacity to recognize where theater veteran Shamaine Buencamino could upgrade the viewing experience in her own way. She situates a teen-movie staple, a scene where female friends turn giggly over the presence of an ideal male catch, after the narrative midpoint, and makes us instantly realize how the accumulation of years makes the experience far more rewarding because of how the participants earned the right to indulge in silly pleasures. In line with her lead actor’s career specialization, she devices theatrical situations to highlight the turning points at this period in Lorna’s story, and not surprisingly Buencamino holds court in these scenes without any perceptive exertion. Bernardo by this point was already staking her claim as chronicler of the overlooked and/or downgraded members in contemporary Philippine womanhood, but part of the challenge in evaluating her auteuristic output is in recognizing how she appropriates stylistic approaches that serve the purpose of making her material palatable to mass viewers.

UnTrue

Year of Release: 2019
Director & Screenwriter: Sigrid Andrea Bernardo [as Sigrid Andrea P. Bernardo]
Producers: Viva Films & The IdeaFirst Co.

Cast: Cristine Reyes, Xian Lim, Rhen Escaño, Peewee O’Hara, George Lasha, Tengiz Javakhidze, Lera Chikvaidze, Giorgi Makharadze, Luminita Gamboa, Anita Haines, Pouna Khalili, Par Maghzi, Andy Knots, Magkee Khiabani, Edison Maghzi, Sophiko Khachidze, Misho Maisuradze, Ramin Ghonghadze, Shota Ghonghadze, Beso Kirikashvili, Irakli Uchaneish, Giorgi Khelashvili, Givi Poti Abesadze, Givi Bauradze, Nodar Kartsivadze, Giorgi Kartsivadze, Karlo Alavidze

A badly battered Mara tells a Georgian police officer that her husband is missing. Asked to tell her story, she narrates how, on his way to meet his Georgian vineyard business partner at the latter’s restaurant, Joachim bumped into her and one of his bottles fell and broke. As it turns out, Mara was the new waitress and Joachim befriended her as a fellow compatriot. Their relationship moved quickly, seemingly borne along by Joachim’s impulsive decisions—to move to an isolated residence, for example, and get married. He also had outbursts of rage over minor matters, and swerved while driving because he thought he’d run over a girl. After several attempts by Mara to get him to see a psychiatrist, Joachim presents his version of events to the specialist, going over the same incidents that Mara narrated but this time on the premise that Mara dominated their relationship. The couple’s conflicted relationship is rooted in incidents in their home country, when Joachim was a schoolteacher who conducted an ill-advised affair with one of his students, which resulted in a social-media sex scandal.

Sigrid Andrea Bernardo’s development as filmmaker is apparently premised on a nonnegotiable premise shared by a few though fortunately increasing number of millennium-era directors: that only those regarded as society’s Others deserve to be positioned front and center in her stories. From that point onward, she set for herself challenges that departed further from personal (and even geographic) experience, although it would be safer for us to take the admonition of the Greek playwright’s character, that nothing human is alien to any other human. UnTrue stands out not just in her body of work or even among Philippine women filmmakers, but as a global text that closely inspects the dynamics of trauma, pain, and the pleasure that has the potential to accompany exceptional cases of our experience of these sensations. Bernardo draws from the privilege exercised by Pinay filmmakers, where women’s suffering can be depicted with the certainty that they would be aware of its origins and dimensions, and that the director would never let go of her empathy for the sufferer. Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s Milagros (1997) would be the ne plus ultra in this realm of discourse, but Bernardo’s achievement lies in stepping away from these concerns and revealing, in progressively startling ways, the sadistic pleasure that men might be able to derive and, as payback, the cruelty that women are capable of inflicting. The revelation is subtle and ironic, since in any realistic instance of mutual combat, human females would inevitably physically lose to males. Yet UnTrue requires an impartial foreign system to rescue (as it were) the defeated male; the selection of the Republic of Georgia as figurative battleground resonates with the Philippines’s labor-export strategies and blends near-perfectly with the detrital beauty that typifies Eastern European film aesthetics, but it also raises parallel issues in both countries’ predicaments—i.e., lying adjacent to hostile neighbors, approaching developed status with difficulty, and observing Christian practice (with Georgia fortunately aligned with its own Orthodox church rather than the Vatican State). In its refusal to declare any definitive winner between its flawed though well-matched protagonists, UnTrue looks forward to more ambitious material from a still-young but already unstoppable talent.

Á!

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December 20, 2025

Canon Decampment: To Track Down a Rare Film Title

By Joel David

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

After the triumphant global release of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), two European filmmakers followed suit, completing projects located in Manila. These had the distinction of being set around the time of the early 1980s Manila International Film Festival, when the Marcos dictatorship encouraged global personalities to highlight the country in every way they could. One of the titles, Cinq et la peau (Five and the Skin, 1982), by Cannes Film Festival talent scout Pierre Rissient, was reissued on video by Carlotta Films, the same outfit that made the Second Golden Age Euro releases of Lino Brocka and Mike de Leon available once more.

11011One other title from that period has been near-impossible to access: Jag Rodnar (I Am Blushing), Vilgot Sjöman’s typically semi-autobiographical feature whose title was meant to recall the succès de scandale of his soft-core I Am Curious films, subordinately titled Yellow (1967) and Blue (1968), as well as one of his better-received subsequent releases, Blushing Charlie (Lyckliga skitar, 1970). I remember watching rather unexceptional excerpts of Jag Rodnar from some collectors at the time of its release, although unlike Cinq et la peau, it was never exhibited in Pinas theaters.

11011I inquired with the Swedish Film Archives, whose representative said that the only available copy is in their national library; unfortunately the latter’s policy allowed researchers to watch their film collections only in their premises or via interlibrary loans with selected institutes in Scandinavia. Since my Canon Decampment writing project was self-funded, the next best thing would be to source a copy of Jag Rodnar’s storyline, the more detailed the better. The English-language interface of the archive listed the film but had no entry for story; fortunately the librarian I corresponded with provided a link for the film’s Swedish-language plotline. I’m reprinting it in full below, with minor edits and conflation of several isolated sentences into paragraphs. It’s a better-developed narrative arc than Cinq et la peau’s, but still partakes of the same narcissistic self-rationalization—something that future scholars of the period might be interested in inspecting.

The storyline of I Am Blushing (1981), written by Vilgot Sjöman:

A voiceover tells us that the film is dedicated to “Ford Francis Coppola” in memory of his expedition to the Philippines, where he created his masterpiece Apocalypse Now with Marlon Brando. Then an airplane interior is shown. And here is my doppelgänger Gunnar Sjöman, the announcer continues. He has had the same idea as Coppola—to draw inspiration from a novel by Joseph Conrad.

11011The novel is Victory (1915), and the main roles will be played by Max von Sydow and Siv Andersson. Gunnar Sjöman arrives in Manila, where he is reached by a phone call from Max von Sydow in the office of producer Domingo de Jesus. But the call is cut off before clarity is reached about Max von Sydow’s involvement.

11011The Swedish Film Institute pays 50 percent of the production costs, Gunnar says. The producer’s wife suggests [then-top tennis player] Björn Borg for the lead role. Then success is a given. A sailor searches for environments. He is well received in a remote village. But he is dissatisfied. The savages are too civilized. At a path he sees a sign with the text “Coppola was here.”

11011While Gunnar vainly seeks contact with Max von Sydow, the producer advocates hiring an international superstar for the lead role. Increasingly desperate, Gunnar drifts around town. At a bar, he begins to talk about his film plans with the American owner, Pete Cooper—who claims to have participated in Coppola’s filming as a military adviser and as Marlon Brando’s stuntman. Cooper runs a diversified business. He provides a room and a prostitute, and Gunnar stays for several days.

11011Siv Andersson arrives in Manila earlier than agreed. She tries to secretly contact the family of a political prisoner, but to no avail. Instead, she meets a lawyer, Jose Diokno, who tells her that the prisoner, Emanuel,[1] has been transferred to another prison and is no longer being tortured. The reunion between Gunnar and Siv is happy. They then talk about how many years earlier they broke up from their private relationship. It happened without them sorting out their intertwined emotional threads. What once was is highlighted with a glimpse from the film Carnival (1961).[2]

11011The streets are clogged with a religious procession. Gunnar and Siv leave a stalled taxi and end up meeting a healer who cures through the laying on of hands and performs operations with his bare hands. Blood flows.[3] Cries for healing and miracles are heard in Swedish. A short segment is shown from the film Simon the Sinner (1955).[4]

11011Actually, it was pretty crappy directing, Gunnar complains to Siv after the healer’s performance. Gunnar says he remembers the plot from his own film Simon 25 years ago. At the hotel, Siv receives a message that the prisoner Emanuel has escaped. Later, she learns that he is hiding in the mountains.

11011Gunnar, Siv and the producer are reconnoitering in the wild. They travel on rivers in long canoes. They pass a building on the shore, where a bald-headed man in a monk’s robe shouts: Ford Francis Coppola, where are you? It’s me, the Horror![5] “But I recognize him,” says Siv. “It’s Vilgot!” She shouts and waves, and he waves back. “What is he doing in this movie?” Gunnar wonders. Victory! Vilgot shouts with a clenched fist.

11011During a carnival-like party, the producer tells Gunnar that neither Max von Sydow nor Siv are in the film anymore. CBS has demanded an American TV star, and he in turn has demanded the female lead role for his wife. Gunnar and Siv seek refuge from the partying crowds. In a simple hotel room, they undress and kiss each other.

11011They have driven into deserted areas when they get into an argument. She is risking the entire film project through her contacts with certain elements, he says. She says that an Amnesty International group in Stockholm has simply asked her to seek justice for a political prisoner. Now the prisoner has escaped and is therefore no longer an Amnesty case. But she knows where to find him, and she is not out on political business. She just wants to help a fellow human being.

11011They get separated on the rough road. She is able to continue on a bus. His engine stalls after driving for a while. She is confronted with the news that her prisoner is dead. He has left behind a poem titled “Prayer,” in which he says he blushes at the injustices that God inflicts on poor people. Siv and Gunnar are reunited outside a telegraph station in a small town. They hug each other. Sorry, she says. He says he’s the one who should ask for forgiveness and shows a telegram he just received from the producer: “SUPERSTAR AND WIFE HAVE ARRIVED. RETURN IMMEDIATELY TO MANILA.”

11011Gunnar says he has to survive. It doesn’t have to be that bad to be an American TV star. Gunnar arrives at a swimming pool, where he is warmly greeted by the star—Larry Hagman—who introduces a new wife. Nearby, the bald Vilgot looks up. Siv introduces herself. Gunnar introduces her—after which she says goodbye to everyone.

11011Larry speaks confidentially to Gunnar. He hasn’t read the script yet, but the female lead role should probably be rewritten. It’s probably a bit too big for his wife to handle. A speech bubble rises from Gunnar’s mouth with the text “I blush.”

Notes

Many thanks to archivist Sam Lane and librarian Katarina Sandblom-Laamanen for help in tracking down Jag rodnar.

[1] Possibly a reference to Emmanuel Lacaba (1948–76), an activist poet who was killed by soldiers while on assignment with the New People’s Army in Davao del Norte. He occasionally spelled his nickname “Eman” (see Jose F. Lacaba, “Emmanuel F. Lacaba,” Martial Law Files: A History of Resistance, posted October 1, 2012, originally published in 1985).

[2] Karneval (1961), directed by Lennart Olsson and produced by Svensk Filmindustri, featured Bibi Andersson, Gerd Bibi Andersson, and Gunnar Hellström.

[3] Spalding Gray, in the comic monologue filmed by Steven Soderbergh, titled Gray’s Anatomy (1996), narrates how he traveled to Pinas to seek faith healers to cure an eye ailment. The punchline was that for all the money he spent, his condition did not improve.

[4] Simon syndaren, directed by Gunnar Hellström and produced by Metronome Studios, starred Hellström, Ann-Marie Gyllenspetz, and Stig Järrel.

[5] Francis Ford Coppola’s name was jumbled possibly to avoid the complications of making a direct reference without his permission. “The horror” was the final line of dialogue uttered by Colonel Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando. The description of a bald-headed man in a monk’s robe approximated Brando’s appearance in the film, which was Coppola’s way of downplaying Brando’s unexpected weight gain.

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