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Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay

Year of Release: 2011
Director & Screenwriter: Antoinette Jadaone
Producers: Cinema One Originals & Post Manila

Cast: Lilia Cuntapay, Gerladine Villamil, Antoinette Jadaone, Joel Saracho, Bella Mercado, Angel Castanos, Mary Jane Alejo, Opaline Santos, Carlo Cannu, Fernando Cruz, Eivy Rose Lavalle, Mark Sicat dela Cruz, Pio Balbuena, Moises Magisa, Ruffa Zuueta, Cris Lorena, Ring Perez, Neil Colango, Jo Macasa, Roman Perez Jr., Angela Andaya, Chanel Latorre, Rita Vargas, Joe Tutanes, Ramon Rebancos, Michael Orozco, Moncia Galvey-Tan, Edwin Sayson, Senaca Moraleda, Vincent Matteu, Erbin Bajado, Leo Valencia, Frances Mae Ramos, Jason Domantay, Ethel Francisco, Vanessa Abastillas, Mark Dizon, Regina Valenzuela, Aileen Alcampado, Irene Villamor, Candy Cypres, Joenathann Alandy, Ronald Mendoza, Juan Miguel Severo, Jed Medrano, Dingdong Dantes, Kris Aquino, Peque Gallaga, Lore Reyes, Alwyn Uytingco, Topel Lee, Marian Rivera, Camille Prats, Rez Cortez, Maryo J. de los Reyes, Mercedes Cabral, Raquel Villavicencio, Karen delos Reyes, Niña Dolino, Rita Daniela, Armando Lao, Irma Adlawan, Rio Locsin, Erika Padilla

Real-life bit player Lilia Cuntapay thrives on her newfound celebrity status in her old age, in the working-class neighborhood where she lives. Her daughter has migrated to the US and converses with her by phone occasionally. Since she has no mobile device of her own, she asks her neighbor to take her calls so she can be apprised of any casting call. Genre directors are aware of her strong presence, especially in horror roles. Movie stars, however, had never heard of her—until her nomination for one of the older awards competitions. Her neighborhood shares her excitement when a TV crew arrives to interview her, and she prepares extensively for the ceremony. The night of the broadcast results in some disappointment, but she nevertheless keeps her spirits up all the way to awards night.

Mockumentaries are rarely attempted in Philippine cinema, which may seem ascribable to the limited market for nonmainstream formats. But Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay helps steer the conversation away from the usual audience-bashing that elitists indulge in when they want to assure themselves of their superiority. Despite the ease with which it can be ingested, nothing about the production looks hurried or low-rent. Director Antoinette Jadaone also had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of Lilia Cuntapay, who died not long after completing the project, and who had enough good sense to know when the roles she accepted had the potential to impact culture beyond their exhibition period. (If anything, Jadaone can be faulted for having too much tastefulness to illustrate the moments when Cuntapay said she’d accepted “bold” roles that involved nudity or obscenity, preferring to present her jump-scare scenes instead.) The format works superbly as an occasion for industry members to uphold one of their own, so amusingly though unsurprisingly we find filmmakers and even stars agreeing to play-act for the sake of providing dramatic anticipation in the then-patently fictional occasion of Cuntapay acquiring an awards nomination. The film will remain one of a kind, as Cuntapay had been, and will reward occasional rewatching for the moments when one wishes to recall once more why the medium is capable of catching fire among its audiences and practitioners.

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That Thing Called Tadhana

English Translation: That Thing Called Meant-to-Be
Additional Language: Ilocano
Year of Release: 2014
Director & Screenwriter: Antoinette Jadaone
Producers: Cinema One Originals, Epicmedia, Monoxide Works, One Dash Zero Cinetools

Cast: Angelica Panganiban, JM de Guzman, Joem Bascon, Carlos Castano, Joenel Canaria, Bianca Balbuena, JR Miano, Joi Bayan, Kelvin Dy, Martin Mayuga, Jane Torres, Marjarey Kasey Politico, Monique Ladimo

At the airport on his way home from overseas work in Rome, Anthony Lagdameo sees Mace Castillo unable to check in her luggage because of excess weight. He offers to carry some of her possessions since he will be traveling light. Mace is affected by tearjerker scenes in the movie that she watches, and confesses that her boyfriend had dumped her for another woman. Anthony opts to keep her company to help nurse her broken heart, even when she expresses a drunken wish to take a trip all the way north to Baguio. They discover along the way that Mace’s dream was to write short fiction, while Anthony’s was to be a book illustrator. Their further interactions reveal a mutual compatibility with each other, but the results of such a quick-blooming romance will sometimes be unpredictable for both of them.

The several crossovers from independent to mainstream film practice generally failed to find sustainable exemplars. That Thing Called Tadhana has been the most influential of the lot, and the reasons are immediately apparent: a strong, articulate woman meets-cute with an understandably smitten man, both unfazed by the prospect of overseas employment yet sharing some past experience of heartbreak, venturing into less-familiar scenic spots while exchanging wit-laden insights into each other’s situations, ending with a bittersweet lack of closure that heightens their newly formed romantic bond. One may wonder how such a plain, by-now predictable formula can continue to yield such a well-received series of follow-up projects, but TTCT is long-ago enough to provide us with clues. The first would be a light directorial touch, reminiscent of the French romantic comedies (notably those of Eric Rohmer), successfully appropriated by Richard Linklater for his Before trilogy (1995-2013) as well as by Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo. The next would be a feminist spin on the manic pixie dream-girl, a Hollywood stock character who winds up being domesticated by the man she falls for; TTCT’s self-ironic neurotic lead female refuses to yield to her male partner’s bemused stoicism, instead winning him over to her impulsively free-spirited approach to life. A special touch that only TTCT has been able to pull off so expertly that the entire movie takes on the quality of a well-remembered pleasant dream is when the heartbroken woman reaches for an ideal of true love via John Lloyd Cruz’s character in Cathy Garcia-Molina’s One More Chance (2007). The reflexive touch is unobtrusive mainly because of the credible manner in which Antoinette Jadaone succeeds in integrating it into the narrative. (Not surprisingly, her earlier indie project and full-length debut, Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay [2011], foregrounded this process by letting the main subject play herself in a mock-documentary.) TTCT affirms its innovative roots by being lesser-budgeted than its progeny, but overflowing with so much spunk and wisdom that it still manages to surpass all the romcoms that it had since inspired.

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Fan Girl

Year of Release: 2020
Director & Screenwriter: Antoinette Jadaone
Producers: Black Sheep, Gold Studios, Crossword Productions

Cast: Charlie Dizon, Micko Laurente, Camille Penaverde, Bea Alonzo, Paulo Avelino, Milo Elmido Jr., Aikah Agnote, Cristine Calawod, Marjorie Lorico, Jack Alimbuyugin, Sheenly Gener, James Fajardo, Gie Onida, Mina Cruz, Joshua Cabiladas, Melvin Garcia

Jane’s a diehard fan of real-life movie star Paolo Avelino, who’s promoting his new movie with Bea Alonzo in a nearby mall. Instead of focusing more intently on her classroom discussions, she cuts her next session to attend the promotional program. Amid the mêlée over the stars’ presence, she manages to sneak into the cargo bed of Paolo’s pickup truck, sees his penis as he urinates by the roadside, and winds up at the abandoned and isolated villa where he resides. When he discovers her, she tells him she’s “almost 17” but since it’s already nighttime, he decides to show her the way back to the city the next day. Unable to sleep, she peeks at him and discovers him in coitus with an unknown woman. He sneaks up to her bedroom and invites her to have a beer, upon which she narrates her story of being abandoned by her father and having a stepfather she can’t stand.

Fan Girl starts out in mainstream territory, with the promise of conflicted romance enhanced by metafictional devices, despite sustaining lesser-than-usual production values. It moves toward increasingly psychoanalytic territory, with Jane, the central character, experiencing a displaced primal scene where she resolves to present herself as a substitute for Paolo Avelino’s female partner (essential background information disclosed during production was that the actress was 24 years old at the time). Avelino’s dissipation, exacerbated by his realization that the married working-class woman he fell in love with might leave him and take their son with her, makes him behave toward Jane with appalling irresponsibility, although the film is conscientious enough to depict how her romantic fantasies propel her as well toward self-destructive delusory behavior. The larger revelation, crucial to the project’s reflexive intent, is that Avelino produced the undertaking—an unusual affirmation of artistic credibility, as well as a paradoxical assurance that the actor, whatever his shortcomings, will never be as awful as his fictional counterpart; most significantly, the arrangement guarantees that the deliberate distance between actor/producer and his role can be regarded as an exercise in self-amusement, a logic of humor that equilibrizes Jane’s increasingly and inexorably serious trajectory. The semblance of FG with Lino Brocka’s lionized Bona (1980) was immediately noted in several responses to the film. We can note at the outset that, while Nora Aunor at her peak will always be worth repeated attention, FG as a film does not suffer from the comparison, and might even possess longer-term rewatch value.

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On the Job

Year of Release: 2013
Director: Erik Matti
Screenwriters: Erik Matti & Michiko Yamamoto
Producers: Star Cinema Productions & Reality Entertainment

Cast: Joel Torre, Gerald Anderson, Piolo Pascual, Joey Marquez, Michael de Mesa, Leo Martinez, Angel Aquino, Vivian Velez, Shaina Magdayao, William Martinez, Rayver Cruz, Empress Schuck, Lito Pimentel, Rosanna Roces, Al Tantay, Niño Muhlach, Joel Saracho

Tatang and his cocky protégé Daniel are let in and out of jail by the powers-that-be to work as hired killers. Handling their cases are local cop Joaquin and promising National Bureau of Investigation agent Francis. But the pursuit of justice becomes complicated when Francis realizes that his search for the truth can lead him to permanently sever his ties with his politician father-in-law.

Changes in technology can no longer be called revolutionary during a time when companies upgrade their electronic products as a means of capitalist survival; but the digital shift in Philippine cinema can be granted a measure of progressive agency if it manages to revitalize a long-dormant genre such as, in this case, the action film. On the Job upholds the critical social commentary that the best action samples purveyed during the genre’s heyday, roughly from the 1960s to the people-power revolt in 1986: as examples, in the present canon listing alone, we have films such as Gerardo de Leon’s The Moises Padilla Story (1961), Cesar Gallardo’s Geron Busabos: Ang Batang Quiapo (1964), Celso Ad. Castillo’s Asedillo (1971), Romy Suzara’s Pepeng Shotgun (1981), and several entries by Lino Brocka. On the Job depicts a heretofore clandestine situation so abhorrent and extensive that even recent real-life discoveries of similar and worse conditions still enable the movie to retain its shock factor—a tribute to Erik Matti’s skill at delineating congested urban spaces steeped in paranoia, betrayal, and ensuing heartbreak. In fact, because of the intensity of the movie’s vision of the state as failed and abusive provider, the narrative’s cold-blooded resolution regarding the denial of fatherly commitment provides cathartic relief, since it is a flesh-and-blood criminal father (Joel Torre in peak form) who grieves as he executes his professional duty at the expense of his chosen son. Along the way we get treated to impressive set-pieces, harrowing chase sequences, mile-a-minute repartee, even lust and tenderness—so for those inclined to linger further, the complex allegory advanced by the film becomes worthy of contemplation.

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Transit

Additional Language: Hebrew
Year of Release: 2013
Director: Hannah Espia
Screenwriters: Giancarlo Abrahan & Hannah Espia
Producers: Cinemalaya & Ten17P

Cast: Irma Adlawan, Jasmine Curtis-Smith, Ping Medina, Marc Justine Alvarez, Mercedes Cabral, Yatzuck Azuz, Perla Bronstein, Omer Juran

As Israel begins deporting the children of foreign workers, Filipinos Janet and her brother Moises hide their kids so they can remain in the country, with their respective Israeli employers sympathetic to their plight. Janet, a maid, clashes with her daughter Yael, who struggles to define her identity. Moises, a caregiver, looks for ways to make his son Joshua a legal resident. But an unfortunate incident will cause massive changes for these four individuals.

The most persuasive argument to be made for university-administered formal film training lies in this type of output, a debut film made by a fresh graduate, a woman who’d been partly foreign-based. The expected technical limitations will be evident to anyone who watches just for the purpose of cataloguing them, but the filmmakers turn their weakness into an advantage. Although resembling several foreign films that deal with the subject matter, including an Israeli entry, Shira Geffen and Etgar Keret’s Meduzot (Jellyfish, 2007), Transit compensates by using surface plainness as an opportunity to interweave globalization issues, fragmented time and space, and multiple characters. The result, as expected, is discursively complex; but the unexpected bonus is that the film is emotionally affective as well. The multicharacter film text has become one of the distinctive specializations of Filipino filmmakers, but Transit takes this format a step forward by applying the principle of multiplicity not just to the number of characters, but to the concepts of time and space as well.

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Zombadings 1: Patayin sa Shokot si Remington

English Translation: Zombadings 1: Kill Remington with Fear
English Title: Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings
Additional Language: “Swardspeak” [Philippine gay lingo]
Year of Release: 2011
Director: Jade Castro
Screenwriters: Moira Lang, Jade Castro, & Michiko Yamamoto
Producer: Origin8 Media

Cast: Martin Escudero, Lauren Young, Kerbie Zamora, Janice de Belen, John Regala, Roderick Paulate, Daniel Fernando, Angelina Kanapi, Eugene Domingo, Leandro Baldemor, Odette Khan, Ward Luarca, Bayani Agbayani, Jess Evardone, Joseph Fernandez, Andre Salazar, Marian Rivera

As a kid, Remington’s inconsiderate behavior toward gays causes a grieving cross-dresser to curse him to a future as a queer man. Fifteen years later, the curse starts to take effect as it changes how he looks and acts, despite his pursuit of a “normal” heterosexual lifestyle. Coincidentally, several gay men die one after another, of causes unknown. Realizing that he might be vulnerable to the same fate, Remington goes on a paranormal quest with his girlfriend and his best male friend (who willingly accommodates his conflicted other personality) to find out how to lift the curse and possibly stop the series of deaths.

By the time Zombadings demonstrated its creditable box-office clout, local film-industry observers were ready to accept the ability of so-called independent-film projects to challenge mainstream entries. What was exceptional about this particular piece, though, was its spirit—and not just in terms of its fantasy-based premise: it was the first and, as of this writing, the only local digital-indie movie to set aside both its expected high-art ambitions as well as its competitors’ mainstream appeal. Instead, it turned to a tradition in Philippine film practice, one that had generally paralleled the art-vs.-commerce struggle that vied for the public’s attention but always stayed under the radar, as it were: the much-derided B-movie, where all manner of crowd-pleasing genres clashed without worrying about their mutual incompatibilities, and where the complete lack of respectability allowed their practitioners to engage in occasionally innovative treatments of overlooked subjects. Zombadings brings together comedy, horror, action, musical numbers, transvestism, soft-core (same-sex) erotica, science fiction, family melodrama, and just plain old-fashioned weirdness; demands that its cast of veterans and newcomers, notably Martin Escudero in the title role, be good-natured sports in ridiculous-though-fun parts; and sneaks in an unexpectedly hefty critique of social intolerance and personal hypocrisy.

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LSS

Alternative Title: Last Song Syndrome
Year of Release: 2019
Director: Jade Castro
Screenwriters: Siege Ledesma & Jade Castro
(Based on a story by Jessie Lasaten, Emman A. de la Cruz, Nikkie del Carmen, Siege Ledesma, Jade Castro)
Producers: Film Development Council of the Philippines & Globe Studios

Cast: Gabbi Garcia, Khalil Ramos, Ben & Ben, Tuesday Vargas, Bernard Palanca, Elijah Canlas, Iana Bernardez, Mika Manikan, Eian Rances, Ameera Johara, Jam Rances

Zack and Sarah are millennials saddled with their own domestic problems who notice each other on a bus ride because of their love for the music of Ben & Ben. After the ride, Zack contends with his heartbreak over a crush who’s unavailable because of her on-again, off-again relationships, and provides much-needed company for his quirky single mother and her determination to find for him a suitable partner. Sarah, for her part, has to give up her dream of success as a singer-songwriter in order to help her younger brother finish his studies. The two navigate the complex challenges thrown their way by modern living until another chance encounter, also centered on Ben & Ben, brings them together once more.

Before she succumbed to an illness that cut off her mid-career productivity, Marilou Diaz-Abaya expressed her concern for the then-ascendant independent-cinema scene: that its practitioners looked down on mass audiences and, consequently, on their preferred genre in film—which for the past decade-plus meant romantic comedies. She explained how celluloid-era directors had to be careful in planning their projects down to the last shot, because of the great expense involved; for this reason, connecting with the audience, she said, should be a non-negotiable feature of filmmaking practice. Fortunately, a number of indie figures, most of them (not surprisingly) women, seemed to heed her call and began the time-honored tradition of introducing innovations and refining them while maintaining the genre’s appeal, which was (per Diaz-Abaya) allowing people to hope for something better. After Antoinette Jadaone’s That Thing Called Tadhana (2014) made strong femininity, sensitive masculinity, and ambivalent closures viable, LSS attempts a mode of seemingly meandering storytelling closer to the Euro art-film inspiration of indie projects, fuses this with TTCT’s still-useful elements, and draws from director Jade Castro’s confidence in investing seemingly trivial, even corny, developments with dignity, respect for the audience, and faith in his performers—who respond in turn by providing a reality effect all throughout what appear to be random twists and turns of events. The use of profound ironies as well as the subtlety of the film’s class, gender, and sexual politics would elicit admiration from the likes of Ernst Lubitsch, if the romcom master were still around today, while its stylistic fluidity would be worthy of comparison with none other than Diaz-Abaya in peak form. Philippine cinema welcomes a brighter future, once everyone takes a breather and figures out what makes an apparently casual yet strangely satisfying affair like LSS work.

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Ang Babae sa Septic Tank

English Title: The Woman in the Septic Tank
Year of Release: 2011
Director: Marlon N. Rivera
Screenwriter: Chris Martinez
Producers: Cinemalaya, Martinez Rivera Films, Quantum Films, & Straight Shooters Media

Cast: Eugene Domingo, JM de Guzman, Kean Cipriano, Cai Cortez, Jonathan Tadioan, Carlos Dala, K.C. Marcelo, Cherry Pie Picache, Mercedes Cabral, Lani Tapia, Eric Cabahug, Melvin Lee

Film-school graduates Rainier, Bingbong, and Jocelyn are raring to make what they envision as their Oscar-worthy debut movie, Walang Wala (Impoverished). As they discuss the film’s various possible treatments, they succeed in getting acclaimed actress Eugene Domingo to be their leading lady. However, a series of misadventures threatens to sabotage the project even before their cameras start rolling.

One of the first cautionary comedies about the Filipino film industry’s wholesale embrace of the digitalization of the medium was unsparing, prescient, and (true to the nature of the project) guffaw-a-minute funny. The tale of a clueless middle-class team whose members set out to make their mark in foreign film festivals by documenting what they believe are typical Third-World scenes might have failed in halting other local filmmakers’ cynical exploitation of contemporary social miseries. In this instance, however, it served adequate notice that Filipino observers were on to the trend. The current blurring of the boundaries between “mainstream” and “indie” projects may yet be considered Ang Babae sa Septic Tank’s most constructive contribution. On the basis of its international acclaim, we may meanwhile conclude that Euro-American responders have remained prepared to accept the movie’s criticism of their own foreign venues as the primary enablers of what has become known as the “poverty porn” trend. Septic Tank has also proved to be capable of sustaining its own sequel, with Ang Babae sa Septic Tank 2: #ForeverIsNotEnough (also by Marlon Rivera) released during the 2016 Metro Manila Film Festival; a trilogy-of-sorts was realized via a seven-episode TV series titled Ang Babae sa Septic Tank 3: The Real Untold Story of Josephine Bracken [the American-adopted Irish woman who became national hero Jose Rizal’s common-law wife] (2019, dir. Chris Martinez), with Eugene Domingo the mainstay in the entire set of presentations.

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Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria

English Title: Eleuteria’s Dream
Alternate Title: Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria Kirchbaum
Language: Cebuano
Year of Release: 2010
Director: Remton Siega Zuasola
Screenwriters: Maria Victoria Beltran & Remton Siega Zuasola
Producers: Cinema One Originals & Panumduman Pictures

Cast: Donna Gimeno, Gregg Tecson, Lucia Juezan, Emelda Mabusay, Ara Chawdhury, Daday Melgar

Eleuteria is a young lady who is reluctant to fly to Germany where a rich old man is waiting to claim her as his mail-order bride. However, her mother convinces her that this is the best way she can support their poor family. As she walks toward a harbor en route to the city airport, with her boyfriend pleading with her to stay, she has to choose between her family’s welfare and her own happiness.

A tour de force made even more remarkable by the fact that the material is set on far-flung Olango Island, part of an eponymous island group in Cebu Province and famed as a bird sanctuary. The actors speak in Cebuano and the action unfolds in real time. Remton Siega Zuasola was brazen enough to appropriate, in his first feature-length release, the single-take strategy of a few (appropriately celebrated) Western models.[1] Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria stakes its interests in an issue as vital to the survival of the Philippine nation as it has also become the concern of citizens in more affluent economies: the uprooting of Filipino citizens, occasionally against their will, as constituent elements in the country’s labor-export machinery, its only viable new-millennium industry.

Note

[1] The single-take film can arguably be ascribed to the very first commercially successful instances of cinema, little over a hundred years ago: the Lumière brothers’ so-called actualities, each comprising about a minute’s worth of unedited footage. This may be one of the reasons why people familiar with film history appreciate long unbroken shots. Since commercial-gauge celluloid film could only be exposed continuously for up to ten minutes at a time, Alfred Hitchcock had to use artificial devices (usually panning or zooming into dark surfaces) to mask the cuts in Rope (1948). Because of the extreme difficulty of executing narrative dramas this way, as well as audiences’ unfamiliarity with the technique, most single-take efforts during the pre-digital period were confined to experimental arthouse releases such as Andy Warhol’s eight-hour Empire (1964), a stationary shot of New York City’s Empire State Building, and Michael Snow’s 45-minute zoom Wavelength and whirling-camera La region centrale (The Central Region, 1971). The digital format enabled actual or simulated single takes and provided several notable samples: Mike Figgis’s commercially released Timecode (2000), with four full-length single takes presented in four interactive frames simultaneously; Aleksandr Sokurov’s Russkiy kovcheg (Russian Ark, 2002), where a ghostly narrator, represented by the camera, wanders through Saint Petersburg’s Winter Palace and encounters people and events over the past three centuries; and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s so-titled Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), a mixed-genre film with reflexive elements that won the US Academy Award for Best Picture. In the Philippines, Zuasola’s subsequent films as well as Pepe Diokno’s Engkwentro (Clash, 2009) were also single-take features.

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Biyaheng Lupa

English Translation: Overland Journey
English Title: Soliloquy
Year of Release: 2009
Director & Screenwriter: Armando Lao
Producer: Quantum Films

Cast: Jaclyn Jose, Julio Diaz, Coco Martin, Angel Aquino, Eugene Domingo, Susan Africa, Shamaine Buencamino, Mercedes Cabral, Carl Guevara, Allan Paule, Andoy Ranay, Archie Adamos, Jess Evardone, Jose Almojuela, Isabella de Leon, Mely Soriano

The stories of various people come together via their thoughts in a bus ride from Manila to Legazpi City. Anabel, a young single woman, is pregnant and, wracked by guilt, worries that she might give birth to a monster. Alex, whose ambitions have fallen apart, desperately clings to the pyramid scheme that he believes will be his key to success. A mother, Irene, regrets leaving her son so she can work abroad. Fina, a game-show contestant who finally admits to herself her dissatisfaction with her husband, crumbles at the prospect of meeting him once more. Helen, a woman conducting an extramarital affair, is anxious to maintain her secret. Her reverie is interrupted when a gossipy spinster, Lilian, boards the bus; in turn Lilian sets her eyes on Pepe, the conductor, just as a gay passenger similarly eyes Obet, a dreamy, melancholy young man who turns out to be homophobic. Even Mickey, a deaf-mute, articulates his thoughts as he leaves his foster home to visit his biological mother’s grave. As more passengers hop on and off the bus, these and other stories either find, in their own ways, their own welcome (or unwelcome) resolutions.

A busload of working-class characters journey to a distant destination and see, not the scenery passing by, but their past follies, present predicaments, and uncertain futures. The movie first takes on the difficult challenge of pulling off a genuine multiple-character narrative, perhaps the most ambitious among local features, with 16—or possibly 17, counting the unseen bus driver—lead actors. It then complements this with the audacious technique of externalizing these personalities’ inner lives by allowing us to literally hear their thoughts. The end of the film, coinciding with the end of their trip, demonstrates not just how rare it is to encounter a fully developed aesthetic philosophy in a first film, but also how preferable this is to the skills display that most debuting directors feel obliged to demonstrate. Perhaps more significantly, in light of Lao’s extensive influence in local film-project conceptualizations, is in how Biyaheng Lupa departs from Lao’s utilization of real-time presentations, notably in his collaborations with filmmakers who first garnered global attention via the scripts he wrote for them. Lao described BL as reliant on poetic time, where cosmic principles impinge on the unfolding of the narrative, as opposed to the duration-dependent real time and his earlier deployment of character-based dramatic time. Such insights on transience, destiny, and the abiding power of memory are brought to bear in the film’s bravura climax, simple in conception, casual in execution, yet grand in the best possible way, where a series of rapturous textual ruptures build up to an incredible final shot that resolves the film narrative in a way that coalesces the literal with the symbolic in a manner that might still have the capacity to surprise avant-gardists wherever they may lurk.

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Tunay na Tunay: Gets Mo? Gets Ko!

English Translation: So True: Got It? I Got It!
Year of Release: 2000
Director: Joyce Bernal [as Bb. Joyce Bernal]
Screenwriters: Dindo Perez & Mari Mariano
(From a story by Dindo Perez & concept by Debbie Cimafranca)
Producers: Star Cinema & RCP Productions

Cast: Robin Padilla, Jolina Magdangal, Vic Diaz, Efren Reyes Jr., Roldan Aquino, Dindo Arroyo, Bearwin Meily, JR Herrera, Via Veloso, Dang Cruz, George Lim, Gamaliel Viray, Cris Vertido, Levi Ignacio, Polly Cadsawan, Mark mendez, Angel Ayson, Jean Co, Sheerlyn Co, Wilen Navarro, William Romero, Josie Tagle, Marilyn Naval, Ramon Fernandez, Manolito Ampon, B.J. Nakamoto, Peter Lim, Steve de Leon, Jun Hidalgo, Wally Villanueva, Boy Roque, Jack Montalban, Gil Carino, Reynaldo Castro, Melvin Galang, Boy Gomez, Gads Aranel, Alex Cunanan, Alberto Laderas, Jun Arenas, Boyet Ferro, Moroski Padilla, July Hidalgo, Rey Cercena, Banjo Romero, Long Mejia, Leychard Sicangco, Dick Sangkad, Mario Castillo, Khader Alhamsi

Nick Abeleda is an undercover police officer who keeps having to change his identity, including his name, for every assignment or emergency that he has to handle. While being chased by the gangsters who discovered his police status, he attempts to hide in the narrow and congested streets of Manila Chinatown. To be sheltered by a small restaurant that he runs into, he claims to be in search of a job and gets assigned to cook. Fortunately his cooking skills are adequate, but the charming but incompetent waitress, who introduces herself as Tin Tin, doesn’t want him minding her business. Tasked by his supervisor to infiltrate the syndicate of Mr. Wong, a master criminal operating as a legitimate Chinese businessman, Nick is requested by the man he’s shadowing to search for his missing daughter so he can marry her off to the son of a business associate. It doesn’t take long for him to figure out that Tin Tin’s actually Mei Ling, Mr. Wong’s daughter.

Hong Kong cinema may be the immediate reference point in Tunay na Tunay: Gets Mo? Gets Ko! Although wire fu, a fight scene where the players defy gravity by being suspended on invisible wires, makes only a singular and modest appearance, the sense of mayhem premised on the interaction of multiple characters abides, and the expedient comic-book plotting serves to outline seemingly impossible narrative challenges that leave the lead characters with nothing else to fall back on except charm and daring. Fortunately Jolina Magdangal and Robin Padilla were intrepid presences for their time, since their respective star status as romcom princess and action prince did not observe conventional expectations of whatever constituted personalities of their stature. Director Joyce Bernal also demonstrates the flexibility and adaptability of the enthusiastic and creative nonspecialist, capable of welcoming a challenge mainly because she’s unaware of how taxing it could get and how easily the typical expert could falter. If one had to formulate a complaint, that would be regarding the material’s wasted potential for advanced Orientalist discourse; but then, even Hong Kong cinema rarely attained insightfulness in this area, and if we’re to be honest with ourselves, most everyone who’s drawn to it doesn’t really hope for life-changing revelations, if life-altering fun can serve as compensation.

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1—Booba

Year of Release: 2001
Director: Joyce Bernal [as Binibining Joyce Bernal]
Screenwriter: Mel Mendoza-del Rosario
(From a story by Joyce Bernal & Mel Mendoza-del Rosario)
Producers: Viva Films & RS Productions

Cast: Rufa Mae Quinto, Gary Estrada, AiAi delas Alas, Gina Pareño, Roldan Aquino, Archie Ventosa, Denver Razon, Ava Avila, Rico Miguel, Rad Dominguez, Polly Casawan, Felindo Obach, Rudy Meyer, Josie Galvez, George Lim, Angie Reyes, Peter Lim

Booba is resented by her homely and quarrelsome twin sister Gretchen, for being her diametrical opposite: sweet, pretty, popular, shapely, and vacuous. Lola Belle, their grandmother, keeps attempting to mollify Gretchen, but the latter gets fed up and leaves their rural shack for the city. Lola Belle dies not long after, but before doing so, she tells Booba to look for Gretchen and assures her that she will always be by her side. Booba then ventures alone in Manila, trying to earn a living while occasionally spotting her sister, who keeps evading her in a huff while engaging in a range of criminal activities as a mob boss. Her attractiveness draws the attention of the wrong kind of men, although fortunately Lola Belle’s spirit shows up to warn her of trouble. While doing her job as a nightclub dancer, her workplace is raided by the vice squad, whose kindly police leader takes pity on Booba and does what he can to assist her.

2—Masikip sa Dibdib: The Boobita Rose Story

Alternate Title: Masikip sa Dibdib: Ang Tunay na Buhay ni Boobita Rose
English Translation: Tight in the Chest: The Boobita Rose Story
English Translation of Alternate Title: Tight in the Chest: The Actual Life of Boobita Rose
Year of Release: 2004
Director: Joyce Bernal [as Binibining Joyce Bernal]
Screenwriter: Mel Mendoza-del Rosario
Producer: Viva Films

Cast: Rufa Mae Quinto, Antonio Aquitania, Gina Pareño, John Lapus, Sunshine Dizon, Phytos Ramirez, Tita Swarding, Rudy Hatfield, Raquel Pareño, Kier Legaspi, Bernard Bonnin, Charlie Davao, Chinggoy Alonzo, Raquel Monteza, Ralion Alonzo, Earl Ignacio, Lui Manansala

As a young child, Boobita is driven out of home with her mother and siblings after her father takes in a mistress and passes on his out-of-wedlock daughter to them. The now grown-up Boobita has to earn a living in order to maintain her homebound mother, womanizing brother, and rebellious stepsister who, like their grandfather, has become an alcoholic. Although determined to find success by snagging a well-off eligible bachelor, Boobita’s lack of education proves to be a liability. The series of misfortunes that she encounters occasionally induces her to burst into song.

Two releases featuring Rufa Mae Quinto in the persona that made her a star trade on the bawdy drollery of a well-endowed woman too vacuous to realize her hotness. Sex-focused comediennes are a rarity in Philippine cinema, although in consonance with Marilyn Monroe’s irrefragable demonstration, sly intelligence distinguishes the best aspirants from all other pretenders. The establishing text, Booba, uses a name derived from the Spanish word for dimwit (further extended in English slang to mean “breast”), with the political incorrectness setting the terms for director Joyce Bernal’s irreverent approach to humor and willingness to play with genre. Inasmuch as sex-focused comediennes are a rarity in Philippine cinema, both films, though unrelated to each other, foreground this condition in their casting of Gina Pareño, the only full-figured comic star from any First Golden Age studio, described as a “sex-starved lola (granny)” in Booba’s jokey opening credits. As inevitable with the cultural specificities of humor, Booba finds its parodic intentions occasionally dulled by overfamiliarity, with only its talents’ sense of conviction lifting the project through these rough spots. Quinto, however, never betrays any cognizance of superiority to her material—always a welcome perk in comic performance. The rewards of such inconspicuous discipline carried through in her next Bernal project, Super-B (2002), but it was in the one after where director and actor were able to scale heights that only Mike de Leon (replicating his home studio’s lost Manuel Conde masterpieces) was able to pull off beforehand. Included by Asian Movie Pulse contributor Epoy Deyto in “10 Gritty Asian Films That Defined a Generation’s Struggle,” Masakit sa Dibdib performs the difficult stunt of delineating a tearjerker narrative while maintaining a straight face, figuratively as well as literally, within the pop equivalent of Viennese operetta. The fact that Quinto manages to convey the naïveté essential for her character to be swiped by the casual cruelty of her social betters as well as by the sudden eruption of musical numbers (restoring the “melos” in melodrama—make sure to source the full version rather than the producer’s severely truncated remastering) provides a clue into how our compatriots managed to survive wars, dictatorships, and overseas traumas. Among several minor touches, for example, the film wittily commemorates the early-millennium Pinoy-slang reinscription of “nosebleed” to indicate the use of difficult words or expressions in English. The film as a whole might also imply another long wait before the next knockabout bombshell comes along, but that would be all up to how fast Pinas pop culture can respond to the challenge.

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Kimmy Dora: Kambal sa Kiyeme

English Translation of Subordinate Title: Twins in Silliness
Year of Release: 2009
Director: Joyce Bernal [as Binibining Joyce Bernal]
Screenwriter: Chris Martinez
Producers: Spring Films & MJM Productions

Cast: Eugene Domingo, Dingdong Dantes, Zanjoe Marudo, Ariel Ureta, Miriam Quiambao, Baron Geisler, Gabby Eigenmann, Archie Alemania, Zeppi Borromeo, Leo Rialp, Phillip Nolasco, Tyrone Rabago, Christian Bautista, Marvin Agustin, Mark Bautista, Paolo Ballesteros, Jinggoy Estrada, Vhong Navarro, Rufa Mae Quinto, Erik Santos, Aiza Seguerra, Regine Velasquez

Smart yet moody Kimmy and sweet but airheaded Dora are identical twins who always seem to be at odds with each other. Both are also heirs to the Go Dong Hae business empire. A misunderstanding leads Kimmy’s lawyer Harry to hatch a plan to eliminate Dora. But when the plan hits a major obstacle, each of the sisters faces a slew of problems that can endanger their business and their family.

The doppelgänger situation has been the stuff of fantasy and horror, and occasionally of metaphysically minded authors and auteurs. Film enables what theater has difficulty pulling off, but Kimmy Dora banks on the performance-driven fireworks of Eugene Domingo, replicating theater veteran Roderick Paulate’s multiple (because popular) accomplishments[1] and enhancing it with a pared-down version of the class conflicts portrayed in Jim Abrahams’s Big Business (1988). Despite these references, as well as the irrelevance of the Korean references (developed in the sequel and prequel that followed in 2012 and 2013 respectively), Kimmy Dora retains the progressive orientation that made its predecessors worthy of double takes, and literalizes Christian Metz’s appreciation of mirror construction, where film enables its audience to witness a hall-of-mirrors effect of the medium portraying and commenting on itself. At one point, when Domingo is challenged to depict evil-sister Dora mimicking the angelic Kimmy in order to mislead their overindulgent father, the multiple bravura impersonations that Domingo performs provoke a rare instance of laughter in local comedy that is presented as slapstick but is premised on conceptual sophistication. Director Joyce Bernal provides the humanist and romantic resolutions that characterize the earlier texts, yet insists on the primacy of feminist independence and cathartic humor, hand in hand (in hand) with Domingo’s game sensibility.

Note

[1] The films invariably exploit Roderick Paulate’s “Rhoda” or flaming-queen persona by contrasting him with a straight-acting twin. These include Ako si Kiko, Ako si Kikay (I Am Kiko, I am Kikay) and Kumander Gringa (Commander Gringa), both directed by Mike Relon Makiling and released in 1987, with the first proceeding from a sci-fi premise where each of the brothers drinks a potion, transforming into a princess and a prince charming but unaware of each other’s existence. Kumander Gringa, as well as Maryo J. de los Reyes’s Bala at Lipistik (Bullet and Lipstick, 1994), turns on the more realistic Kimmy Dora formula of twins with differing orientations and placed in life-threatening situations—the Philippine rebel insurgency in the former and gangland conflict in the latter—where the interloping femme brother has to mimic his butch counterpart in order to survive. An attempt to update the formula, possibly intended for Vice Ganda, the contemporary counterpart of Paulate, was Wenn Deramas’s Bromance: My Brother’s Romance (2013), where the professionally successful gay brother suffers a concussion and lapses into a coma, and his homophobic ne’er-do-well sibling (both played by Zanjoe Marudo) has to enact a queer charade while exploiting his gay bro’s closeness to the woman he desires.

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Independencia

English Translation: Independence
Year of Release: 2009 / B&W
Director: Raya Martin
Screenwriters: Ramon Sarmiento & Raya Martin
Producers: Cinematografica, Arte France Cinéma, Atopic, Razor Film, Volya Films

Cast: Sid Lucero, Tetchie Agbayani, Alessandra de Rossi, Mika Aguilos, Bodjie Pascua, Lui Manansala, Richard Gonzales, Carl Lawrence Lagasca, Bong Cabrera, Lav Diaz, Arnold Reyes, Angeli Bayani, Adriana Agcaoili, Arleen Cuevas

As American forces invade the Philippines during the late 1890s, a mother and her son settle in a jungle to hide from the ongoing chaos. One day, the son finds a wounded pregnant woman (everyone is unnamed in the story) who later becomes part of the family. Years pass but as a storm approaches and American troops wend their way through the jungle, the family’s peaceful existence could soon come to an end.

The reflexive strategy, where an artwork exposes its creative processes—a novel about a novel being written, for example, or a painting of the painter finishing a painting—succeeded in film more than in any other medium, for reasons that we take for granted today: its photographic nature guarantees a “real,” as opposed to abstract, experience; its use of actors provides the lure of star-worship; its commingling of all the other art forms that preceded it allows it to be indirectly self-referential in focusing on a non-filmic occupation. In this respect, the deep reflexivity that Independencia extends bodes well for literate film entertainment. Handling a late 19th-century fictional situation with late 19th-century cine aesthetics, Raya Martin renders the anachronism with such bravura expertise that we wind up accepting his stylistic strategy as an appropriate means of framing the narrative. In retrospect, silent-era cinema’s bold artificialities also enable our better-late-than-never response to the just-as-blatantly fake anti-revolutionary propaganda films churned out by Thomas Edison et al. for the US colonial government. An additional danger, that of fantasizing that Independencia is actually a piece recovered from an early-film archive (which is how the movie presents itself), may be a source of pleasure that the nostalgic-nationalist viewer can be forgiven for indulging in.

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How to Disappear Completely

Year of Release: 2013
Director & Screenwriter: Raya Martin
Producers: Cinematografica & Hubert Bals Fund

Cast: Shamaine Buencamino, Nonie Buencamino, Ness Roque, Ronnie Martinez, Abner Delina, Nicole Alejandro, Brent Michael Borro, Jamela Magbanlac, Vince Ivan Real, Patricia Rubiano, Francesca Venice Orense, Rainer Lumbera, Edson Jay K. Ortega, Feliciano M. Lumbera, Donabel Diokno, Mervic Jay Javier, Vener dela Cruz, Jaypee Plaza, mario Nipay, Dencio Gagarin, Prinz Gererd Madamba, Appie Badillo, Violy Orense, Jasmin Orense, Esther Banathlao, Pinky Baro, Violeta Lumbera, Josie Regalario, Susan Lumbera, Ma. Yssabella Nervie J.dela Cruz, Elmer Gamilla Jr.

[Note: spoilers provided] A girl’s voice informs a preteen boy that she wants to kill him and his family. He cries and his nose bleeds. A title reads “The islands. A year ago” and we witness a funeral procession of laughing children who drop petals on a girl’s body on a sepulcher. The mother of a girl reads the Book of Genesis narrative of how the daughters of Lot conspire to sleep with their father by getting him drunk on wine. Meanwhile the girl masturbates on her bed and avoids her father seeing her through the slats on the bamboo floor. As the mother sells sausages to a haggler next day, the father places bets on a cockfight while children play outdoors but “zombie women” (according to end credits) arrive and take them away. The girl arrives home in her play clothes but changes into her school uniform right before arriving. Later the mother witnesses what appears to be her hubby’s incestuous interest in their child. The mother tells her daughter the tale of how, in the seventeenth century, a tsunami hit their town and caused death and destruction with only one survivor, and old woman, who continues to haunt their plce looking for her lost daughter. Carrying a figurine of the Virgin Mary, the girl buys two bottles of gin from a convenience store, then she and her mother pray the rosary. The father next tells the story of an angel who told a king he’ll have a son, who turned out to be a chicken. The parents died after raising a large brood which wound up quarreling and led to the origin of the Texas rooster breed—a story he narrates to his fighting cock. The girl plays, in costume, the gun of the American who shot a playful Philippine native and started the Philippine-American War; when a teacher looks for the children to congratulate them afterward, she discovers they’re gone, abducted in a jeepney. Her parents search for her in their jeep and see her running ahead but fail to notice the old lady sitting in the back seat. Her parents are bound by ropes while the girl, brandishing a gun, marches around a burning cross, occasionally turning into the old woman, then she shoots her parents. A gang of young men desecrate the cemetery then rape and kidnap the girl’s classmates, tormenting them during the ride, and threatening to toss them over a bridge their vehicle’s crossing.

One will probably be unable to find a more authentic experimental-narrative film from the Philippines than Raya Martin’s How to Disappear Completely. The question of “better” or “best” achievement will of course be impossible to determine in such a category, although the nearly unanimous oversight of recognition bodies except for the limited (and now-defunct) film festival where it first participated, is a deplorable indicator of our presumptive film evaluators’ preparation in conducting out-of-the-ordinary film analysis—not that we never had any forewarning in the past. An enfant terrible, Martin never had sufficient support or encouragement from the elders who were then running the national university’s film program and opted instead to leapfrog the system they devised and proceed directly to foreign exhibition venues. A family background in political activism and a childhood in a semi-rural environment ensure that the material at least of HDC will be rooted in Martin’s memories of authentic experience, with the digital medium’s tendency to opt for darkening imagery evoking the constant estrangement of personal memory from the artist’s grasp. The traumatic recollection of the past that commences the tale, along with the main character’s parents’ own remembered fantastic narratives, prove to be no match for forms of violence that the outside forces of history and uneven development imprint on the citizens. Despite its relatively short length, the film reveals its title well past the one-hour mark, possibly the longest wait for any local film, and presents its darkest events from this point onward, in the mercifully short running time that remains. But the preceding practice of juxtaposing unrelated events, characters, and time frames, ensures that HDC will nevertheless maintain a fascination with what must have happened beforehand and where the film will end up afterward.

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Yanggaw

English Title: Affliction
Language: Hiligaynon
Year of Release: 2008
Director: Richard Somes [as Richard V. Somes]
Screenwriters: Richard Somes & Dwight Gaston
Producers: Cinema One Originals, Reality Entertainment, Larger Than Life, & Strawdogs Studio Production

Cast: Ronnie Lazaro, Tetchie Agbayani, Joel Torre, Aleera Montalla, Gio Respall, Monet Gaston, Keith Bryan Cabañez, Leon Gaston, Erik Matti, Lilit Reyes, Juliet Matti, James Montelibano, Dwight Gaston

Amor returns to her family’s rural home after coming down with an undiagnosable and incurable illness. Her father Junior and the rest of the family soon discover that her ailment causes her to transform into an aswang or flesh-eating ghoul. Initially hesitant to harm his own daughter, Junior is driven to extremes just to protect her. But his fatherly compassion threatens to tear apart not just his family but also his small village.

Otherness will probably be the always-already underlying theme of regional cinema, proceeding from the latter’s linguistic and geographic distance from Manila-centered production. In depicting a poor rural family coping with a beloved member’s monstrous transformation, Yanggaw foregrounds this Otherness, stripping away the usual artifice of indie-digital projects and working out ways, mirroring its characters’ exertions, to cope with the challenge of low-budget genre production. The resultant shock lies as much in the monster’s capacity to generate a parallel lethal response in her heartbroken father (exceptionally played by Ronnie Lazaro), as in our realization that the filmmakers had enough backbone and brains so that they no longer needed to resort to pricey production or visual effects in order to fashion a devastating tale of familial love beyond human understanding.

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Mariposa: Sa Hawla ng Gabi

English Title: Butterfly: In the Cage of Night
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Richard Somes [as Richard V. Somes]
Screenwriters: Richard Somes, Boo Dabu, Jimmy Flores
Producers: Cinema One Originals & Strawdogs Studio Production

Cast: Erich Gonzales, Alfred Vargas, Mark Gil, Joel Torre, Maria Isabel Lopez, Rez Cortez, Dennis Padilla, John Lapus, Odette Khan, Vangie Labalan, Mon Confiado, Ermie Concepcion, Levi Ignacio, Alex Medina, Shielbert Manuel, Eric Perez, Jim Libiran, Adriana Gomez, Jimmy Callanga, Jake Alba, Allan Ramos, Jack Loterte, Peter Quilapio, George Constantino, Milka Bahian, Johnny Barnes, Cesar Cruz, Conrad Vargas, Vorgy Torre, Coco Torre, Christian Halili, Rayann, Jestoni Negradas, Greg de Costa, Arthur Cudia, Alex Samoranas, Gerald Torrejos, Ju San, Edielyn Hyacint, Barbara Chavez, Grace Ann Gonzales, Charloitte de Guaman, Anna Rose Mina, Yannick Gutierrez, Stefany Lim, A.C. Roperos

In 1994, Maya’s alerted by her aunt, who’s unable to shoot a monitor lizard that attacked their chickens. Maya takes the gun to kill it, then skins and prepares it for a meal. Her aunt brings a telegram from Vivian, her sister Mona’s friend, telling her she needs to travel to Manila immediately. Vivian brings Maya to a morgue, but when the attendant reveals Mona’s body, Vivan’s unable to recognize the face and rotting body. When she recognizes some of the tattoos on Mona’s body, the attendant tells her that she needs to pay 40,000 pesos to retrieve the corpse or it will be donated to a university for dissection by med students. She reads a name, “Carlos,” on one of the tattoos, and asks Vivian to accompany her to wherever the guy lives. Vivian says that the place is dangerous and that she cannot help out after a day. Caloy feels guilt-ridden when he discovers what happened and volunteers to take Maya to Eddie, who knows the crime lord who lent Caloy money in exchange for Vivian’s services.

Mariposa: Sa Hawla ng Gabi enacts a long-overdue twist on the hoary standard of the rural innocent who’s lured then consumed and expelled by the city. The first indicator of its purpose is in how the title mirrors Lino Brocka’s seminal Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila: In the Claws of Light, 1975), but the points of departure are immediate and startling: Mariposa focuses on a still-young lady, whose sister had strayed into the human-trafficking racket that Maynila’s Ligaya Paraiso endured. True to her millennium-era emergence, Maya proves to be just as truehearted a seeker as Julio Madiaga, but far better-prepared than the supposedly conflict-scarred urbanites she encounters. Admittedly, this feminist idealization only works within the generic terms dispensed in the film, but that would belie Brocka’s own belated realization that the arty social-problem subjects he was encouraged to pursue also had their own baggage of rules and limitations. He’d started to reorient himself in the wilderness of the commercial genres he’d earlier abandoned, and would probably have found some satisfaction in Mariposa’s embrace of the monstrous, which also distinguished director Richard Somes’s approach in Yanggaw (Affliction, 2008). The larger, more abstract monster, which indubitably accounts for film evaluators’ hesitation, is that of generic excess: when Maya, her reluctant guide, and the small-time loan shark who’d collected her then-still-living sister as payment all slug it out in a bid for dominance, the unpredictability of the violence reveals how position, gender, even age become incidental factors when the ultimate stake is survival. And the worst (which is ironic good news for genre hounds) is yet to come.

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