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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 crushing 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 object 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 a 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.

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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.

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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, failing that, 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, 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.

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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.

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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]

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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.”

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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 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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Cry of Battle

Alternate Titles: Officers and Men; Grido di battaglia
Language: English
Additional Language: Filipino
Year of Release: 1963
Director: Irving Lerner
Screenwriter: Bernard Gordon
From the 1951 novel Fortress in the Rice by Benjamin Appel
Producers: Allied Artists Pictures Corp & Petramonte Productions

Cast: Van Heflin, Rita Moreno, James MacArthur, Leopoldo Salcedo, Sidney Clute, Marilou Muñoz, Oscar Roncal, Liza Moreno, Michael Parsons, Claude Wilson, Vic Silayan, Oscar Keesee, Hal Bowie, Francisco Cruz

David MacVey, the son of a shipping magnate, escapes in his car from his family plantation when bandits attack and kill his caretakers. He’s assisted by Manuel Careo, an anti-Japanese guerrilla, and brought to a peasant home where the owner’s daughter teaches him some Tagalog words. Joe Trent arrives and mistakes David for his same-named father, who has ongoing trade relations with the Japanese. Joe decides to take David under his wing, but while David wanders outdoors, Joe gets drunk early in the day and rapes the owner’s daughter. David is angered but has to flee with Joe when the daughter keeps screaming even at him. They make the acquaintance of another guerrilla group led by Atong and befriend Sisa on their way to meet Colonel Ryker, whom Careo endorsed for army protection. Ryker sends them on a mission with a guide, but the latter gets killed by the Japanese they were planning to ambush. Joe and Sisa attempt to negotiate for replenishments from town elders, but when they’re told that their stocks are reserved for Careo, Joe ambushes them and takes what they have by force. After Joe kills Atong, Sisa aligns with Joe although she also spends a night with David. Careo returns to the town where they’re resting and presents the Americans with a list of Joe’s transgressions. When David refuses to testify, Careo places both of them under house arrest.

One of the most remarkable overseas productions ever made in the country, Cry of Battle’s reputation has been surpassed by its source novel, also a peak achievement in antiwar and anticolonial fiction. Director Irving Lerner is better remembered for The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969), his unsatisfactory adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s play on the Spanish conquistadors’ 16th-century incursion into the territory now called Peru and their incredibly barbaric betrayal of the Inca emperor in order to amass the kingdom’s entire store of gold. A victim of Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist blacklisting, Lerner may have engaged in pro-Soviet espionage and worked for a producer, Joe Steinberg, who raised funds via his brother Harry (who Anglicized his family name to Stonehill—and became notorious for allegedly paying off previous, present, and forthcoming Philippine presidents in the course of building his business empire). All these complications may have been part and parcel of the Cold War situation, which might also account for some of the film’s departures from the novel it was based on.[1] Nevertheless it’s an impressive, unfairly forgotten achievement, far superior to TRHS and unsparing in its delineation of American sexism, juvenility, and cupidity, factors unbecoming of imperialist aspirants (not that imperialism can ever be justified) and back on flagrant contemporary display in its corridors of power. CoB’s literary origin precludes the staging of extensive combat scenes, which is all for the better for material that requires careful exposition of conditions that would intensify further, after the narrative’s resolution, when the unstable alliance between American forces and Filipino guerrillas would result in a peasant-based war on land reform that has persisted to the present. The contention between old-line lawlessness mentoring yet being resisted by youthful-though-opportunistic idealism is all-too-neatly eroticized in the lead American characters’ competition for the affection of a Filipina guerrilla fighter (poignantly rendered by Rita Moreno), with the two sides arriving at some form of accord by admitting that they both need each other amid their irresolvable mutual hatred. With its paradisiacal backdrop, Pinas has proved irresistible to talents from Hollywood  and elsewhere looking to present war stories, including conflicts that actually took place in the country. CoB, with its intelligent grasp of global politics and unstinting proclivity for the interests of the neglected, deserves to be upheld as the entry to beat.

Note

[1] The acknowledged exegesis on the novel is E. San Juan Jr.’s “Benjamin Appel’s Fortress in the Rice: Forging the Radical Conscience of the Empire,” in Lineages of the Literary Left: Essays in Honor of Alan M. Wald, edited by Howard Brick, Robbie Lieberman, and Paula Rabinowitz (Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2015), pp. 227–244. The Harry Stonehill story was recollected after his death in Amando Doronila’s four-part series in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, all uploaded on the periodical’s website: “Stonehill and Pork: Prelude to Farce?” (September 9, 2013); “The Inside Story of the Raids on Stonehill Firms” (September 10, 2013); “The Curse of Stonehill’s ‘Blue Book’” (September 12, 2013); and “[Jose W.] Diokno Sacked, Key Witness Murdered” (September 20, 2013).

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Beloy Montemayor Jr.: Tirador ng Cebu

English Translation of Subordinate Title: Executioner of Cebu
Year of Release: 1993
Director: Junn P. Cabreira
Screenwriters: Chito B. Tapawan & Junn P. Cabreira
From research conducted by Chito B. Tapawan & Junn P. Cabreira
Producer: OctoArts Films

Cast: Jeric Raval, Patrick dela Rosa, Monica Herrera, Janet Arnaiz, Tirso Cruz III, Charito Solis, Vic Vargas, Nikka Abaya, Edgar Mande, Roldan Aquino, Benedict Aquino, Pocholo Montes, Dexter Doria, Howard Zaleta, Lindsay Custodio, Jean Zaleta, Ernie Reyes, Liza Garcia, Robert Miller, Tony Bagyo, Bomber Moran, Ronnel Victor, Vic Belaro, Jim Rosales, Eddie Tuazon, Jing Castaneda, Rene Pascual, Pol Tantay, Telly Babasa, Romy Blanco, Danny Labra, Miko Manzon, Edward Salvador, Harris Mantezo, Johnny Ramirez, Julito Nunez, Emil Estrada, Bella Flores

Beloy, Roy for short, started his life of crime at 16, his best friend Andy always standing by him and his mother constantly admonishing him to avoid trouble. Toughies seek him out, however, to find whether he can fight as well as his late father. After getting roughed up, he embarks on a workout routine and succeeds in overcoming the guys who bully him, but he winds up in prison as a result. After further scoring against jailhouse thugs, he contrives an escape plan by cross-dressing and asking his girlfriend to help; the latter’s family refuses to accept a hooligan in their circle, so she elopes with Roy and travels with him and Andy to Manila. Lt. Delgado, a crooked police officer, recruits Roy and Andy for his kidnapping-for-ransom racket. When they realize that Delgado plans to kill off his latest victim once he gets the ransom money, they free her and incur Delgado’s ire.

A sure indicator of a genre’s supremacy is when a number of stars can flourish in secondary capacity—headliners of low-budget quickie projects, rather than of the rarer prestige productions. As the French nouvelle vague critics were careful to impart, more innovations could be found in this mode of practice, with the artists’ freedom from producers’ impositions providing opportunities for fortuitous approaches meant to compensate for industrial limitations. As one of the more successful second-string personages during the heyday of Pinoy aksyon, Jeric Raval unsurprisingly commanded his own share of avid fandom, commemorated in Keith Deligero’s Iskalawags (2013), a semi-autobiographical account of growing up in a rural milieu in the Visayas, where Raval himself makes a reflexive appearance as an embodiment of Manila-based stardom. Beloy Montemayor Jr. might serve as satisfactory representation of Raval’s dapper yet congenial projection, with a former softcore star, Patrick dela Rosa, serving as comic sidekick. The material, like Raval’s persona, dwells on certain characters and settings only long enough to draw useful impressions from them, then finds any available excuse to quickly move on. In this way, BMJ is able to cover far more personalities and locations than the typical action outing, and manages to overlay loose ends and unanswered questions (not to mention budgetary restrictions) via the frenzy of its core characters’ concerns and movements. Director Junn P. Cabreira immersed in a variety of genre specializations, all of them with the same cost-effective orientation, so BMJ can be regarded as a culmination of his accumulation of skills in purveying fast-paced and well-modulated amusements for anyone willing to surrender to genre enchantments.

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The Golden Holiday

Language: Korean
Additional Languages: Filipino, English
Alternate Title: Gukjesusa (literally International Investigation)
Year of Release: 2020
Director & Screenwriter: Kim Bong-han
Producer: Yeonghwa-sa Jangchun

Cast: Kwak Do-won, Kim Dae-myung, Kim Hee-won, Kim Sang-ho, Nico Gomez, Fredie Abao, Mon Confiado, Shin Dong-mi, Joshua Eliason, Lee Han-seo, Jo Jae-yoon, Marnie Lapus, Hwang Moo-young, Cindy Miranda, Neil Ryan Sese, Shin Seung-hwan, Christian Villete, Fredie Abao, Loren Burgos, Kim Chang-ok, Yu Jinoo, Lee Chanyu, Kang Chaemin, Lee Kyuyeong, Kim Chaejun, Lee Sojin, Lee Yuri, Park Changhee, Rafael Robles, Candy Arcangel, Taos Obach, Cherish Maningat, Marnie Lapuz

Hong Byeong-soo’s house will be foreclosed by the bank if he’s unable to raise funds soon. He explains, to no avail, that his childhood friend, Kim Yongbae, absconded with the extra income he was hoping to raise and fled to the Philippines. His wife and daughter petition him to bring them to Pinas for his tenth wedding anniversary, since they’d never taken a foreign trip in their lives. He can barely afford the expenses on his salary as a rural detective in Daecheon City, so his colleagues chip in and raise some money for him to spend. While searching for Yongbae, he gets framed for murder by corrupt police officers and solicits the help of his Korean tourist guide, Mancheol. He then finds out that Yongbae’s in prison and confronts his friend there. Yongbae offers him a share of the legendary Yamashita gold, a collection of treasures hoarded by the eponymous World War II Japanese general who was executed for war crimes, with the location of the trove remaining a mystery that he (Yongbae) managed to place.

The Golden Holiday is all that any national cinema can reasonably expect from the Korean pop-culture industry at the peak of its prowess. A number of Pinas-shot K-productions have come out during the millennium, ranging from the furthest “indie” extreme (made by a protégé of the late Kim Ki-duk and better left to oblivion) to several gangster stories that raise issues of identity and difference; Koreans also hold the global record of having the most number of overseas kabayans acknowledged in varying degrees in their film material.[1] But like in the case of Hong Kong, specifically Alan Chui Chung-San and Yuen Bun’s Mabangis na Lungsod (Ferocious City, 1995), it took a tongue-in-cheek approach to devise the most effective entry, in the face of the expected hemming and hawing on the part of less-informed global appreciators. The use of Yamashita’s gold as MacGuffin in resolving the differences between childhood friends who grow up to find themselves on opposite sides of the law, turns out to have a larger significance in suggesting a critique of the various forays by shady foreign and local forces on the Philippine treasury. The Korean characters also keep reminding one another of their presence in a foreign country, in which corporate and government (including police) services are much less responsive to less-privileged individuals, even if they come from developed territories: a sharply observed series of Korea-set events, where the lead character’s friends raise an amount that would be able to cover the cost of a vacation in the Philippines, lands a real-world cognitive blow when we realize that it would barely last the family a day or two of sightseeing in Seoul. A final populist gesture pops up when a streetsmart Manila-based Korean recruits a pair of assistants, whom he accurately terms tambays (a Tagalized clipping of “standbys”)—layabouts with expertise in violence, or lumpenproles in short. The total takeaway is something that now mostly gone Pinas experts could have imparted: that pop-culture pleasure need not preclude political significance, a lesson that practitioners and evaluators of all stripes need to constantly relearn.

Note

[1] One potential for added insight was debunked, to my relief: the production company’s name resembles that of the Chinese Changchun studio (which it actually credited in Wikipedia), active since the 1940s, whose record is consistent in covering foreign-set material, with generally a pro-China stance. I’d feared that since The Golden Holiday was created and released during the presidency of Rodrigo Roa Duterte, known for favoring China in defiance of US policy, but also at the expense of Philippine territorial and economic interests, then its producer may have been attempting to replicate the Koreans’ success in deploying soft power. As it turns out, the actual production company of TGH “doesn’t have an official English name online (yet) … but has no connection to the Chinese film company” (from a Facebook Messenger note sent December 8, 2025, by Son Boemshik, a former student researcher of mine). The company’s Korean name, used in the credit listing here, is owned by the director and has only three other productions as of this time. (I am grateful to Mr. Son as well as to Yu Taeyun, a former graduate advisee, for uncovering these vital details, and to Jerrick Josue David for providing me with access to the film.)

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Amigo

English Translation: Friend
Additional Languages: Cantonese, Spanish
Year of Release: 2010
Director & Screenwriter: John Sayles
Based on research used in John Sayles’s novel A Moment in the Sun (Mc Sweeney’s Books, 2011); Tagalog translations by Jose F. Lacaba
Producers: Anarchist’s Convention Films & Pinoy Pictures

Cast: Arthur Acuña, Irma Adlawan, John Arcilla, Merlin Bonning, Hoffman Cheng, Reymart Colestines, Ermie Concepcion, Chris Cooper, Dane DeHaan, Garret Dillahunt, Miguel Faustmann, Brian Lee Franklin, Joe Gruta, J.P. Jagunos, Ronnie Lazaro, Rio Locsin, Diana Malahay, Raul Manikan, Spanky Manikan, Pen Medina, Raul Morit, Lucas Neff, James Obenza, Jemi Paretas, James Parks, Bodjie Pascua, DJ Qualls, Lady Jane Rellita, Bembol Roco, Bill Tangradi, Stephen Monroe Taylor, Joel Torre, Ka Chun Tsoi, Yul Vazquez

Rafael is the cabeza or head of the small rural town of San Isidro, while his brother joined the anticolonial revolution against Spain, which has transmuted into the Filipino–American War. American troops arrive and take over the town and instruct Rafael to continue his function while freeing the incarcerated Spanish priest, even as Rafael’s adolescent son flees to join his uncle’s resistance army. Rafael finds himself caught between the revolutionary leadership’s instructions and the commands of the new occupation forces, who provide a carrot-and-stick strategy to win the cooperation of the townfolk. They set up telegraph wires to communicate directly with the US administration in Manila but the rebels massacre the Chinese coolies that the Americans brought over. Lt. Compton, with the priest as go-between, organizes an election to select a new leader, but the qualified voters (males at least 21 years old) write in Rafael’s name; true to his promise, Compton honors their choice and even accedes to their plans for their annual town fiesta. The arrival of Col. Hardacre, who’d earlier instructed his troops to fence off the town to prevent San Isidro from providing insurrectionists with support, restores the tense relations between the natives and the US Army, as Rafael is waterboarded and forced to lead the US soldiers to the place where his brother and son might be hiding.

The resonance of the brother-vs.-brother conflict in Amigo is so schematic, biblical even, that it proves a relief when John Sayles opts to focus instead on the regular interactions between Rafael and the people in his community, even including the foreign invaders. Amigo demonstrates that authors of Western film and literature can only begin to understand their own societies’ prosperity-driven triumphs by confronting their colonial records. John Sayles’s political honesty and moral clarity enabled him to come up with the first US-made critical text on his country’s occupation of the Philippines, and one can see the approach’s usefulness in how Western film critics eagerly read contemporary American political concerns in their appreciation of the release, including a covert attempt by the official whom Rafael had won over, to subvert his own superior. There were also a lot of reservations expressed about the work compared to Sayles’s earlier output, although we might be able to take the cue from the quandary that Rafael finds himself trapped in: try as he might to reconcile the demands of either side, their inherent antagonisms will result (as they did in the plot) in either division deciding that their best interest will be best realized if they get rid of him. In this respect, it would also prove productive to see how Sayles, inadvertently or otherwise, anticipated several then-forthcoming developments in Philippine politics: the population’s frustration with democratic processes, the acceptance of militaristic violence against elements configured as outlaws, the vulnerability to influence-peddlers who have their own agenda to advance. The viewing experience has always been difficult for anyone, regardless of nationality, invested in the story’s historical implications—which is tantamount to saying that more ambitious plans announced by other American film artists might encounter greater difficulty in reaching an audience. Amigo might therefore remain for some time the only overt progressive treatment by Americans on their only successful overseas colonial adventure (to our long-term detriment, needless to add), and it serves as a fitting cap to its filmmaker’s exemplary career.

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Mabangis na Lungsod

English Translation: Ferocious City
Alternate Titles: No hoi wai lung; Tough Beauty and the Sloppy Slop
Year of Release: 1995
Directors: Alan Chui Chung-San & Yuen Bun (with action direction by Alan Chui Chung-San & Lee Chi-Kit)
Screenwriter: Fok King-yiu
Producers: Libran Films, Libran Motion Pictures, New Treasurer Films Co.

Cast: Yuen Biao, Cynthia Khan, Monsour del Rosario, Lee Waise, Billy Chow, Yuen Wah, Alan Chui Chung-San, Jerry Bailey, Wai Lam, Peter Chan, Wai Shum, Tam Suk-mui, Wong Ngok-wah, Lam Ngok-wah, Alex Man, Lily Leung

[Note: characters’ names apparently vary depending on language version.] Major Sandos and his partner bust a transaction about to be consummated by some drug dealers in a double-deck bus and later arrest the wife of drug dealer Hwa Quo, who in turn arranges the killing of Sandos’s partner during his mother’s birthday celebration. Meanwhile in Hong Kong, police officer Yiang discovers that Hwa Quo’s operation makes use of counterfeit bills for their overseas drug transactions. She is assigned to befriend Hwa Quo’s wife in jail in Manila, with another operative, Li Chin Tang, masquerading as her husband. The pair succeed in freeing the wife and befriending Hwa Quo, who’s impressed by their fighting skills and assigns increasingly sensitive missions, culminating with the killing of Sandos. Their cover’s almost blown when Li mourns his best friend’s demise, but Hwa Quo’s higher-up wishes to make their acquaintance. Just when Hwa Quo’s suspicions endanger them, Sandos turns up and informs them that he deliberately set up his mock execution in order to end Hwa Quo’s pursuit.

Mabangis na Lungsod may be regarded as one of the realizations of the inter-Asian exchanges that Pinas initiated when it was still a fairly influential American client state. A list of blunders and misjudgments will make itself available for anyone who wishes to insist on perfect representation, but then one should also be obliged to point out any compensatory achievements when these become evident. The ML project was completed during the buildup toward the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, when HK cinema was nearing the end of several decades of productivity; for this reason, the film was considered the equivalent of a B-movie, a ripoff of a franchise sequel, deficient in star power and stunts and explosives. Moreover, the necessarily cartoonish approach to plot and character results in a host of sexist and lesbophobic devices that, coupled with the HK industry’s valorization of police work, create products whose primary value lies almost exclusively in their provision of visual and kinetic pleasure. But the overseas locale also yields a few critical touches: police and government officials readily collaborate with foreign elements when they’re capable of financial enticement, and the opening hostage situation involving a public bus, where the use of firepower only resulted in multiple tragedies, should have served as a warning to local officials when a similar crisis emerged in real life in 2010. Viewed several decades later, the relatively modest dimensions of ML remain superior to the run of most local action films, where its creatives’ aesthetic discipline furnishes split-second edits that serve as conduits for fluid delineations, tongue always firmly lodged in cheek. One could reasonably speculate how action aficionado Toto Natividad, the country’s last best celluloid-era filmmaker, could have taken notes in order to further upgrade his skills set.

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1—Da Dog Show

English Title: The Dog Show
Year of Release: 2015
Director & Screenwriter: Ralston Jover [as Ralston G. Jover]
With Sergio Redolosa & Howie Severino as story consultants
Producers: Queen B Productions & sam cinema

Cast: Lou Veloso, Mercedes Cabral, Almira Alcid, Bernard Carritero, Aljon Ibañez, Simon Ibarra, Micko Laurente, Cherry Malvar, OJ Mariano, Flor Salanga, Menchie Diaz Tabije Villavert, Jhorel Bocade, Bobby Tamayo, Joshua Liechtenberg, Janzhed Negrite, Arrian Labios, Roma Oyson, Sandino Buan, Bernard Carritero, Kathleen Reyna, Rener Concepcion, Anthony Camposano, Jasmine Brazil

Although he should be retired at his age, 73-year-old Sergio has to continue earning a living by staging sidewalk programs where both of his trained dogs perform tricks for an audience of strangers in exchange for money. His intellectually disabled grownup daughter Celia helps him while her younger brother Alvin goes to school. For the past thirty years, they’ve been residing in the mausoleum of Sergio’s late employers—an arrangement that upset his wife so much that she fled to her provincial relatives with their youngest son Eddie Boy. Sergio saves up enough money so he could retrieve the kid. After Celia throws a tantrum, knowing she may never see her mother again, he brings her along as well as one of his dogs. His wife however refuses to see him and her relations don’t want to accede to his request without any legal oversight. Negotiations with district officials work out and he’s allowed to take Eddie Boy back to Manila with him, but their journey home turns out to be far more complicated than their arrival.

2—Hamog

English Title: Haze
Year of Release: 2015
Director & Screenwriter: Ralston Jover [as Ralston G. Jover]
Producers: Cinema One Originals, Keep Me Posted, Black Maria Pictures, CMB Film Services, Wildsound Studios

Cast: Zaijian Jaranilla, Therese Malvar, Samuel Quintana, Bon Andrew Lentejas, Kyline Alcantara, OJ Mariano, Anna Luna, Mike Liwag, Lou Veloso, Ruby Ruiz, Flor Salanga, Junjun Quintana, Vic Romano, Jane Torres, Cataleya Surio, Cyril Dayao, Elyboy Medina, Aljon Ibañez, Meljun Quinto, Vincent Olano, John Lloyd Medina, Bernard Carritero, Vangie Castillo, Kiko de Guzman, Eero Yves Francisco, Victor Taniegra, Charry Castinlag, Jomel Redobante, Jelyn Lavarez, Toby Anthony del Rosario, Luis Ruiz

Four street kids live in open spaces and earn a living by stealing from the drivers of vehicles that slow down at the busy cloverleaf interchange on the Makati City side of Epifanio de los Santos Avenue’s Guadalupe Bridge. Moy, the youngest, escaped from an orphanage, while the rest ran away from abusive parents or guardians: Jinky and Tisoy sleep together as a couple, while Rashid is a Muslim abandoned by his mother to his heavy-handed father. They’re familiar with the rules that police, social-work, and district officials of the area seek to impose on them, which is why they avoid getting caught. Their modus operandi consists of distracting a target driver (usually male, without a companion or passenger) and stealing his goods and valuables when he chases away some of them. In one instance, Jinky is caught by Danny, a cab driver, and brought by him to the police precinct; Tisoy, who’s frustrated in being unable to find her, intensifies his sniffing of rugby (named after the popular brand of addictive contact cement) and hallucinates a vision of Supergirl. In another instance, the loot they stash away is swiped by another gang of street kids. They give chase but Moy is hit by a delivery truck driven by an underage guy who’s also fleeing from an abusive employer. With Tisoy too stoned to help, Rashid finds himself alone in arranging for his friend’s burial.

Having written some well-received films for their respective directors, Ralston Jover arrived with raised expectations for his output as filmmaker. The passage of time functions best for the kind of work he does, with its focus on the intimate lives and irresolvable problems of overlooked citizens. The two films he released in 2015 recall the paired similar-yet-different scripts he wrote for Brillante Mendoza nearly a decade earlier, Foster Child and Tirador (Slingshot), both about grownups who turn out to be innocents when confronted with the harsh realities of urban existence. This time the characters are mature enough in approaching the challenges of uneven neoliberal development, but we’re provided the privilege of watching them cope with curveballs that most of us won’t have to worry about precisely because of privilege: consistent with the treatment he provided in all his previous materials, Jover doesn’t allow any of his characters to plead their cases with us—only with specific people in their universe, who they perceive as instrumental in determining whether they can succeed in their pursuits. Da Dog Show’s Sergio, an elderly father reduced to living in a graveyard but defying the reality of fast-approaching mortality for the sake of his four dependents (two humans and two animals) by staging entertainments for strangers, consistent with the derogatory implication of “dogshow” in Pinas slang. Sergio persists nevertheless in order to recover one more son from his estranged wife. The treatment lends itself to comic or melodramatic handling, but Jover unexpectedly accepts the challenge of utilizing secular humanism, an option that initially softens the rough edges of Sergio’s existence but becomes entirely crucial with the increasing unpredictability of events in what should have been a fairly standard mission narrative: wherever Sergio might find himself by the time his hour upon the stage is up, Jover ensures that his fate, or at least an empathetic understanding of it, remains in our hands. In contrast, Hamog might seem to have an excess of the same sentiment, with its most vulnerable character, a severely abused young woman named Jinky, reciting improbably poetic introductory voiceovers … until the troubles that the characters grapple with bring up the question of our own prejudicial assumptions. For if Jinky manages to transcend this vision of hell she’d been plunged into, who’s to say if eloquence might still lie outside her range of abilities? As if to illustrate that existence is never always a strictly linear experience when trauma induces inner turmoil, Jover halts the plot and revisits an earlier incident, in order to make definitively clear why Jinky had to disappear from the lives of her comrades. Such a storytelling “error” would never be permitted by conventional script evaluators, but the triumph of Hamog lies in how this literal plot twist becomes more a necessity than a correction.

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Rene Villanueva’s Hiblang Abo

Alternate Title: Hiblang Abo
English Title: Strands of Gray
Year of Release: 2016
Director: Ralston Jover [as Ralston G. Jover]
Screenwriters: Naning Estrella & Ralston Jover
From the full-length 1980 play by Rene Villanueva, with poem “Tapus Na ang Prusisyon (The Procession is Over)” by Rener Concepcion
Producers: Cinemalaya, Queen B Productions, Keep Me Posted, Heaven’s Best Entertainment, Wildsound, Tabula Rasa

Cast: Lou Veloso, Jun Urbano, Leo Rialp, Nanding Josef, Matt Daclan, Lui Manansala, Flor Salanga, Cherry Malvar, Angela Cortez, Mike Liwag, Rommel Luna, Rener Concepcion, Anna Luna, Bernard Carritero

Four geriatric men, each with his own backstory, share a dormitory room in the Bahay ni Juan (John’s House) hospice. Through their voluntary sharing of their individual stories, they find out the reasons that they wound up rejected and, in one case, homeless. Huse was a playwright who came out as gay to his wife but was unable to maintain a student lover and his family’s upkeep. Blas narrates how he was a fiery union organizer although one of his companions uncovers a more disturbing version about the labor strike he led. Sotero, Teroy for short, was a farmer who had to allow his depraved landlord, Don Sixto, to collect his beloved daughter as payment for loans that his harvests could not cover. Pedro was the vagrant abused and rejected by his family, eventually found literally wallowing in mud. Unable to find a way back to the lives they once knew, the four find themselves haunted by their memories and upset at finding out about their companions’ suffering.

Hiblang Abo is the closest that Ralston Jover has come to melodrama, primarily because the source material by Rene Villanueva was conventionally designed and resolutely stagebound. By deciding to observe the play’s lines and structure, and enhancing the artifice by having the same actor depict each of the major characters in their younger years, Jover enables the successfully distinct feel of a filmed play; more important, he allows Villanueva’s long-standing concerns with native masculinities to be foregrounded, with Hiblang Abo intersecting with his own interest in the plight of people neglected by society. The entire outing might sound like a downbeat presentation, but the major attraction of theatrical events abides herein: each of the four lead performers is associated with different outstanding performing-arts circles in the country, decades of experience providing them with well-honed expertise that each one deploys in recollecting the crucial slice of memory that led to the shame and destitution of their seeking refuge in a hospice home. Although aware that Philippine society regards their status as failures, they admit to themselves that no other option remains for them except to await the arrival of the end in the place they happen to find themselves in at the moment. The fact that other sufferers share the same space ought to be a source of some comfort, but the opposite—that their companions’ respective misfortunes remind each of them of his own—could also take hold and upend whatever camaraderie they managed to work on. The most painful aspect of Villanueva’s bleak, heartbreaking vision is that the one among them capable of cruelty will endure, but our journey toward that realization, with some of the best performers of their generation treating us to the late playwright’s delight in language and drama, documented in full creative flowering by an old-for-his-years filmmaker, ensures that Hiblang Abo will age far better than its warmhearted but tragically damaged elderly folk.

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Bomba

English Title: The Bomb
Year of Release: 2017
Director & Screenwriter: Ralston Jover [as Ralston Gonzales Jover]
From a story by Ralston Jover & Dennis C. Evangelista
Producers: ATD Entertainment & Heaven’s Best Entertainment

Cast: Allen Dizon, Angeli Nicole Sanoy, Alan Paule, Sue Prado, Kate Brios, Joel Saracho, Felixia Crysten Dizon, Tabs Sumulong, Romeo Lindain, Lucas Allric Dizon, Apol Salonga, Bon Andrew Lentejas

Deaf-mute Pipo leaves his job as custodial assistant in a funeral parlor. The owner, a police officer, wants him to return, but he expresses an aversion to handling dead bodies, which happen to be in abundance because of the out-of-control drug war of then-President Rodrigo R. Duterte. None of the other jobs he finds, including scavenging at the dumpsite where he lives with his young daughter Cyril, earns enough to tide the two of them over. Fortunately the girl is mature for her age and is able to negotiate with grownups in the community. Finally, neighbors concerned with their condition are able to persuade Pipo to return to funerary work. But when Pipo approaches the site of a terrorist attack and is unable to answer the police’s questions, he is mistaken as a suspect and arrested. Cyril meanwhile hears her neighbor Ina pay attention to a man on the radio announcing that his daughter disappeared when her deaf-mute godfather brought her to Manila; Cyril pleads with Ina to leave her and Pipo in peace.

Protagonists in Ralston Jover’s films were consistently marked as highly susceptible to legal and social reprisals, but also as seriously flawed; to draw a link from one condition to the other would be tantamount to revealing one’s biases, rather than the characters’ blameworthiness. Bomba trains the harshest light in his oeuvre so far in its presentation of Pipo: the individual in question has to endure abuse even from strangers who misrecognize his regular appearance and never bother to figure out why he seems unable to understand and respond the way everybody else does; his devotion to Cyril makes his plight even more poignant and disconsolate. Although the latter possesses enough wisdom and valor to make a perfect match for her guardian, she first needs to conform to the greater expectations brought to bear on underage women. Rover intensifies the challenge of empathizing with this pair by focalizing our realization of the worst-case scenario in the responses of a concerned neighbor, their strongest supporter. Her suspicions reverberate throughout their circles, the scandal strong enough to overpower Cyril’s own warning that her father wishes to treat her as a sexual commodity. The final challenge for us (though not for the community, since drug-war violence already ensures what kind of measures will be taken) is to find a way to accommodate Pipo’s reprisal. The navigation provided by Allen Dizon, in a performance that speaks volumes even as the character struggles to articulate basic words, helps in shaping the scope and depth of a person who started with the intent to love and protect and wound up losing everything he held valuable, through no fault of his own.

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Latay (Battered Husband)

Additional Language: Kapampangan
Year of Release: 2019
Director & Screenwriter: Ralston Jover [as Ralston Gonzales Jover]
Producers: BG Productions International, Center Stage Productions, Sinag Maynila

Cast: Allen Dizon, Lovi Poe, Snooky Serna, Mariel de Leon, Soliman Cruz, Adrian Cabido, Tabs Sumulong, Renerich Ocon, Dianne Alvaro, Rhea Usares, Adda Musni, Lucas Allric Dizon, Ryan David, Hernand Tulud, Romeo Lindain, Baby F. Go, Khey Dalit, Art Bajar, Sean Andrei Maliwat, Rosalyn Veray, John Lloyd Mallari, Julie Ann Taylan, Tristan Mallari, Stephanie Tolentino, John Mark Guintu, John Nikki Sotto, Michael Mirador, Billy Gutierrez, Glen O. Gutierrez, Gobak L. Pangilinan, Roy P. Sotto Jr., Jemma Magtoto, Tricia Ann de Jesus, Anne dela Torre Tongol

In Minalin, a municipality in Pampanga, straight males cross-dress in the New Year celebration called Aguman Sanduk (Ladle Association). Olan participates although people who know him realize that the scratches and bruises on his body were inflicted by his wife Lorie because of his unfaithfulness to her. Olan endures her rage since she’ll be leaving for overseas work in a few days and he wants to reconcile with her. His former mistress Cherry visits him to arrange closure with him but Lorie gets wind of their assignation and creates a public disturbance by violently harassing Cherry; when Olan succeeds in separating them, she turns on her husband. Olan is also jealous of Noy, Lorie’s younger friend, and busts the farewell party that members of Lorie’s circle were holding for her. Lorie gives vent to her anger but their quarrel is disrupted by the arrival of Lorie’s mother, who never approved of her daughter’s choice of husband. Olan seeks solace with his father and asks permission to seek his mother in Manila but his father forbids him from doing so. His desperation is compounded by the sudden death of fish in the pond that he’s maintaining as well as Lorie’s declaration that she prefers to terminate their union as husband and wife, burning their mementos of their happy times together.

Latay takes the unusual step of looking at gender trouble by proceeding from a reversal in straight relationships: the inflictor of violence is the woman, with the man performing the role of acceptor. The arrangement applies the national dynamic to the level of familial transactions, since the ignominious failure of the social experiment in Marcos Sr.’s plan to fast-track development via authoritarian means, led to a welcome shift in granting Philippine women greater roles in public and even global living—with the film itself acknowledging as much when it opens with Lorie preparing to leave for overseas work. The retention of the standard recognition of the male as still ultimately a more dangerous force, derived from relative physical capability, is responsibly maintained in the narrative. Olan’s passivity, paralleling the country’s experience, derives from a combination of humiliation (his extramarital affair becomes public knowledge) and opportunism (Lorie’s prospective earnings will relieve him of the anxiety of inadequate income generation); his prerogatives of initiating intimacy with his wife and recognizing the emergence of a rival still abide. By all accounts, it is Lorie who misjudges her rage as strength, although to elaborate further would be to ruin the process of discovery. The allegorizing with civil society may also have been far from Ralston Jover’s mind, but the danger for anyone in approaching and dealing with a battered male, especially in confined circumstances, will be recognizable to anyone sufficiently familiar with the Philippine character.

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Area

Language: Kapampangan
Additional Languages: Filipino, English
Year of Release: 2016
Director: Louie Ignacio [as Luisito Lagdameo Ignacio]
Screenwriter: Robby Tantingco
From a story by Ferdinand Lapuz
Producer: BG Productions International

Cast: AiAi delas Alas, Allen Dizon, Sue Prado, Sancho delas Alas, Ireen Cervantes, Sarah Pagcaliwagan, Tabs Sumulong, Eufrocina Peña, Cecile Yumul, Bambalito Lacap, Francisco Guinto, Rein Gutierrez, Eugene Garrett C. Euperio, Geraldo Dizon, Kim Duenas, Tin Velasco, Elizabeth Masangcay, Johnny Cabanlig, Tony Cabanlig, Dylan Ray Talon, Bong Ramos, Hernand Timoteo Tulud, Jennifer Cimagala, Vicky Vega-Cabigting, Boy Cayetano, Rustom Agustin, Christian Aquino, Bongjon Jose, Gerald Torrejs, Arnel Avila, Baby Go, Romeo Lindain

What used to be the most successful brothel north of Manila, set up for servicemen at Clark Air Base when it was still operated by the US Army, has now been reduced to a pitiful joint, its family owners earning their keep from a more reliable neighborhood convenience store. Eldest son Bren manages the hookers, assigning johns to them and ensuring they abide by the law. Hillary, who lost her son when she fled the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, is saving money so she can travel to the US to see him via his American father. Julie, whose looks make her the favorite of many customers, cannot afford to leave because she has to raise three children, with the older two acting as procurers. Bren’s mother, a former guerrilla fighter with the Hukbong Magpapalaya ng Bayan or People’s Liberation Army, had also seen better days as a sex worker and relates how rebel and counterinsurgency forces would observe a truce whenever they encountered each other in the brothel district, called Area. The approach of Holy Week brings about a decline in customers, so Bren focuses on soliciting residents and neighboring workers as well as taking the women to a clinic for their Pap smear test, and prepares for his annual vow of penance as a self-flagellant.

The mix of insurrectionist history, religious folk practice, and indigent sex work attains a surprising coherence in Area. Then again the element that brought everything together—American imperialist interest in the Southeast Asian region circa the Cold War—still overhangs Area’s area like the mushroom cloud that would have materialized if one of the military base’s nukes detonated for some reason or other. The Philippine government’s takeover of Clark Air Base in 1991 (after the eruption of the volcano that also led to one of the working girls seeking employment in the brothel) resulted in a decline in the businesses that originally sprouted to cater to American soldiers, now only a distant memory for folks old enough to have lived through it. The film relieves the pathos that inescapably suffuses the brothel’s shoddy, cramped, inadequately lit spaces, with walls so thin that children can hear their mother at work despite her co-workers’ efforts at maintaining sufficient prudence, by providing credible moments of levity, mostly centered on frank exchanges among the characters on the conditions of and hindrances to effective sex work. Even more fascinating is the brothel owners’ justification of insurrectionist activity, including their support for rebel militias, effectively pardoned since their leaders obtained clemency from Ferdinand Marcos Sr. The sex workers’ individual narratives though evince that the liberation their predecessors fought and died for never really materialized, although the film provides an unexpected personal culmination for Hillary, the most downtrodden among them. She’s also furnished with a revelation, a way by which human psychology copes with deep sorrow by reconfiguring it as passion. The shock of recognition when it arrives invites an entire host of responses, although the ultimate question of why such irrational processes are so rarely realized in film and literature guarantees that Area will always possess evidence that confronting discomforting questions, while generally useful in opening up new avenues for exploration, sometimes yields answers that everyday existence would be too opaque to grant.

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Boy Pick-Up: The Movie

Year of Release: 2012
Director: Dominic Zapata [as Dominic C. Zapata]
Screenwriter: Aloy Adlawan
From a concept by Ogie Alcasid & Eri Neeman and a story by Ogie Alcasid & Aloy Adlawan
Producers: GMA Films & Regal Entertainment

Cast: Ogie Alcasid, Solenn Heussaff, Dennis Trillo, Michael V., Antonio Aquitania, Diego Llorico, Eri Neeman, Boy 2 Quizon, Sam Pinto, Sarah Lahbati, Gwen Zamora, Jackie Rice, Maey Bautista, Albert Sumaya Jr., Roadfill, Moymoy, Pepe Smith, Lilia Cuntapay, Kerbie Zamora, Isko Salvador, Caesar Cosme, Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr., Jose Javier Reyes, Boy Abunda, Dingdong Dantes, Victor Aliwalas, Ellen Adarna, Ian Batherson, Kristoffer Martin, Adrian Alandy, Paolo Contis, Vicky Belo, Derek Ramsey, Loonie, Dello, Mike Swift, Reg Rubio, Rhon Henley, Apokz, Abra, Jonan Aguilar

Battle rap mutates into a variation where the contestants freestyle with pickup lines. The long-time winner by acclamation is Boy Pick-Up, who comes off as a doofus who somehow casts a spell whenever he delivers his winning dispatch. His rival Gabbs consoles himself by marrying his girlfriend Queen, but the latter’s so infatuated with Boy that she abandons her fiancé at the altar. The despondent Gabbs leaps into the Pasig River but is fished out by a masked manipulator who transforms him into Bagwis, Boy’s worst nemesis. Boy meanwhile resists his gay landlord Sharona and seeks a job, finally finding it at Heaven’s Bakeshop when he prepares his irresistible fishcake. The shop owner Angel is typically besotted with Boy from first hello, but Bagwis returns to steal her away in order to sabotage Boy’s supremacy in the battle rap competition.

The TV mainstay Bubble Gang has been around for longer than most of its viewers’ lifetimes (three decades and counting) so that it’s easy for older audiences to assume that its purpose ends with the entertainment it dispenses. The disappointing performance of the film adaptation of its otherwise satisfying satirical segment featuring a parentally unsupervised rich daughter and her beleaguered though sexually amorous nanny, titled Yaya and Angelina: The Spoiled Brat Movie (dir. Michael Tuviera, 2019), was not so much a reflection of the source’s limitations as it was further proof of the difficulty of crossover attempts from TV to cinema. By confining itself to the TV property’s elements—including unexpected guest stars, with the late rock legend Pepe Smith’s definitive film appearance—and punching up its potential for spectacle, Boy Pick-Up winds up revealing the tension between forcing a Western cultural innovation to address a developing country’s occasionally imperviable concerns. Proof of the approach’s effectiveness lies in how Boy Pick-Up results in a more holistic unit than the millennium’s other significant battle rap film, Treb Monteras II’s Respeto (Respect, 2017), although then again, it might be able to accommodate the latter’s allegorical ambition only with far more difficulty. Satire has nevertheless rarely been this rewarding since the departure of our Second Golden Age experts, so both films may be counted as essential twinbill immersions in a working-class culture that might not be around for too long from now.

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