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Jay

Year of Release: 2008
Director & Screenwriter: Francis Xavier Pasion
Producers: Cinemalaya, National Commission for Culture and the Arts, & Pasion Para Pelicula Productions

Cast: Baron Geisler, Coco Martin, Flor Salanga, Angelica Rivera, Rjay Payawal, JC Santos, Jericho Espiritu, Carlo Mendoza, Karla Pambid, Peewee O’Hara, Willy Cunanan, Ernie Enrique, Joven Gabuyo, Ejie Nario, Maris Dimayuga, Francis X. Pasion

TV producer Jay Santiago goes to Pampanga to feature the family of a slain high-school teacher who shares his given name. But as he develops his story, he brazenly changes various details to heighten its overall impact, and conscripts the victim’s family into his schemes. As he forms relationships with the teacher’s family and former lover, he shows how far media can be capable of manipulating the truth for the sake of higher ratings.

How far has Philippine culture progressed as a proponent of queer lifestyles? One way of figuring out an answer is by observing the manner in which male homosexuality suffuses the narrative of Jay yet refuses to be upheld as a yardstick of social morality. One of the title characters is an apparent victim of homophobic violence, while another utilizes his namesake’s tragic outcome to promote not so much his sexual preference as his media career. The manner in which the members of the victim’s family take their cues from the media practitioner’s exploitative conduct and yield to their own baser motives demonstrates the film’s affirmation of a post-queer situation, where a villain can happen to be gay yet not be judged as flawed on the basis of his sexual preference. Jay demonstrates how such a level of cultural development enables a presentation that is at once reflexive—representing a vision of itself, the same way that the still-living Jay calls to mind the similarly named dead character—yet self-critical, casually intermingling comedic, dramatic, even horrific elements.

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Boses

English Title: Voices
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 2008
Director: Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil
Screenwriters: Froilan Medina & Rody Vera
Producers: Cinemalaya & Erasto Films In Cooperation With UNICEF, Casa San Miguel, Department of Social Welfare and Development, Council for the Welfare of Children Secretariat, National Commission for Culture and the Arts, & Film Development Council of the Philippines

Cast: Julian Duque, Coke Bolipata, Ricky Davao, Cherry Pie Picache, Meryll Soriano, Tala Santos, Carl John Barrameda, Mailes Kanapi, Soliman Cruz

Seven-year-old Onyok is taken away from his abusive father by a social worker before being brought to a shelter. Unable to speak due to a damaged larynx, the boy meets Ariel, the brother of Amanda, the shelter’s owner and director. As Ariel teaches Onyok how to play the violin, they (and Amanda) realize that the arts can be a means to recover from trauma—not just of the victim but of everyone else touched by his situation.

Advocacy filmmaking never acquired serious attention in the Philippine context, and for good reason: it was hijacked and exploited by the Marcoses’ all-too-clever martial-law dispensation. This film restores the original ideals of the practice and demonstrates, via its intimate understanding of the dramatic potential underlying art-as-therapy methods, how effectively it could move people to strong responses, if not to action. The unmentioned assumption, however, is that the people behind the project had better be gifted with critical and self-aware skills in order to figure out what to do with the conventions of advocacy practice, which would otherwise drift toward sentimental and didactic conclusions. As proof, films produced in the wake of Boses’s success foundered badly despite their best intentions, while Boses itself managed to generate sufficient word-of-mouth and repeat viewing to become, circa the early 2010s, one of the festival circuit’s most financially successful digital-indie projects.

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Indigo Child

Year of Release: 2016
Director: Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil (with stage direction by José Estrella)
Screenwriter: Rody Vera
Based on his stage play
Producers: University of the Philippines Film Institute, Ladies Who Launch, Bantayog ng mga Bayani, Rey Agapay

Cast: Skyzx Labastilla, Rafael Tibayan

Jerome, now a young man, is perplexed by the situation he finds himself in. His mother, Felisa, tends to act out her traumatic experience as an activist in the underground resistance during the martial-law dictatorship of Ferdinand E. Marcos. Because of her unstable condition, she occasionally requires medical intervention and becomes nearly impossible to communicate with. Jerome has to summon inner reserves of strength and filial devotion in order to fully comprehend the unspeakable horrors that his mother once suffered, from which she never seems able to recover.

Millennials may conceivably hesitate to consider critical presentations of the dictatorship of Ferdinand E. Marcos because of the implication that these involve returning to a past that they never experienced in the first place. (The authoritarian terms that President Rodrigo Duterte proffers appear to be more forward-looking, in contrast—which may partly explain his appeal to the otherwise apolitical younger generation, who consequently became more receptive to the Marcos scion’s presidential aspiration.) Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil conducts her film and media practice with a concern for what shifts the future may bring. Her contribution to the call to warn contemporary audiences about the dangers inherent in a tyrannical system anticipated the limits that the long-running pandemic era would impose on media production and consumption: tight budget, intimate setting, interactive inserts, dialogue-driven arguments presented as an exchange between two players in the shortest acceptable playing time for a full-length feature. Indigo Child may sound like a throwback to the theatrical origins of early silent and sound cinema, until we take a look around at the online arrangements that have been leading to shifts in audiovisual formats, from direct address to accidental revelations in domiciliated situations: the trauma in Rody Vera’s narrative, essentially a one-act two-hander, derives as much from the child’s realization of the severity of the torture his mother experienced as from, as Vera once expressed it, “her constant denial [of her past experience] that eventually drives her to madness.” The horror plays out not as malignant external forces (the way that typical cautionary texts on the evils of fascism tend to relate). Instead it begins with one of those seriocomic ironies that families deploy when they need to cope with existing difficulties: the son ascribes his choice of college course, electrical engineering, to his mother’s continuing electroconvulsive therapy program, and proceeds from there to increasingly distressing intimate revelations, culminating with an unexpected connection with historical reality. The fact that the historical experience in question is even more horrendous is left for us to discover on our own, proof that an antifascist text does not always have to replicate the full extent of the cruelties that it references: the end credits play over actual Marcos-era protest footage then lead to the artists and producers relating the text to their personal experience before an unseen audience presumably confronting this aspect of history for the first time. It may be less effective than ensuring solid liberal education for all citizens, but Pinas cinema has long been more influential than the local system, and this is one of several instances when its impact deserves to be upheld.

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1—Foster Child

Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 2007
Director: Brillante Mendoza
Screenwriter: Ralston Jover
With script supervision by Armando Lao
Producers: Seiko Films & Center Stage Productions

Cast: Cherry Pie Picache, Kier Segundo, Eugene Domingo, Jiro Manio, Alwyn Uytingco, Dan Alvaro, Kristoffer King, Jake Macapagal, Ella Antonio, Paul Holmes, Lili Arivara, Ermie Concepcion, Jess Evardone, Ma. Ruvie Suarez, Hermes Gacutan, Aya Joy Ellett, Elize Santa Angelo, Coco Martin

Thelma prepares to turn over John-John, whom she nurtured for three years, to his adoptive parents, an American family. Her family, including her husband and son, live on what she earns from the foster-care program, where she’s acknowledged as the best participant. Bianca, the program coordinator, guides her through the turnover process, which includes a program by the working-class foster-care families and their wards. Bianca informs Thelma that John-John’s mother-to-be had an injury, so they have to bring the kid to his family in a plush Makati hotel.

2—Tirador

English Title: Slingshot
Year of Release: 2007
Director: Brillante Mendoza
Screenwriter: Ralston Jover
Producers: Center Stage Productions, Rollingball Entertainment, Ignite Media

Cast: Jiro Manio, Coco Martin, Kristoffer King, Nathan Lopez, Harold Montano, Angela Ruiz, Benjie Filomeno, Enrico Villa, Aleera Montalla, Jean Andrews, Russel Laxamana, Jaclyn Jose, Julio Diaz, Simon Ibarra, Mark Dionisio, Armando A. Reyes, Rigo Ramirez, Lucky Mercado, Pusa Milanez, Ezra Munoz, Aaron Rivera, Nico Taverna, Alan Trent, Jam Milanez, Archie Dennis Duro, Jess Evardone, Arsenia Acosta, Josefina Magtagnob, Ino Amoyo, Marina Sinadjan, Majij Et, Intoy Geluca, Gemma Barrientos, Tintin, Mang Tomas, Janus Bakla, Cadiza Agarin, JP Cuaresma, Alex Arcallano, Cathy Acosta

After a sona or police-conducted roundup of male residents in a slum area in Quiapo district for alleged drug trafficking, the arrested citizens are freed by a re-electionist official who extracts promises of support from each of them. They then attend to the everyday struggle for survival. Caloy has to make overdue payments on his loan for a pedicab that he drives for a living. Rex engages in appliance repair and petty thievery to maintain his drug habit. Odie watches over his drug-peddling father, while Leo and his gang extort money and valuables from strangers that they identify as prospective targets. Political and religious events provide opportunities for the characters to further victimize the public as well as one another.

Brillante Mendoza had an early start that must have been the envy of his contemporaries: local critics’ prizes mirroring foreign triumphs, capped by two separate awards at the Cannes Film Festival for direction and female performance. Dissenting opinions from major sources, compounded by his ill-advised political decisions, led to a cooling down of takes toward his subsequent output. Nevertheless no one else has been as prolific, with over thirty titles since his emergence in the mid-2000s, not counting shorts, documentaries, TV series, and his production of other filmmakers’ works, as well as his involvement in tech elements in his and other people’s projects. It should not surprise anyone that his early domination of local critics’ awards in the same year suffers from the weaknesses one could expect in exploratory attempts—in this instance, of documentary aesthetics. Yet Foster Child and Tirador also exhibit potentials that Mendoza’s later work would elaborate on and even exceed. Both partake of direct cinema approaches focused on the working class, one on a singular subject and the other comprising the delineation of a social milieu with a variety of participants. Tirador conveys the type of skill that Mendoza would be able to parlay into works whose discursive challenges occasionally exceed his grasp, but which always guarantee an admirable control of complex situations that spin out of the control of the characters, but never of the director’s. In contrast, Cherry Pie Picache in Foster Child embodies the predicaments that confront the country’s female citizens after patriarchal authoritarianism took a back seat for several decades. Her attainment of a reality effect is so intact that it invites us to wrongly assume that no effort was expended in the process; yet her quiet moments in experiencing the bond of mothering with a prospective adoptee, for example, or panicking over losing the child she fostered while marveling at the enchantments of the adoptive family’s prosperity, help in reminding us that such privileged moments are rarely encountered even in foreign cinemas.

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Serbis

English Title: Service
Year of Release: 2008
Director: Brillante Mendoza
Screenwriter: Armando Lao
Producers: Centerstage Productions & Swift Productions

Cast: Gina Pareño, Jaclyn Jose, Julio Diaz, Kristofer King, Dan Alvaro, Coco Martin, Mercedes Cabral, Roxanne Jordan, Dido de la Paz, Buddy Salvador Caramat, Julia Taylor, Arman Reyes, Armando Lao

The Pinedas live in and operate a decrepit provincial movie palace that doubles as a gay cruising area. But just like the decaying building, the family members’ relationships with one another gradually crumble due to problems like destitution, infidelity, adultery, incest, and unplanned pregnancies. Time can only tell if the family, just like their theater, will yield to a steadily worsening fate.

The third Filipino film to compete at the Cannes Film Festival—after Lino Brocka’s Jaguar (1979) and Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim (1985)—did not perform as well at the event as the fourth one, Kinatay (Butchered, 2009), also by Brillante Mendoza. Yet Serbis is distinctive even as a Mendoza film, since it foregrounds his self-referential concerns by setting the narrative in a movie theater. The memory of past glories is inscribed not just in the film palace’s architecture but also in the psychology of its restive, embittered characters, constantly seeking ways to fulfill personal desires yet thwarted by laws, conventions, and culs-de-sac. The unexpected and unlikely ending terminates the narrative but raises questions, neither encouraging nor savory, but absolutely essential to understanding what could happen next to Philippine society and local cinema.

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Lola

Additional Language: Cebuano & English
English Title: Grandmother
Year of Release: 2009
Director: Brillante Mendoza
Screenwriter: Linda Casimiro
Producers: Centerstage Productions & Swift Productions

Cast: Anita Linda, Rustica Carpio, Tanya Gomez, Jhong Hilario, Ketchup Eusebio, Benjie Filomeno, Bobby Jerome Go, Geraldine Villamil, Nico Nullan, Hope Matriano, Tim Yap, Earl Zanorio, Cherry Cornell, Jojit Lorenzo, Tess Antonio, Edwin Tio, Karla Pambid, Ruby Ruiz, Geraldine Tan, Enrico Villa, Ces Aldaba, Placer, Jeffrey Sison, Nolan Angeles, Cris Garrido, Elpidio Juanola, Miro Delano, Gigi Felix Velarde, Raymond Nullan, Mark Philipp Espina, Revo Dungca, Antonio de Guzman Jr., Harley Alcasid, Theresa Panlilio, Jenny Cabual

After Lola Sepa lights a candle at the footbridge where her grandson was stabbed dead when he resisted the thief attempting to take his mobile phone, she goes to the local police station where she learns that Mateo, the grandson’s killer, was already apprehended and is now incarcerated. She cannot confront him though because visitors were not welcome that day. As she leaves, Lola Puring, Mateo’s grandmother, arrives to drop off some food for him. The two grandmothers learn about each other and make clear their intention: Mateo’s punishment, per Lola Sepa, and his pardon and subsequent freedom, which Lola Puring determinedly pursues. Mateo’s fate hangs on whether the two old ladies could arrive at an agreement about what course of action would be best to take.

The same year that Brillante Mendoza came up with Kinatay (Butchered), which controversially won for him the best director prize at Cannes Film Festival, he also released this low-key and languidly paced neorealist drama, with two elderly actors whose characters warily circle each other, finally forced to a public negotiating table because of their indigent circumstances (minus any hint of hagsploitation, if that ever needs pointing out). One earns a living by selling vegetables at an illegal open-air market where occasional police raids wipe out the day’s earnings; the other lost her family’s breadwinner because of a botched robbery attempt by the former’s grandson. The socioeconomic dynamic in this scenario favors the former, but the latter can and does claim moral ascendancy. The rainy-season downpours provide an unobtrusive metaphorical counterpart of the wearying impact of neoliberal development on citizens unable to keep pace and forced to rely on the transactional favors of government functionaries, if not the goodwill of acquaintances who themselves are barely scraping by. Movie queen Anita Linda, playing the more impoverished grandparent, is situated in a riverside residence, where her character’s attempts at soliciting donations for her grandson’s funeral demonstrate her long-unchallenged stature as the country’s premiere performer; Mendoza effectively rewards her with a vision of surreal beauty, via positioning her in a rarely depicted fluvial funeral procession during a brief spell of sunshine.

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Ma’ Rosa

Year of Release: 2016
Director: Brillante Mendoza
Screenwriter: Troy Espiritu
Producers: Centerstage Productions

Cast: Jaclyn Jose, Julio Diaz, Baron Geisler, Jomari Angeles, Neil Ryan Sese, Mercedes Cabral, Andi Eigenmann, Mark Anthony Fernandez, Felix Roco, Mon Confiado, Maria Isabel Lopez, Ruby Ruiz, John Paul Duray, Kristofer King

Ma’ Rosa and her husband Nestor sell shabu (methamphetamine), using their family-run neighborhood variety store as front. Operatives at the local police district are able to arrest her entire family by capturing and convincing one of Ma’ Rosa’s regular clients to participate in a buy-and-bust operation. Taking the family to a secluded section of the district office, the police are able to bamboozle Ma’ Rosa into a palit-ulo scheme (where she identifies her supplier so they can make a bigger killing), and demand 200,000 pesos in exchange for her and her family’s release without charges. Her husband is too addicted to function effectively, so she asks her kids to help her raise the money.

On the way to winning big as Best Director at Cannes Film Festival for Kinatay (Butchered, 2009), Brillante Mendoza had to endure severe backlash from his detractors, led by the late Roger Ebert. No surprise then that his next major Cannes-winning entry, Ma’ Rosa (which won Best Actress for Jaclyn Jose), generated a similar round of reservations, primarily centered on the poverty-porn strategy which Mendoza had used in order to garner foreign acclamation. The surprise, rather, lay in how heartfelt, vibrant, confident, and light-handed it turned out to be, as close to an exemplary poverty-porn entry as local filmmakers have been able to get, without sacrificing the requisite soul-crushing resolution. Knowingly embodying the entire national allegory in her now-motherly frame, Jose fully earns her stripes the same way Mendoza does—with frighteningly sharp instincts and a judicious combination of roughness and technical expertise. Her histrionic triumph almost overwhelms another of Ma’ Rosa’s feats: a near-perfect acting ensemble, where even the smallest and/or quietest roles contribute to the larger picture with inspired-yet-disciplined performances. One would have to search in the distant past for an equivalent local sample, possibly Gregorio Fernandez’s Malvarosa (1958), with Charito Solis at her fieriest and fiercest.

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One More Chance

Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 2007
Director: Cathy Garcia-Sampana [as Cathy Garcia-Molina]
Screenwriters: Vanessa R. Valdez & Carmi Raymundo
Producer: Star Cinema Productions

Cast: John Lloyd Cruz, Bea Alonzo, Derek Ramsay, Maja Salvador, Dimples Romana, James Blanco, Janus del Prado, Ahron Villena, Beatriz Saw, Nikkie Gil, Nanette Inventor, Al Tantay, Melissa Mendez, Shamaine Buencamino, Bodjie Pascua, Lauren Young

Despite frequent spats and near-breakups, Popoy and Basha have remained a couple for five years. However, when Basha finally had enough of Popoy’s domineering behavior, she ends the relationship. In time, they each find new partners. But as they try to start over, they learn that there is still something that prevents them from completely moving on from the love they once shared.

The Pinoy middle class, after enduring decimation because of the Marcos regime’s failed authoritarian experiment, recently managed to re-emerge in the current globalized era of outsourced labor, foreign direct investment, and intensifying interconnectivity. Among the several attempts to observe and chronicle this crucial paradigmatic shift, One More Chance fares better than its contemporaries, mainly because its mainstream aspirations helped it avoid the judgmental tone that the typical independent project would have succumbed to. The tight circle of yuppified characters at its center may be oblivious to the country’s—and the world’s—developmental issues, but they do manage to justify their insularity by occupying themselves with a contemporary version of courtly love. As it plays out in the film, the process appears modern in so far as the couples no longer worry about premarital relations and the main female character sets the conditions of engagement, but it also retains a nobility in terms of the male lover’s ardency and loyalty. Cathy Garcia-Sampana makes the most of her cast’s grown-up ability to convey emotional states via subtle adjustments in expressions and ironic line readings, with John Lloyd Cruz managing to utter the cheesy-sounding line “She loved me at my worst, you had me at my best” as if the fate of humanity depended on it.

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Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros

English Title: The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros
Year of Release: 2005
Director: Auraeus Solito
Screenwriter: Michiko Yamamoto
Producers: Cinemalaya & UFO Pictures

Cast: Nathan Lopez, Soliman Cruz, J.R. Valentin, Neil Ryan Sese, Ping Medina, Bodjie Pascua, Elmo Redrico, Ivan Camacho, Lucito Lopez

Twelve-year-old Maximo looks after his family of small-time crooks, including his father and two older brothers, as they live in Manila’s slums. Although openly queer, he is unconditionally accepted by his straight family members. Things get complicated when the boy develops a youthful crush on a handsome policeman, who’s been shadowing the activities of Maxie’s household. Despite his young age, Maxie has to choose between following his heart and protecting his family.

Maximo Oliveros was the justly celebrated first definitive proof that a flat-out independent-digital project can aesthetically surpass mainstream-celluloid entries. Beyond that, it has several other advantages stacked in its favor. Aside from delightfully relaxed production values and luminous performances that enable the characters to stay in the mind for long stretches, the movie also celebrates Philippine queer sensibilities without falling into the usual traps of either punishing the non-normative character or over-indulging her or his erotic fantasies. Maxie may not have been possible without the pioneering efforts of a long line of comic predecessors starting with Dolphy. In contrast with them, however, his outward flightiness masks a deep and complex—and, by film’s end, still-evolving—moral reconfiguration of a developing country’s social challenges and responsibilities, particularly toward its most vulnerable citizens.

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Minsan May Isang Puso

English Translation: Once There Was a Heart
Year of Release: 2001
Director & Screenwriter: Jose Javier Reyes
Producer: Regal Entertainment & Available Light

Cast: Ricky Davao, Jaclyn Jose, Carlo Aquino, Ana Capri, Simon Ibarra, Lui Manansala, Dekster Santos, Jiego Malvar, Dimples Romana, Marlito Ambrocio, Luz Imperial, Hope Matriano, Jaro Conde, Randolf Reyes, Val Trono, Gilleth Sandico, Nino Ignacio, Julie de Leon, Jeffrey Santos, Grace Villablanca, Tessie Villaram, Archie Cayetano, Adeth Alviar, Portia Bullecer, WRC Talents, Maru Talents Studio, Jequipros Talent Center

Simon runs a small bakery with two assistants, from which the working-class families of a neighborhood buy their breakfast buns (called pan de sal). One of these families is Emily’s, whose comatose husband has to be cared for by Boyet, her younger child, so that his elder sister can complete her studies and eventually help him return to school. Simon also maintains an exclusive arrangement with Melba, a sex professional, since he lost his family in an accident when the car he drove crashed and killed them. Simon catches one of his assistants pilfering the bakery till and dismisses her; when Boyet sees the “Help Wanted” sign, he applies for the job and endures Simon’s mean-spirited treatment in order to help his mother. Emily could not prevent her daughter from seeking comfort in her premarital relationship but winds up banishing her when she gets pregnant. As head of their respective households, Emily’s and Simon’s insistence on righteousness and independence get confronted by the realities of economic subsistence and their need for human connection.

The neorealist impulse was definitely old-hat, half a century old by the time the millennium rolled around. Yet effective local samples were hard to come by, partly because celluloid films were difficult to maintain and also because the adoption of the Hollywood practice of reserving social-realist products for awards competitions often resulted in works that did not address mass viewers as well as they impressed prestige gatekeepers. Jose Javier Reyes’s declaration that he concocted Minsan May Isang Puso as his tribute to Lino Brocka, who beat his own path to creating crowd-pleasing social dramas even at the cost of critical revulsion, helps explain how this particular sample has managed to endure since its release. The characters in the narrative attempt to attain fairly ordinary ambitions, but financial realities keep proscribing the limits within which they must function. Yet to their surprise, as well as ours, it is their exploration of these constraints that enables them to break out selectively, with sufficient consideration for others who might be affected by their decisions. The film benefits greatly from topnotch delivery by all members in the cast and reminds us never to take for granted performers who accept difficult and unglamorous roles for the sheer purpose of fulfilling their potential: no one could have seen that Jaclyn Jose and Ricky Davao would be leaving too early, but that only makes of MMIP an outing that deserves to be cherished beyond its already laudable terms.

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Kung Ako Na Lang Sana

English Translation: If It Had Only Been Me
English Title: Without You Through the Years
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 2003
Director & Screenwriter: Jose Javier Reyes
Based on the concept by Mary Rose Colindres, Emmanuel Dela Cruz, Theodore Boborol, Dennis Teodosio, Guia Gonzales, Tammy Bejerano
Producer: Star Cinema Productions

Cast: Sharon Cuneta, Aga Muhlach, Christine Bersola, Mickey Ferriols, Dominic Ochoa, Jennifer Sevilla, Shintaro Valdez, Patrick Guzman, Gabe Mercado, Reggie Curley, Chat Silayan-Bailon, Butz Aquino, Banaue Miclat, Raul Montesa, Lolly Mara

Emmy has been so preoccupied with providing for her family as well as her more needful friends that she never found time for romance. When Vince, a friend from college, is disowned by his successful father because of his irresponsibility, he turns to Emmy, yet continues to falter. But only he, among Emmy’s friends, treats her as an equal, rather than his superior. When each of them arrives at the point where their relationships force them to confront their maturity, they begin to joke about winding up with each other.

Occasionally a genre piece fulfills its functions so well that it works despite its conventions and predictability. Any serious film observer would be able to anticipate that Kung Ako Na Lang Sana will be uncovering its lead characters’ compatibility with each other and bring them to a point where their differences, not just with each other but also with their family and friends, will be resolved in a climactic reunion party. Yet the film works, mainly because it never takes these elements for granted. It provides careful motivations and character consistency even in the smallest roles, and makes its few coincidences dramatically credible. Central to its success is the fact that Sharon Cuneta and Aga Muhlach had been careful in cultivating their wholesome and responsible personas, and had both reached a performance peak when they worked together, generating sparks that neither of them was able to realize with any previous screen partner. The ease with which they essay complicated roles—apparently drawn in part from their real-life conditions—would make the most jaded rom-com viewer root for them to remain together, if only for the satisfaction of watching them trade a whole lot more lines and gestures with each other.

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Hesus, Rebolusyunaryo

Alternate Title: Hesus, Rebolusyonaryo
English Translation: Hesus, the Revolutionary
English Title: Jesus the Revolutionary
Year of Release: 2002
Director & Screenwriter: Lav Diaz
Producer: Regal Films

Cast: Mark Anthony Fernandez, Donita Rose, Joel Lamangan, Ronnie Lazaro, Pinky Amador, Ricardo Cepeda, Bart Guingona, Richard Joson, Orestes Ojeda, Marianne de la Riva, Lawrence Espinosa, Arvin “Tado” Jimenez, Dido de la Paz

It is the year 2011 and a military junta has taken over the Philippines. Underground resistance forces are present but paranoia has infested their ranks. Caught in the middle is freedom fighter Hesus, a rebel from within the ranks. But as he advocates his ideologies, the words of his mysterious superior Miguel and those of manipulative junta member Colonel Simon make him question what he should really fight for.

The so-far last regular-length film made by long-form master Lav Diaz is an overlooked achievement in at least two respects: it was the last canon-worthy action entry during the celluloid era, and it remains the best science-fiction (in the qualified futuristic sense) local movie. A third distinction—an up-front skills display—was fortunately only temporarily abandoned by Diaz, who appears, with 2013’s Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan, to have reconciled recently with the commercial preferences of Filipino spectators. Set almost a decade in a future (2011) that again fortunately never came to pass, the movie envisions a junta-led dictatorship of such vicious efficiency that only the best-trained military officers can be capable of providing revolutionary resistance.[1] The notion that Philippine society as we know it can turn dystopic even before it has reached a decent level of developmental comfort raises a few questions, such as “What are we fighting over then?” and “What happened to our strong women?” Hesus, Rebolusyunaryo operates as a cautionary text that raises the question of whether any form of dictatorship by Armed Forces reformists can be better than the one that the country experienced under Ferdinand E. Marcos, and does not hesitate to give out one resounding answer: “Never.”

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Florentina Hubaldo, CTE

Year of Release: 2012 / B&W
Director & Screenwriter: Lav Diaz
Producer: Sine Olivia

Cast: Hazel Orencio, Kristine Kintana, Noel Sto. Domingo, Willy Fernandez, Joel Ferrer, Dante Perez, Brigido Tapales, Ana Arrienda, Cesar Arrienda, Martina and Julia, Edelyn Nava, Erica Nava, Jeffrey Sigua, Christopher Tapales

Florentina Hubaldo keeps running away from her home in a rural town in Southern Luzon, but her father always manages to track her down and punish her while exploiting her for his drinking and gambling expenses. One of the effects of his severe physical abuse is chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE, a condition where she suffers from migraine and other signs of brain trauma; for example, she keeps repeating a short spiel she had prepared about herself but has difficulty completing it. Her grandfather is concerned about her plight but is too old and weak to help. In a parallel narrative, a group of friends search for some treasure supposedly buried in one of the friends’ yard. The friend who owns the place takes care of a sickly girl whom he calls his daughter, whose health keeps worsening. These two stories eventually intertwine in an unexpected manner.

Waves of admiration greeted Lav Diaz’s venture into a self-styled version of long-form filmmaking—called “slow cinema” by most observers, a term that Diaz abhors. His first attempt, Batang West Side (West Side Kid, a.k.a. West Side Avenue, 2001), broke the four-hour maximum running time for commercial releases. His next long-form entry, Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino (Evolution of a Filipino Family, 2004), ran for about double BWS’s five-hour length, at 9 to nearly 11 hours, depending on which version is being screened. Ebolusyon bore the qualities that would mark the rest of Diaz’s long-form films: done in digital video, utilizing black-and-white cinematography, filled with long takes and long shots, completed with a small crew whose members double as the movie’s actors, with material drawn from harrowing historical memory. To further challenge audience expectations, he announced a trilogy based on the theme of trauma.[2] Florentina Hubaldo, CTE is the trilogy’s last entry, and the shortest at six hours. It stands out from Diaz’s other early work in that it was the first and, until recently, the only one to focus on a woman. The title character’s suffering is so distressful and heartrending that only a mean-spirited viewer would attempt to look away and ponder the movie’s allegorical issues. Unlike its long-form predecessors, it also foregrounds the tranquil beauty of the countryside, with the majestic presence of the Bicol region’s Mayon Volcano overlooking the proceedings. The movie’s stately and formal perfection provides the anchor by which Florentina’s experience becomes bearable enough to witness; in fact, it is the mercifully few moments when she cannot be seen, when only her cries can be heard, that the movie comes closest to visceral horror. Diaz’s storytelling strength is in his handling of time and duration, and Florentina Hubaldo provides further evidence in its interweaving of seemingly distinct strands that, by the movie’s sad-yet-hopeful close, fully reward the patient viewer.

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Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan

English Title: Norte, The End of History
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 2013
Director: Lav Diaz
Screenwriters: Rody Vera & Lav Diaz
Producer: Wacky O Productions

Cast: Sid Lucero, Archie Alemania, Angeli Bayani, Hazel Orencio, Mae Paner, Soliman Cruz, Angelina Kanapi, Ian Lomongo, Kristian Chua, Noel Sto. Domingo, Perry Dizon, Moira, Sheenly Gener

Fabian is a smart albeit radically oriented student who puts off finishing his last year in law school, while Joaquin is a simple man who struggles to provide for his family amid various financial setbacks. Their lives intersect when one of them commits a crime but it’s the other who gets arrested for it. The varying degrees of punishment they endure lead to a path of either moral degeneration or personal enlightenment.

The movie that strains at the four-hour mark replicates what Eddie Romero’s Aguila (1980) managed to prove in an earlier film generation: that the Filipino spectator is capable of attending extra-lengthy presentations, given the proper motivations—major stars then, widespread acclaim this time. The fact that Norte, more than any previous three-hour-plus local commercial release, delivers on its promise has certainly helped its case and, more important, its often-reviled audience’s. Its success in indigenizing Russian source materials, notably Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 19th-century novel Crime and Punishment, may be ultimately impossible to resolve. Nevertheless Lav Diaz ensures that we won’t be deprived of the cinematic equivalents of literary wonderment, generously providing ravishing scenery, arresting performances, and twists of fate that swerve, often without warning, from the ethical to the corrupt, the sublime to the horrific, the quotidian to the phenomenal.

Notes

[1] A provocative reading was ventured via confidential message by RCO, an independent researcher from the Department of European Languages at the University of the Philippines’s College of Arts and Letters. Drawing from the context of the film’s year of production, he stated that its period setting and use of military stragglers may have been a way of allegorizing the then-ongoing internal conflicts among various factions in the Communist Party of the Philippines and their armed operators, specifically the Alex Boncayao Brigade; see Alecks P. Pabico’s “Reaffirmist–Rejectionist Schism: The Great Left Divide,” The Investigative Reporting Magazine 5.2 (April–June 1999) at http://www.marxists.org/history/philippines/ra-rj/pabico/great-left-divide.htm. Circumstantial corroboration may be found in the critical remarks Lav Diaz expressed regarding a 1988 film, Cesar S.B. Abella’s Patrolman, where the lead character is targeted for assassination by the ABB despite his having been an upright citizen; see Diaz’s “Propaganda ng Pulis (Police Propaganda),” Manila Standard (January 4, 1989), page 15.

[2] The materials as well as the narratives in the trilogy are unrelated, and may therefore be viewed individually. For those curious about the other titles, these are the nine-hour Kagadanan sa Banwaan ning mga Engkanto (Death in the Land of Encantos, 2007) and the 7.5-hour Melancholia (2008).

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Hubog

English Translation: Shape
English Title: Wretched Lives
Year of Release: 2001
Director: Joel Lamangan
Screenwriter: Roy Iglesias
Producer: Good Harvest Productions

Cast: Assunta de Rossi, Alessandra de Rossi, Wendell Ramos, Jay Manalo, Romel Villamor, Jackie Castillejo, Mel Kimura, Jim Pebanco, Tony Mabesa, Mhalouh Crisologo, Mario Magallona, Joanne Quintas, Ryan Eigenmann

Vanessa, a casual worker, strives to provide for her intellectually disabled younger sister Nikka in order to stave off social workers bent on taking her, following the death of their mother. Vanessa’s boyfriend Oliver offers little support given his work as both cabbie and petty criminal. Eventually, Vanessa leaves him for Uno, a bodyguard who seems more capable of providing for her and Nikka. As discontent among slum dwellers intensifies with the 1998 ouster of President Joseph Estrada, a breakdown in peace and order extends to the personal relationships among Vanessa, the men in her lives, and the community she lives in.

Shorn of its cynical intentions and reduced to its generic elements, “poverty porn” need not bear the derogation that has made it an easy satirical target among contemporary observers and filmmakers. Hubog is a case in point: early commentators may have been put off by its political allegories—specifically referencing the EDSA III rallies that sought to restore deposed President Joseph Estrada—as well as its literal approach to the “porn” aspect. Way over a decade since its release, however, it has shed off its aura of eager exploitation, retained its confidence in engaging in social discourse, and daringly foretold a right-wing pro-fascist drift, along with an extensive reliance on social-networking, among the dispossessed—a then-contained vision that became a reality during the 2016 presidential election and its aftermath. The movie cleverly modifies the standard inscription of “nation” on women’s bodies by splitting the usual singular representative into two: a mature contract worker who makes herself sexually available as a matter of survival, and her mentally challenged and therefore readily abused younger sister. No happy resolution awaits such a situation, especially when the only choice they can make among male prospects is whoever can be the least evil. Nevertheless the film attains a note of poignant triumph, as the sisters prove not just their devotion to each other but also their willingness to struggle valiantly in a society that can only hold forth the bleakest outcome for its least-privileged members.

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Burgos

Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 2013
Director: Joel Lamangan
Screenwriter: Ricky Lee
Producer: Heaven’s Best Entertainment

Cast: Lorna Tolentino, Tirso Cruz III, Rocco Nacino, Allen Dizon, Ina Feleo, Dimples Romana, Bangs Garcia, Kerbie Zamora, Barbara Miguel, Jim Pebanco, Tony Mabesa, Gilleth Sandico, Raquel Villavicencio, Madeleine Nicolas, Anna Luna, Menggie Cobarrubias, Lollie Mara, Joe Gruta, Arlyn de la Cruz, Dorothy Gilmore, Ruby Ruiz, Jess Evardone, Brian Arda

Edita Burgos persists in tracking down the whereabouts of her missing son Jonas. The farmer’s collective he was working for claims that the military abducted him for his alleged subversive activities. Widowed when her husband Joe died of a stroke in 2003, Edita warned Jonas about associating with people considered outlaws by the military; when he responded that she and his father similarly undertook a dangerous form of activism by pioneering in what became known as the “mosquito press” by the fascist Marcos administration, she had no choice but to reluctantly allow him to continue with his commitment to radical change. The other members of her family as well as an organization of desaparecido seekers assist her in her quest, although the Carmelite order, which she joined as a lay nun, expresses misgivings about her increasingly high-profile image as well as her seeming refusal to forgive the people who might have disappeared her son.

Part of Joel Lamangan’s announced legacy project of documenting the human-rights record of the martial-law regime of the first Ferdinand Marcos (1972-86), including its aftereffects in the turbulent post-dictatorship era, Burgos also stands out as a departure from his tendency to incorporate sermonizing in his narrative resolutions. Possibly necessitated by budgetary restrictions, the approach is well-complimented by his maturation as film director, benefiting from striking use of closeups, fluid editing, and sharp coaching of performers. The film presents an open-ended delineation of Edita Burgos’s still-ongoing search for her son Jonas, with Lorna Tolentino embodying what must be the most credible figuration of a formally consecrated individual increasingly conflicted by an activist commitment she thought she could already leave behind. Proceeding in medias res, Burgos necessarily relies on flashbacks in order to explicate Edita’s frustration with a democratized system to which she and her late husband had devoted their most productive years, only to revert to a covert fascism that cut down one of her own, in case she wanted to still harbor any delusions about it. Her strategy of drawing strength from her past builds up to a quietly devastating finale, with Lamangan demonstrating a subtlety and sophistication that betokens a newfound reliance on the capacities of the medium he’d been working in for the past several decades already.

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Minsan, Minahal Kita

English Translation: Once, I Loved You
Year of Release: 2000
Director: Olivia M. Lamasan
Screenwriters: Ricky Lee & Olivia M. Lamasan
Producer: Star Cinema Productions

Cast: Sharon Cuneta, Richard Gomez, Edu Manzano, Angel Aquino, Carmina Villaroel, Ciara Sotto, Rosemarie Gil, Sandra Gomez, Marvin Agustin, Kristine Hermosa, Bonggoy Manahan, Ama Quiambao, Andrea del Rosario, Gabe Mercado, Patty Wilson

Diane and Albert are stuck in loveless marriages but after an initial meeting, their paths keep crossing. They fall in love and proceed with a discreet romance. When their affair is discovered, Albert begs Diane to elope with him to the US. Diane is persuaded because her husband, Louie, tends to be physically abusive. But when Albert’s wife Jackie asks for another chance, Diane and Albert’s plans are left in uncertainty.

The team and studio behind Madrasta (Stepmother, 1996), Sharon Cuneta’s breakout as serious actress, devised an even more challenging role for her, this time as the other woman, and were matched with a superior performance, and film, that got taken for granted—possibly in response to a perceived overrating of the earlier project. Cuneta, as well as her director Olivia A. Lamasan, deserve to be remembered more for this type of melodrama entry, one that implicitly critiques her earlier teen-star roles by presenting her as an emotionally and physically battered woman, forced to resort to subterfuge for the sake of love. In Minsan, Minahal Kita, grown-up issues are handled with just the right attention to thematic development and fan-pleasing devices, not to mention an uncompromising stance toward women’s prerogatives in terms of their bodies, desires, and preferences.

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Milan

Additional Languages: Italian, English
Year of Release: 2004
Director: Olivia M. Lamasan
Screenwriters: Moira Lang & Olivia M. Lamasan
From a story by Moira Lang
Producers: ABS-CBN Film Productions & Star Cinema

Cast: Piolo Pascual, Claudine Barretto, Iza Calzado, Ward Luarca, Irma Adlawan, Ilonah Jean, Ryan Eigenmann, Pia Moran, Lotlot de Leon, Cecil Paz, At Maculangan, Lollie Mara, Richard Arellano, Maritess Joaquin, Cathy Garcia-Sampana, Nuel C. Naval, Elvis Vargas, Chona Zaballa, Melogin Evangelista, Matteo Luca, Ernie Cortez, Esting Cortez, Jay Rivera, Longo Francisco, Cristina Cortez, Cesare Cortez, Rochelle Tolentino, Ricardo Lorenzi, Jennifer Arcena, Yulan Tejada, Michael Garland

Wondering why his wife Mary Grace hasn’t been responding to his letters for a long time, Lino decides to leave his job as a factory supervisor and look for her in Milan, Italy. In order to do so, he has to join a group of Filipinos who illegally cross the Swiss border under cover of night. Upon arriving in Milan, he asks Filipino-looking residents if they can remember Mary Grace from a photograph, but no one recognizes her. Jenny, a Filipina who passes herself off as Italian, takes pity on his plight and provides him with bedspace in the apartment she arranged to share with several other migrants, as well as some of the part-time work that she has no difficulty in sourcing, while asking her contacts about the possible whereabouts of Mary Grace. When Lino falls for Jenny’s intelligence and strength of character, she suddenly receives a lead on where Mary Grace might be located.

Of the several OFW-themed rom-coms that Star Cinema produced, Milan distinguishes itself as the most accomplished and heartfelt. The subject of overseas migrant work is by definition nearly inexhaustible, but the budget and resources that the material requires have proved to be obstacles that only the most successful film producer of the millennium can confront, and even then with a full list of commercial compromises. Milan comes close to losing its footing after its midportion, when the central pair begin their preordained process of courtship, coupling, frustration, and reconciliation. The film traverses these treacherous requisites by falling back on the strengths of the traditions it draws from: one is the pre-Code phase of Classical Hollywood, where social and legal violations are acknowledged but treated with nonchalance; the other is the documentalist potential of social realism, realized in the film via on-cam interviews with compatriots who’re apparently living out in real life the specifics of the plot. With such fail-safe measures, the film could actually dispense with cinematic values—but Milan nevertheless provides a tactile, emo-laden captivation of the forlorn enchantments of a long-advanced system running just to stay in place, with performers skilled in their designated tasks and a then-youthful Claudine Barretto uncovering a useful range of performative abilities as she goes along.

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Pila-Balde

English Translation: Queue of Pails
English Title: Fetch a Pail of Water
Year of Release: 1999
Director: Jeffrey Jeturian
Screenwriter: Armando Lao
Producer: Good Harvest Productions

Cast: Ana Capri, Marcus Madrigal, Harold Pineda, Allen Dizon, Estrella Kuenzler, Becky Misa, Jess Evardone, Engelbert de Ramos, Darylynn Dajao, Amaya Meynard, Rina Rosal, Lawrence Roxas, Cris Corpuz, Edwin Amado, Rosemarie Cane, Erica Masinam

Gina lives in the slums with her laundrywoman grandmother Cion and her younger siblings, Boyet and Maria. In hopes of a better life, Gina rejects Nonoy—a fellow slum dweller who truly loves her—in favor of Jimboy, the playboy son of one of Cion’s better-off patrons, Mrs. Alano. Jimboy gets Gina pregnant, but problems arise when Mrs. Alano forbids her son from consorting with the slum folk.

The folly of declaring Golden Ages is exposed by works of this type, one that draws from the strengths of two opposed masters—Lino Brocka’s proletarian sympathies and Ishmael Bernal’s sardonic irreverence—and outdoes either option by combining both qualities. Produced after the end of the so-called Second Golden Age (roughly mid-1970s to the end of the Marcos era in 1986), the film can best be read as an update of the First Golden Age’s Malvarosa (1958, dir. Gregorio Fernandez), this time deploying the carnal allure of the sex-comedy to explore the complexities and paradoxes of class and gender politics. When exploitation threatens to become the norm even among the movie’s heroic proletariat, the narrative pulls them back from the abyss and provides them with a well-earned shot at redemption, a rare instance of an upbeat closure perfectly complementing a hard-core realist text.

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Tuhog

English Translation: Skewered; Long Take (film production parlance)
English Title: Larger than Life
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 2001
Director: Jeffrey Jeturian
Screenwriter: Armando Lao
Producers: Available Light Productions, Regal Films

Cast: Ina Raymundo, Klaudia Koronel, Jaclyn Jose, Irma Adlawan, Dante Rivero, Nante Montreal, Raymond Nieva, Eric Parilla, Crispin Pineda, Frank Rivera, Desi Rivera, Celeste Lumasac, Albert Zialcita, Jessette Prospero, Russell Zamora, Rhett Romero, Menggie Cobarrubias

Perla endures her father’s attempts at incestuous rape. But when he takes an interest in his granddaughter Floring (Perla’s daughter by a lover who had abandoned her), Perla’s moral outrage leads to her killing her own father. An enterprising director and scriptwriter interview mother and daughter in order to make an exploitation movie titled Hayok sa Laman (Lust for Flesh), where a mother, Violeta, melodramatically seeks to protect her concupiscent daughter, Hasmin, from the depraved attentions of her father even while the girl makes out at every opportunity with her boyfriend Adan. Perla and Floring attend a screening with their friends and neighbors, and are appalled by how their narrative is trivilialized and sensationalized onscreen.

The last scriptwriting contest of the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines declared two co-equal winners, but the agency shut down before it could find producers willing to finance the projects. One of the winners, Armando Lao, managed to make a name for himself as an outstanding practitioner. His ECP-winning entry, Pinilakan (Silvered or Silvery), was updated and released during the period of unrest building up to the massive demonstrations attempting to (unsuccessfully) reinstall deposed President Joseph Estrada. One may be tempted to draw a parallel between the people-power events aimed at “correcting” the anomaly of having unpopular and dysfunctional Chief Executives—Ferdinand Marcos in 1986’s original EDSA uprising, Estrada in 2001’s EDSA II—and the parodic and cynical replication of people power subsequently labeled EDSA III. Viewed from a historical distance, Tuhog demonstrates an ability to interrogate the machinations of urban, capitalist, male gaze-dominated cinema and its disregard for the interests of its polar opposites—the rural, agricultural, feminized world of the Third-World subject. It refuses the moral streamlining that renders the typical reflexive treatment sanctimonious and predictable, and makes understandable how media exploitation manages to thrive even while it cannibalizes the misery and suffering of its sources of material. The contrasts between the cinematic polish of the film-within-a-film and the documentary plainness of the real-life narrative, as well as the generic performances of the “fictional” characters, all come to a head when the two stories’ violent resolutions lead to distressing excesses, with the Hayok sa Laman film-within-a-film characters provided with a pornographic equivalent of their real-life counterparts’ domestic happy ending. In this manner, Tuhog implicates not so much its exploitative (fictional and real-life) filmmakers as its (fictional and real-life) audience: who can resist the titillation in the three-dimensional characters’ situation, and the carnal attractions of their onscreen representations?

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1—Bridal Shower

Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 2004
Director: Jeffrey Jeturian
Screenwriter: Chris Martinez
From a story by Chris Martinez, with script supervision by Armando Lao
Producer: Seiko Films

Cast: Dina Bonnevie, Cherry Pie Picache, Francine Prieto, Christian Vazquez, Douglas Robinson, JR Valentin, Alfred Vargas, Pinky Marquez, Rodel Velayo, Gina Pareño, Boots Anson Roa, Lester Llansang, Angel Jacob, Gerald Lauron, Jacob Dionisio, Christine Carlos, flora Gasser, Yvette Marie Tagura, Pocholo Montes, Irma Adlawan, Bon Vibar, Grace Patricia Francisco, Basil Bolinao, Cynthia San Juan, Roher Tierra

Tates, Sonia, and Katie all work as fairly successful advertising executives under the benign supervision of Emily. It is their love lives, however, that prove problematic and potentially upsetting for their friendship. Mickey, an underachiever, is dismayed every time he bumps into one of Tates’s casual flings, although he relies on her contacts so he can annul his marriage to be able to wed her. Sonia enjoys having sex with the poor but passionate Bryan, but when she discovers she’s pregnant, she decides to settle with the wealthy but boring Juancho, despite being unsure which boy toy is the child’s father, just so she can fulfill her trophy-wife aspiration. From their superior vantage point, the two friends cast aspersions on overweight Katie’s choice of Joebert, a male stripper whom she tries to guide toward a more socially acceptable profession.

2—Minsan Pa

Additional Languages: Cebuano, Japanese, English, Korean
English Title: One Moment More
Year of Release: 2004
Director: Jeffrey Jeturian
Screenwriter: Armando Lao
Producer: MLR Films

Cast: Jomari Yllana, Ara Mina, Christian Vasquez, Tirso Cruz III, Rio Locsin, Dimples Romana, Criselda Volks, R.U. Miranda, Malu Barry, Dulce, Anna Fegi, Jonathan Badon, Marru Hadraki, R.R. Jacob, Natasha Denser, Ramon Villanueva, Sari Santillan, Nico Antonio, Jennifer Donaire, Kristopher Relucio, Ben Estur Jr., Gigette Reyes, Donnah Alcantarah, Ed Murillo, Dot Ramos-Gancayco, Kate Pamela Natividad, Igi Boy Flores, Adan Bolivar, Jacqueline Etulle, Roger Rayala, Teresa Tunay, Fonz, Kristopher Grundstrome, Malou Crisologo

Since his father abandoned their family, Jerry has had to play the role of sole breadwinner for his mother, brother, and sister. He earns a living as a tour guide for Japanese men who travel to Cebu for the sights as well as the women. When the influx of foreign tourists declines as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he agrees to accommodate local tourists and falls for Luna, a well-off adopted Manileña who’s engaged to her companion Alex. Jerry’s pride makes him resist his father’s attempts to reconcile with them; he punishes his younger brother as well when he catches him gambling in a casino. When Luna drops her camera into the sea, Jerry sees an opportunity to win her affection away from Alex.

The teamup of Jeffrey Jeturian with script specialist Armando Lao is comparable to the Second Golden Age’s collaborations between their mentors Marilou Diaz-Abaya and Ricky Lee, with Jeturian taking an extensive break from film directing and Lao dying prematurely (both fates of which tragically befell Diaz-Abaya). In a millennial year whose exceptionality has never been adequately appreciated, much less explicated, they came up with a pair of works that seemed generically and structurally opposed, set in the country’s contending major cities. Yet the ready-made response to those willing to find fault with either release is surprisingly simple: watch both in succession and see how one ingeniously complements the other. Bridal Shower’s seemingly frivolous pursuits collapse (normally a disparagement) onto one character’s plot concerns and ends with an ambivalently conclusive coupling, in contrast with the other characters’ resolutions. Minsan Pa meanwhile extends the dilemma of the dispossessed male in Bridal Shower: it would be commonplace in the country to find young working-class hunks who decide to return to their rural roots in order to have a better shot at success. Their objectification by higher-stationed admirers persists nevertheless, whether they like it or not, so they live essentially feminized lives, assured of patriarchal privilege but with their notion of ideal happiness permanently suspended by their social limitations. After traversing the central character’s journey marked by the melancholia of mature acceptance, what awaits the expectant viewer is a quality unique in the works of both director and writer—a happy ending, as smartly disposed and emotionally well-earned as it would be possible for fully attuned affiliates to concoct.

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Kubrador

English Title: The Bet Collector
Year of Release: 2006
Director: Jeffrey Jeturian
Screenwriter: Ralston Jover
Producer: MLR Films

Cast: Gina Pareño, Fons Deza, Nanding Josef, Soliman Cruz, Joe Gruta, Domingo Landicho, Neil Ryan Sese, Johnny Manahan, Miguel Castro, Nico Antonio, Jess Evardone

Despite her old age, Amy’s persuasiveness and her special way of recalling numbers boost her work as a bet collector for jueteng, an illegal game popular in her slum neighborhood. As she goes about her duties, she evades the cops, sits in for her boss at a rigged gambling draw, and even performs some good deeds for her community. All this leads Amy to a fateful encounter after a visit to her son’s grave on All Saints’ Day.

The early post-celluloid production that set hard-to-match standards in directorial style, with real-time storytelling, fluid long takes, and powerhouse performances demonstrating how the strengths of digital filmmaking, granting the participation of genuine talent, could be enhanced. The filmmakers allude to the limits of the medium by introducing a metaphysical element—the mother’s dead son, a reminder of dreams that will never come true—yet we only realize in retrospect how such a device, devoid of its usual tearjerker function, served to prepare us for the mother’s own near-death encounter. On Gina Pareño’s ravaged-yet-hopeful features, a rare mergence of life lessons and masterly performance, we find an epitomization of the hope and despair that the narrow, suspicious, and normativized slum spaces seek to conceal from outsiders.

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Ekstra

English Title: The Bit Player
Year of Release: 2013
Director: Jeffrey Jeturian
Screenwriters: Zig Madamba Dulay, Antoinette Jadaone, Jeffrey Jeturian
Producers: Cinemalaya Foundation & Quantum Films

Cast: Vilma Santos, Cherry Pie Picache, Richard Yap, Ruby Ruiz, Nenita Deonoso, Karen Leslie Dematera, Boobsie, Christopher Ad. Castillo, Raymund Ocampo, Abi Niesta, Zyrus Imperial, Ronaline Ronn Enriquez, Tart Carlos, Antonette Garcia, Erlinda Villalobos, Raymond Rinoza, Hazel Faith dela Cruz, Rex Lantano, Martha Comia, Jake Seneres, Ricky Pascua, Zachary Ezekiel Diaz, Angelica Luis, Mhel Seduco, Michael Bayot, Fatima Centena, Almira Alcid, Cris Garrido, Norberto Portales, Marlon Rivera, Sunshine Teodoro, Vincent de Jesus, Louie Kim Sedukis, Miguel Cruz, Bobby Contiga, Piolo Pascual, Marian Rivera, Cherie Gil, Nico Antonio, Orlando Marcos, Vida Masakayan, Marx Topacio, Afi Africa, Toni Lopengco, Eula Valdez, Rosejean Sevilla, Salvador Zapanta, Glen Elizalde

Even after becoming an unwed mother, Loida refuses to give up her pursuit of bit parts in movies, banking on the awareness that she has more talent than most of her work colleagues. Josie, their coordinator, herds them to out-of-town locales in order to work on a stressful and prolonged TV drama. The bit players maintain the camaraderie necessary for the mutual support they need at work, but Josie also awaits any opportunity for a break so she can raise the tuition money that her daughter tells her is already due.

Calibrating one’s expectation in approaching Ekstra will be the key to uncovering its reflexive charm and cultural circumspection. Vilma Santos had attained the underappreciated ability to maintain a personable presence in her films without upstaging any of her coplayers, in contrast with her rival Nora Aunor’s auteuristic skill in perceiving and seizing a work’s central mechanism in order to override it for the purpose of enhancing, if not bettering, the final product. Jeffrey Jeturian had over a decade’s worth of working through this type of material and demonstrates in Ekstra a delicacy that manages to salvage what could have easily been a devastating, melodramatic resolution. In-joke references to Aunor’s expertise, as well as spot-on parodies of TV-drama conventions, serve to enhance the affecting and all-knowing humiliation that Santos allows her character to endure. Fans of either or both stars—that is, of Philippine cinema in its contemporary entirety—need not hesitate: Ekstra will be more than enough to hold us over until its filmmaker manages to return to creative activity once more.

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