Greatest Performance
Directed & written by Joselito Altarejos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Notes

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

[1] To explicate this paragraph, in order of discussion: In one of my exchanges with the director, he clarified that the use of the same title of an unfinished 1989 film by Nora Aunor (listed in Canon Decampment) is strictly incidental; a sequence breakdown that I made of the earlier film is posted here. From a social-network discussion with Ma Nuno, I gathered the invaluable insight that Yvonne Rivera’s maid, in singing softly to comfort her mistress, could be practicing the healing custom that can be tracked to the predominantly women-led babaylan or native shaman tradition. Another query that could follow for viewers inclined to ponder gender issues: could there be transference in Yvonne’s quiet acceptance of her maid’s ministration? Arguably the women characters in the text are queerer than the males, even if the major ones (Yvonne and Katrina) engage in what might be regarded as counter-exploitation. Finally, the concept of reflexivity in film was brought up by, among others, semiotician Christian Metz, who used the term “mirror construction” in the title of his article.

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

[3] The opening shot of Ang Lihim ni Teresa, Yvonne’s comeback project, is taken directly from her action after her post-interview conversation with her maid, the only instance when a plot moment directly shows up in the fiction that the characters are creating. The shot an is an homage to Ishmael Bernal, who occasionally depicted distressed or giddy women by showing them unsteadily climbing up or down staircases, most famously in his first credited work, Pagdating sa Dulo (Near the End, 1971). The director’s appearance is a reflexive reference to Celso Ad. Castillo’s Totoy Boogie (1980), where the title character watches a TV interview of Castillo discussing the merits of Asedillo (1971), his Fernando Poe Jr. blockbuster. Later in the film, Castillo shows up and makes Totoy his kept man, yet another queer turn from the cis-het filmmaker, whose unfulfilled dream project was to star in his own production of Ang Lalakeng Nangarap Maging Nora Aunor (The Man Who Dreamed of Becoming Nora Aunor); in a parallel development, Totoy himself gets involved with a disco dancer who turns out to be the kept woman of a rich lesbian.

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Lakambini [Noblewoman]
Directed by Arjanmar H. Rebeta
Written by Rody Vera

The biggest still-to-be-resolved controversy about the Philippines’s anticolonial revolution, the first in Asia, centers on the status of Andrés Bonifacio, founder of its liberation army, the Katipunan. Most adequately schooled natives would be aware that recognition of his stature as head of the country’s liberated territories was wrested by a faction that derided his status as uneducated and low-born, despite overwhelming evidence that he’d attained higher levels of historical and political awareness, a result of persistent self-education, than his critics. As a result of duplicitous maneuvering, he and his brother were subjected to a mock trial and summarily executed, their bodies never found despite an arduous month-long search covering two mountains by his widow, Gregoria de Jesús.

11011Also known as Oryang, de Jesus specified Lakambini as her nom de guerre, in acknowledgment of her husband’s position as Lakan or ruler. She accused agents of the usurpation forces of rape and was warned that she could be targeted for assassination. Julio Nakpil, one of her late husband’s lieutenants, married her and kept her safe, enabling her to survive nearly half a century after Bonifacio’s death. A lesser-known fact is that Bonifacio had appointed her his Vice President, which would have made her his successor if the revolution had not been betrayed by Emilio Aguinaldo.

11011Oryang not surprisingly lived out the rest of her life as a traumatized and oppressed figure, although she drew enough inspiration from her years of struggle to be able to codify the lessons she picked up. The challenge for anyone attempting to accomplish a feature film about her would be manifold enough to discourage profit-oriented entities such as the Metro Manila Film Festival, which refused to provide financing for Lakambini (not the only prestige project it turned down in a long history of more questionable entries than memorable ones). Aside from the whopping budgetary requirement of recreating scenes over a century in the past, an extensive millennial-era release had also tackled the same biographical narrative – Lav Diaz’s eight-hour Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis (2016).

11011As if these travails weren’t enough, the Lakambini project suffered from scheduling complications as well as a surfeit of newly uncovered information and insights provided by contemporary historical developments, duly documented by the production team. The feature was initially meant to be a joint project of Jeffrey Jeturian and Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil, with the latter eventually deciding to assume creative producer functions. The final film credits Arjanmar H. Rebeta as director, but also makes use of the aforementioned interview materials as well as subsequent footage where a new actor, Elora Españo, replaced Lovi Poe; still one more actor, Gina Pareño, portrayed Oryang as an elderly citizen.

11011To be sure, the use of multiple actors to portray the same character had already been attempted in earlier films, notably in That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), Luis Buñuel’s well-received last film. But where Buñuel’s purpose was to illustrate the central male character’s shifting perceptions, Lakambini’s turn (as articulated in the film by its director) serves to impress on the viewer the possibility of Oryang representing not one fixed type, but the fuller array of Philippine womanhood. The film’s purpose is further heightened by the actors’ capabilities, with Pareño, an entire cluster of her own share of well-publicized trauma and triumph behind her, ushering the text’s literal mergence of fiction and fact in a remarkable final sequence that will be permanently imprinted on the memory of anyone who watches it.

11011The only possible hesitation for most audiences, apart from the film’s formal novelty, would be the unremitting sadness of Oryang’s story: not only was she, like the revolution, violated by the very people expected to support her cause, she also lived through all three periods of vicious colonization, dying during World War II before the country attained any form of liberation. She allows herself some consolation in hearing the news of the failure of the fraudulent president’s attempt to legitimize his bloody power-grab via national elections, but issues perhaps the most important historical principle ever made by any Philippine political entity: that history, in its own time, will unmask hidden iniquity (preceding by a few decades Martin Luther King’s much-quoted statement on the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice).

11011Yet the filmmakers involved in the project had been capable in the past of creating difficult reflexive material with light-handed, even comic applications.[1] The daring with which they packaged the narrative of Gregoria de Jesús has not only accurately represented her as a polysemic figure, capable of addressing folks from several generations and persuasions and possibly even nationalities; it has also made her recognizable to millennial audiences, with their preference for experiencing multimedia banter and tolerance for crisscrossing various levels of reality. Lakambini has enabled her to step into the here and now, and the pleasant surprise is that her messages continue to resonate.

Note

Previously published July 27, 2025, in The FilAm. Non-essential disclosures: I was present during the feature film’s first day of shooting, intending to occasionally attend in order to observe a post-celluloid production, since the technological transition to digital occurred while I was busy writing my doctoral dissertation. I was also chair of the board of jurors during the short film festival where Arjanmar H. Rebeta’s entry (see note below) won several prizes. Finally, before production started, I wrote “Theater, Film, & Everything In-Between,” effectively an introduction to Two Women as Specters of History: Lakambini and Indigo Child by Rody Vera (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2019), the annotated and translated screenplays of two prizewinning films; the book, also a prizewinner, was edited by Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil.

[1] Each of the names who directorially participated had works that may be classified as reflexive but in differing respects: Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil’s last completed film, Indigo Child (2016), was a documentation of a restaged play; Arjanmar H. Rebeta’s previous work, “Libro for Ransom” (2023), was a short film on an investigative journalist’s pursuit of the truth behind the disappearance and recovery of the novels of José Rizal in 1961. Jeffrey Jeturian had two titles, Tuhog (Larger than Life, 2001) and Bikini Open (2005), the first a tracking of the process of the adaptation of a rape case for a commercial film project and the second a mockumentary on a beauty contest.

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Faney [Fan]
Directed & written by Adolfo Borinaga Alix Jr.

The reverberation of a life after one has died is no longer new because of the dissemination of media-generated popular culture. It should be no surprise that the departure of Nora Aunor has affirmed what film critic and Jefferson public service awardee Mauro Feria Tumbocon Jr. described as “a subgenre yet to be named, where Aunor plays herself as singer-performer” – except that in the recently released Faney, she no longer exists in our world. The film, part of a substantial list of works already completed (some with her still alive in them), is evidence of how intensively she focused on the legacy she wanted to leave behind: not in terms of trophies or material wealth, but in the record of solid performances that she became known for since her emergence as the country’s most capable actor in the 1970s.

11011Faney also testifies to how carefully she cultivated artistic alliances, with Adolfo Alix Jr. taking the place of Mario O’Hara, whose untimely demise from leukemia she mourned openly. Alix was more prolific than O’Hara and already had a few noteworthy projects when he and Aunor first collaborated, but again like O’Hara, his growth trajectory found a grounding that it had been seeking out. Part of the confidence he needed was provided by Aunor herself, since her sheer presence in any type of undertaking always assured, at minimum, an exceptional delivery and a sense that she’d intervened in the project not for highlighting or glamorizing herself, but for enriching the text’s sociopolitical possibilities.

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11011One byproduct of her renewed productivity, after an extended sabbatical in the US, lies in the number of industry participants who had been formerly indifferent, sometimes even hostile, toward her. Faney features a comic turn by Roderick Paulate in his famed Rhoda persona, playing a devotee who’s accused by another fanatic of betraying a rival star, with whom he erupts in a hair-pulling contest. The character who first mentions the film title is played by Althea Ablan, who’s typically millennial in her adulation of a fictional boy band, while her grandmother is essayed by long-time Aunor associate Gina Alajar, serving as the voice of caution regarding her own mother’s overwhelming, decades-spanning fanaticism.

11011The great-grandmother on whom the narrative turns (described as “emotionally wrought yet effective” by film expert Jojo Devera[1]) is embodied by Laurice Guillen, who springs a few surprises with her presence. She’d trained in theater, as Paulate also did, and where Aunor once immersed in productively: anyone fortunate enough to have seen this trio in their respective stage appearances would instantly understand why theater’s any actor’s true medium. But after several film directors, including the otherwise reliable Lino Brocka, could not maximize her performative potential, she found her own footing when she ventured into film directing. The first jaw-dropper is in how she never had any solo-lead film roles all this time, with Faney constituting only her third, after Jay Altarejos’s Guardia de Honor last year and Alix’s Karera in 2009. The more startling revelation is how perfect she turns out to be for the part, as if all the years of being kept from disclosing her full store of histrionic talent enabled an outpouring of, to use the proper descriptor, Noranian proportions.

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11011Only favorable results can arise out of such an approach. The film’s few technical imperfections can be overridden by such an all-infusive display of prowess, with several introspective moments held fast by the eloquence of her appearance: where Aunor made her eyes speak volumes, Guillen deploys her entire face – an even more effective mechanism, truth be told. Her penultimate silent moment is when she encounters a male contemporary who we also see for the first time, and no words need to be uttered for us to deduce that he had shared a past with her. This also serves as a throwback to the climax of Aunor with Vilma Santos in Ishmael Bernal’s Ikaw Ay Akin (1978), which is not the only reflexive moment in the film. In fact the entire outing offers a cornucopia of references for any avid pop-culture follower, starting with the aliases the followers give themselves – “Bona” for Milagros (Guillen’s character) and “Pacita M.” for Paulate’s hell-raising smarty-pants – as well as wisecrack exchanges that sound increasingly familiar until the characters declare the titles of the source films.

11011But it’s in the self-owned silent moments where Guillen makes her mark. The first one, when Milagros hears the news of Aunor’s death and brings out her memorabilia collection, sets the tone of melancholy over loss and aging with the comic undercurrent of insistent, undying obsession. The last one, where she stands with her family over Aunor’s grave and gazes in the distance, will reward any open-hearted viewer with an unexpected moment of grace that doesn’t have to be spoiled in a review. Just make sure to allow Faney to make the mark that Aunor left for us to savor.

Note

First published June 14, 2025, as “Laurice Guillen Is a Devoted Nora Fan in Tribute Film Faney,” in The FilAm.

[1] Devera also provided a later insight, confirmed by the director, to account for how the film was able to make the most of the presence of crowds at Heritage Memorial Park as well as the prevalent air of melancholy that descended on the city: Alix conceptualized and cast the film as soon as the news of Aunor’s death broke out, and took the actors to the relevant locales during the period of her wake.

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Kontrabida [Villain]
Directed by Adolfo Borinaga Alix Jr.
Written by Jerry B. Gracio

After completing work on Kontrabida, Nora Aunor was finally declared National Artist, minus the execrable intrusion of any political leader or showbiz rival (essential disclosure: in June 2014, The FilAm was the first publication to criticize the ill-advised decision by President Benigno Aquino III to drop her name from the list of submissions). What should have been happy news, however, turned out distressing for her followers: she endured a severe medical emergency, declared dead at one point but revived through the intervention of an understandably panicked health team.

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11011Kontrabida might therefore be the last opportunity to watch a consummate Aunor film, although the hesitation of casual viewers would be understandable. Its director’s track record has been spotty, and the Metro Manila Film Festival’s consistent rejection of its participation is reminiscent of its judgment on her own auteur project, Greatest Performance, in 1989. Yet what traces remain of GP suggest an ambitious and exemplarily performed work, one of the MMFF’s gravest missteps in a long list of embarrassments. Kontrabida’s an even more egregious instance of insider politicking and institutional negligence.

11011Any initial viewing will instantly distinguish the film as reminiscent of Aunor’s case history during her peak premillennial years, when filmmakers would be able to realize significant achievements by simply having her on board; her skills in streamlining, clarifying, and amplifying character attributes was (and remains) second to none, ascribable to her intensive experience in creative processes and immersion in her compatriots’ sociological concerns. Kontrabida has also turned out to be her first millennial project that references her stature as queer icon, resisting the typical indie practitioner’s tendency to recognize her considerable store of gifts by unnecessarily pedestalizing her.

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11011The best way of extracting the film’s potential would be by focusing on the persona that she proffers, inasmuch as Aunor appears in every scene. Early in the plot, her Anita Rosales prepares to dispose of the bric-a-brac she accumulated as a movie supporting player, including her only acting trophy. Any devoted Philippine cinema observer would readily recognize that the object happens to be Anita Linda’s only Maria Clara award, the first institutional prize ever handed out for local film achievement. A fan of hers shows up to purchase it, and it turns out to be played by the recently departed Jaclyn Jose – who professes so much devotion that she decides to return the item to its owner.[1]

11011The parallelisms with film history are profound and moving, yet unobtrusive enough to remain hidden for those who prefer to ignore them. Aunor was the actor who set out to challenge Linda’s First Golden Age stature as the country’s greatest performer and succeeded due to her marshaling of her own privileges as the most successful star in Pinas cinema as well as the upgrade in resources and sensibility of the Second Golden Age; Jose meanwhile carved out her own niche in depicting characters ravaged beyond redemption by poverty and managed to snag the much-coveted Cannes Film Festival best actress prize in the process.

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11011Linda had been gone by the time Kontrabida was made (her final starring role was also in an Alix film), but neither Aunor nor Jose, just like Linda before them and unlike a long list of their contemporaneous performers, make an effort to recapture their appearance during their Golden Age glory years. The weight they put on, the wrinkles, lumps, and veins on their faces, their slower movements and weaker physical capacities – all affirm their lifetime aspiration to enable their audiences to identify with them. In this instance, they constitute a redefinition of glamour for those who care to ponder on these matters: that it might mean conforming to a near-unattainable youthful ideal for the vast majority, but it could also mean the fulfillment of long-cultivated potential offered for widespread and long-term public consumption: talent, to paraphrase Pauline Kael, will always be a surer guarantee of glamour.

11011Alix of course had collaborated long enough with Aunor to be able to provide unintrusive details that function like humor devices, and then some: Anita begins by slapping someone in her high-camp dream where she plays a society matron, but gets slapped symbolically by her working-class existence in a crisis-ridden administration; she may have retained ownership of her acting trophy, but we eventually get to see how Aunor herself regards these empty symbols of triumph;[2] she lives in a world where those who recognize her adulate her for her past attainments, but she pays the closest attention to people taken for granted by everyone else.

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11011Toward a later part of the film, Alix introduces Bembol Roco, one of her few male contemporaries who has perfectly understood that one must complement Aunor in order to survive a scene with her, in the role of her infirm ex-husband Ramon. The exchanges of scripted lines between them play on their characters’ real-life circumstances and display the warmth and collegiality that their long-time immersion in Philippine film culture has enabled. Anita then forms a pistol with her fingers and aims it at Ramon, then reflexively remarks “bad acting” about herself. The gesture’s payoff is earth-shattering but doesn’t have to be spoiled in a review. Kontrabida nonetheless deserves to be watched for all the tremendous pleasure and pain that the full life of a genuine film artist has brought to the project.

Notes

First published November 18, 2024, as “Nora Returns Minus the Glamour of the Glory Years,” in The FilAm.

[1] Dolly claims that Anita turned her life around by inspiring her to avenge herself on her wrongdoers. In her real-life career, Jaclyn Jose became a much sought-after camp presence in TV drama by specializing in comically snobbish aristocrats, similar to the characters that Anita dreams that she portrays, but directly opposed to Nora Aunor’s actual movie persona.

11011Her first significant interview was titled “Walang Bold sa Langit [Bold Not Allowed in Heaven]” (1986), conducted by Ricky Lee, retitled “May Bold Ba sa Langit? [Is Bold Allowed in Heaven?]” and reprinted in his 2009 anthology Si Tatang at Mga Himala ng Ating Panahon: Koleksyon ng mga Akda or Old Man and the Miracles of Our Time: Collection of Writings, pp. 70-74). In it, Jose mentioned watching Ishmael Bernal’s Himala [Miracle] (1982) for her lesson in acting excellence and described how she wished she could perform on the same level that Nora Aunor had demonstrated, attaining maximal impact via the smallest of gestures. A final Noranian intertext occurs in Emmanuel Dela Cruz’s 2005 film Sarong Banggi [One Night], where Jose’s character, also named Jaclyn, professes fanaticism toward Aunor, her fellow Bicol-born native. (Thanks to Deo Antazo for this vital recollection.)

[2] I am indebted to critic-archivist Jojo Devera, not just for providing access to Kontrabida, but also for pointing out the function that Anita Linda’s Maria Clara trophy signifies in the plot of the film.

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Unang Tikim [First Taste]
Directed by Roman Perez Jr.
Written by Mariane Maddawat

Launched during the start of the current decade, the Vivamax arm of Viva Films swiftly dominated the subscription streaming services of Philippine cinema and never let up since. The answer will be obvious to anyone who checks out Netflix and several other so-called over-the-top (meaning bypassing middle agencies) services: specialized products, less costliness for the consumer, absence of censorship. It also doesn’t take a lot of figuring out to determine what material the service focuses on, which is what the majority of homesick overseas kabayans demand – sex, as much as the average film presentation can contain without devolving into gonzo pornography, softcore style.

11011Philippine-based recognition mechanisms still have to give Vivamax its due,[1] but an American film festival, the FACINE International, already gave its grand prize last year to Lawrence Fajardo’s Erotica Manila: Foursome, a concatenation of TV-style shorts. Its gold winner for short film was a hard-hitting satire titled “How to Make an Effective Campaign Ad,” directed by Roman Perez Jr., who also took charge of the first theatrically released Vivamax project, titled Unang Tikim (literally First Taste, officially translated as First Time).

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11011So far the film has attained the stature of moderate box-office performer, running into its second week in selected venues – certainly a far more preferable fate than the usual theatrical flop that characterizes even major releases nowadays. More surprising is the type of theme tackled by Unang Tikim: sex, as expected of a Vivamax production, but with the primary relationship transpiring between two women. To be sure, positively depicted lesbian narratives are not new to Philippine cinema, although they occur with far less frequency than gay-male stories. Marilou Diaz-Abaya, the first woman-filmmaker National Artist, arguably started the trend in 1986 with Sensual, also a “bold” (or sex-themed) venture like Unang Tikim.

11011The primary points to make regarding other early attempts at recuperating same-sex love stories between women is that first, they were mostly featured as subplots in straight-centered narratives; and second, they had to contend with the usual homophobic demonization of gay women in local releases. (I can only remember one other premillennial release, Mel Chionglo’s I Want to Live from 1990, as another woman-positive presentation; an earlier “event” movie, Danny L. Zialcita’s T-bird at Ako [Lesbian and Me] from 1982, resorted to visiting violence on its lesbian character, although it nevertheless features a sharply observed turn from another National Artist, Nora Aunor.)

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11011The digitalization of film production during the millennial era brought with it a number of well-realized women’s love stories, most of it from independent producers, with Sigrid Andrea Bernardo’s 2013 Ang Huling Cha-Cha ni Anita (Anita’s Last Cha-Cha) standing out for being a coming-of-age tale, the distaff counterpart of Aureus Solito’s Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros) from 2005. In a remarkable category all its own is Joel Lamangan’s Sabel, a 2004 film based on the seemingly incredible though real life-based odyssey of a woman who started out as an easy-going teenager, entered the nunnery after giving birth, married the prisoner who raped her, then emerged after a long disappearance as a rebel warrior committed to a female spouse. (Sabel and I Want to Live were both scripted by yet another recent National Artist, Ricky Lee.)

11011Unang Tikim constitutes a throwback to the earlier sexualized treatments of lesbian film narratives, with one character’s bisexuality providing the crisis in the plot. It also desists from dealing primarily with “developments” in which one or the other character suffers physical homophobic retaliation – possibly a lack when we inspect actual lesbian stories, but strangely affecting in this case because of the respite it provides from the usual judgmental approach. The fact that Perez, in less than a decade of practice, has overseen well over a dozen film projects, alongside Vivamax’s determination to mount a widescreen-worthy attraction, has resulted in a work of ineffable sensuality and beauty.

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11011What must have added to non-Vivamax viewers’ fascination is the fact that an impressive stable of talents has been residing in the studio – most of them necessarily excluded from mainstream TV-centered programs because of their readiness to bare flesh and engage in activities that may be considered less-than-wholesome, to put it mildly. The film embraces the central female couple’s class difference and even occasional bouts of rage alongside their expressions of passion, but always with a tenderness in its approach to their pain; when such respect for the humanity of Others is extended to the male interloper in their story, that kind of treatment makes total sense in the course of the unfolding of their difficulties.

11011The only complaint one might raise about Unang Tikim is how the measure of its throwback is too far off in the past,[2] so that the complications provided by more recent lesbian film romances seem to be way in advance of the characters’ fates. As if to dig in further, it provides a closure that nearly elevates its realistic material to the realm of the fantastic. But in terms of a narrative tradition that cannot boast of having enough happy endings, what the film purveys deserves to be regarded as an intervention worth maintaining.

Notes

First published August 23, 2024, as “A Lesbian-Positive Film” in The FilAm.

[1] On August 18, 2024, after I had drafted and submitted this review to The FilAm for publication, the Young Critics Circle announced that they were nominating Lawrence Fajardo’s Erotica Manila: Foursome, the same aforementioned FACINE gold prizewinner, for their Film Desk’s annual competition in all their available categories except first film. One of the few instances where I was glad to be proved wrong by my homegrown colleagues.

[2] Upon the filmmaker’s recommendation, I watched a previous film he made, titled Sol Searching (2018), and was appalled at the critical negligence it suffered, despite its clear superiority to nearly all the other titles released during the same period. In a social-network post, I speculated that this may also have been due to the work’s throwback properties, reminiscent of unpolished celluloid material as well as the “developmentalist” media policies of the early martial-law period during the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.

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The Hearing
Directed by Lawrence Fajardo
Written by Honelyn Joy Alipio

The twentieth edition of the Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival actually featured a number of entries that betokened its coming of age, inevitably disappointing certain sectors who would have preferred more of their type of cinema than see other samples being given equal time. One could construct a formal spectrum ranging from documentary to mainstream-starred feature and find various netizen voices clamoring for each one while deriding all the rest as unworthy of inclusion.

11011This may actually be a positive indicator of the event’s inclusivity (or its cynicism, if one were to adopt a more negative stance). Each of the entries was marked by its configuration of what “independence” meant for its own specific application, with the real-world intimidation of an entry that had to be consequently pulled from exhibition effectively rupturing the limits of this mode of practice: Lost Sabungeros, a documentary on 36 missing cockfighting enthusiasts, was announced as cancelled without any definite reason, fueling speculation regarding the intervention of prominent business and/or political figures implicated in the report’s findings.

11011Having no direct access to any screening, I can only provide cursory notes on critical responses to some of the entries as well as provisional commentary on one text made available by its production group. Advocates for reality-based film production have glommed onto Alipato at Muog (Ember and Fortress), directed by JL Burgos, about the well-known abduction and disappearance of his brother Jonas in 2007. Hysterical responses have also been expressed regarding Kip Oebanda’s Balota (Ballot), on the adversity endured by a public-school teacher tasked with delivering election results, played by deglamorized TV and movie star Marian Rivera (“the masses are stupid … putangina” went one contradiction-laden writeup). Several other commentators who foregrounded their ideal of neorealist-inspired indie practice (i.e., no professional performers, narrative drawn from real life, advancing a social problem that proper legislation could solve, if only) endorsed Richard Jeroui Salvadico and Arlie Sweet Sumagaysay’s Tumandok, on a Visayan Ati community’s struggle to raise funds to legalize their land claims.

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11011As it turned out, The Hearing, the only entry to which I was granted access, embodied some of the most problematic responses in the commentaries of festival observers. No one denied the timeliness and urgency of its message, yet even its most enthusiastic responders couldn’t get over the fact that it wasn’t as polished as a feature film ought to be.[1] Its exceptional condition reminded me of an entry during the 2008 edition, Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil’s Boses (Voices), which was the festival’s only advocacy film – and the only movie excluded that year from a festival prize. That period of over a decade and a half in the past was certainly more saturated in indie idealism, with a self-declared film authority dominating the since-suspended Cinemalaya Film Congress in order to ensure that any hint of mainstream accommodation be exposed, denounced, and sidelined.

11011The Hearing will certainly bear close scrutiny as a bellwether of how far attitudes have shifted, if they ever did at all. So far, film analysts still feel stumped by their standard academic preparation in evaluating a work according to its several elements – a vexatious paradox, to say the least, since all those elements had already been brought together in order to arrive at a finalized work. The key to approaching such a film is in recognizing how its function as an advocacy piece aligns it more closely with the documentary than with feature-filmmaking tradition. As such, any viewing pleasure it provides will only happen to be coincidental.

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11011The mise-en-scène immediately makes this purpose apparent. In keeping with its reduction in resources, the film’s characters are situated front and center, with the camera functioning as conversation partner. The strategy motivates the verbal exchanges, as it would in a regular feature film; but since the main character is speech-and-hearing impaired, his point-of-view shots are rendered with severely muted sounds, wherein his companions take time to use gestures or request sign-language users to convey their statements to him. The fact that the film refuses to violate his infirmity by, in effect, jump-cutting to the verbal articulations of his companions demonstrates how this type of advocacy filmmaking upholds the documentary project in accepting what historical reality has provided. We (as audiences) will just have to find our filmic pleasures in other ways.

11011The film also acknowledges the narrative’s real-life origin in skipping over the character’s judicial triumph – a gift of a grand jump-cut if there ever was one. We witness the siblings attempting to amuse themselves, and their parents taking in their children’s happiness while demonstrating some anxiety over a future in which they had isolated themselves from the largesse provided by clerical privilege; devastation eventually arrives in the form of statistical information flashed right before the closing credits. The Hearing offers no easy way out for its audience, inasmuch as its own characters had none of their own either. What it provides in exchange is the close, admittedly uncomfortable, association with the kind of person we would normally take pains to avoid if we could. The few sad moments it extracts ought to count as fair exchange.

Note

First published August 12, 2024, as “An Unpolished Film with a Timely Social Justice Message” in The FilAm.

[1] In February 2025, Lawrence Fajardo completed a tuned-up version of the film, effectively reducing its running time by about ten minutes. This may be considered the equivalent of a (so far unannounced) director’s cut. See the reconsidered review by Jojo Devera, “Passion and Compassion,” in his Sari-Saring Sineng Pinoy blog (uploaded February 13, 2025).

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Erotica Manila: Foursome
Directed by Lawrence Fajardo
Written by Lawrence Fajardo, Jimmy Flores, & Miguel Legaspi

Pinas fanboy film culture must have worn itself out, or else we’d be hearing lamentations about how our filmmakers have started regressing. After several contemporary talents made their names with increasingly longer modernist works, we now find their successors focused on shorter-length material, sometimes even geared toward televised or streaming platforms. But thank goodness for the dissipation of high-art pretension, or we wouldn’t be able to recognize how some of our best and brightest have been able to respond to the challenge of encapsulating entire narrative worlds within delimited timespans.

11011The possibility was first raised when Erik Matti announced that his sequel to On the Job (2013), titled On the Job 2: The Missing 8 (2021), would be adapted into a six-part miniseries for HBO, with the original film comprising the first two episodes. Then last year, the best entries to the first ShoutOut short film competition were compiled into a two-hour anthology, slated for exhibition at this year’s Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival. (Essential disclosure: I was chair of the board of jurors that evaluated the films and provided prizes and citations for outstanding titles and participants.) Titled ShoutOut Pinas 2022, the omnibus work is reminiscent of the 2020 anthology Septet: The Story of Hong Kong, where seven filmmakers provided historical dramas covering specific decades in the former British crown colony’s history. [Update: A recent discovery uncovered a now-lost local title, Wanted: Johnny L (1966), which had, like ShoutOut Pinas 2022, five directors participating: Cesar Amigo, Gerardo de Leon, Eddie Romero, Cirio H. Santiago, and Teodorico Santos.]

11011One might be able to conjure up the riskiest possible combination for this type of project: a playfully sex-themed series which features minimal interactions among the main characters (since each entry was conceived as an independent featurette), made for the local streaming service condemned by moralistically impelled commentators in social media.[1] Nothing in the content and format of Erotica Manila, a four-episode program still screening at Vivamax, indicates any attempt at formulating any grand or problem-solving social statement. Yet when the filmmaker, Lawrence Fajardo, suggested to film-critic acquaintances to watch the series sans intervening credits – as yet another regular-length movie, in effect – an accomplished entertainment made itself evident, with the promise of further insights affirmed by subsequent viewing.

11011The film that resulted from the concatenated episodes, titled Erotica Manila: Foursome and announced as Vivamax’s intended entry to international filmfest competitions, dispenses the expected turns commonly regarded as weaknesses in standard narrative construction: well before the close of an hour, the focus shifts to the next episode’s primary character, who always happens to be a passerby at the close of the preceding story. Fajardo being Vivamax’s fair-haired inhouse talent (after the apparent departure of the unlamented and unmissed Darryl Yap), carnal fireworks ensue, with unexpected and generally satisfying twists just as the next main character happens along. The agents that the narrative follows are male, but the film’s sexual politics turn increasingly scary, funny, and (unusual for Fajardo) queer, with women providing the plot points on which the stories pivot.

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11011The film’s apparent rationale for these shifts – standard in series presentations but usually associated with carelessly developed “trash” material – is its immersion in media activities: from film spectatorship initially, through content management, culminating in actual production, where a predatory older actress preempts her gay directors in laying their horny young assistant. The final episode, set in an urban slum among irregularly employed denizens, might consequently appear to be unrelated to the preceding series; yet its throwback to the poverty-porn trend in Philippine independent cinema makes it the perfect closing material, and then some. The heightened degree of pathos actually masks disturbing sexual-slapstick developments, complete with (technically) a happy ending. The scene where a husband is unaware, while performing in bed, that he’s nailing more than just his wife – these and several other WTF moments actually serve to challenge viewers to LOL if they think they can.

11011It helps to be aware, in approaching EMF, that its director specializes in multicharacter narratives – the Philippines’s most successful practitioner of this fiendishly difficult format since the heyday of Ishmael Bernal. In explaining how he and his coscriptwriters (Jimmy Flores and Miguel Legaspi) conceptualized the project, he initially envisioned a singular intertwined plot. After working out the major lines of action, however, he realized that each one might be misunderstood or trivialized if it were to be juxtaposed with the others, and that the sensational incidents that attend each one would strain the narrative’s credibility if these were presented as simultaneously occuring.

11011Those inclined to dismiss the resultant episodic format might want to direct their attention not just to the ancient folkloric texts adapted as an outstanding film series (dubbed the “Trilogy of Life”) by Pier Paolo Pasolini but also to a classic European play, written over a century ago and filmed during mid-20th century as La Ronde by Max Ophüls. With these as reference points, EMF features the same careful attention to plot and character as the latter, while partaking of the graphic and life-affirming bawdiness of the former. Beyond Fajardo’s implicit critique of his multistrand specialization as well as the cunningly parodic handling of standard Noypi “indie” elements, EMF restores a refreshing measure of humor long missing in local sex films since the demise of Celso Ad. Castillo (duly referenced in the opening narrative).[2] With a fairly small team of technical experts sharpened by several years of intensive experience on soft-core material, plus the large stable of attractive and enthusiastic actors that the country’s most successful production house could readily summon, Fajardo has wound up with a heretofore unclassifiable but definitely superior amusement, in many ways his (and Vivamax’s) best output so far.

Notes

First published July 20, 2023, as “Carnal Fireworks in Erotica Manila” in The FilAm. Screenshots supplied by the director.

[1] For essential capsule evaluations of each episode, see the uploads on the Movie Reviews album of the Facebook account of Jojo Devera.

[2] The comedic elements align Erotica Manila: Foursome, alongside the rare sex-themed movies directed by Ishmael Bernal and Celso Ad. Castillo, with the classics of the US’s so-called Golden Age of Porn. Treatments of sexuality in Pinas cinema tend to capitulate to the guilt-ridden prescriptions of Catholicism as well as the antiseptic preferences of high art.

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