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Kembali Saorang

English Title: One Came Back
Language: Malay
Year of Release: 1957 / B&W
Director & screenwriter: Ramon A. Estella [with dialogue by S. Sudarmadji]
(From a story by Run Run Shaw)
Producer: Malay Film Productions

Cast: Sa’adiah, Ahmad Mahmud, Salleh Kamil, Mariani, Daeng Idris, Supatri, Saamah, Habsah, Malik Sutan Muda, Omar Suwita, M. Rafee, Ali Muhammad, Kemat Hassan, Nyak Osman, Shariff Dol, Ibrahim Pendek, H.M. Busra

Hussain wants to marry his fiancée Aminah and, out of love for her, rejects Zaitun. When Hussain attempts to collect money from a debtor, he finds the latter dead and asks Zaitun to hide him. Aminah’s father searches for Hussain but gets arrested by the police. Meanwhile, Zaitun informs a detective where Hussain is hiding. Hussain flees and jumps into the sea. When the police announce his death, his best friend Yusof comforts Aminah by asking his mother to take care of her and her sister in their home. Believing that Hussain has perished, Yusof begins to develop feelings for Aminah. But Zaitun threatens to expose Yusof’s past with her. The kampung (Malay village) where they live is small enough so that the characters’ personal affairs become public knowledge sooner or later.

Only an excerpt remains of Ramon A. Estella’s 1956 triumph Ang Buhay at Pag-ibig ni Dr. Jose Rizal (The Life and Love of Dr. Jose Rizal), the same condition in which Manuel Conde’s Juan Tamad Goes to Congress (1959) can be found. But where Conde’s Vietnam-set Krus na Kawayan (Let Us Live, 1956) can be fairly described as propagandistic drivel, the output of several Filipino directors for Sir Run Run Shaw in Malaysia is of a generally noteworthy quality, with none more accomplished than Estella’s. Earlier recognized for political controversy over the long-lost Ako Raw Ay Huk (I Was Called a Rebel, later retitled Labi ng Bataan or Remains of Bataan, 1948), only one apparently complete local production of Estella’s remains. Fortunately most Filipino filmmakers’ Malay-language output has been carefully preserved in Singapore, with Estella’s debut contribution, Kembali Saorang, outshining the rest.[1] Estella admirably navigates a surprisingly complex narrative (in addition to finishing in record time, per reliable accounts) and demonstrates why his producers prevailed on him to make several more films before continuing with his peripatetic explorations.[2] For close comparison, Teodorico C. Santos made a charming effort, Taufan (Typhoon), later the same year, in the same locale and with many of the same actors; but even in reprising the melodramatic elements, Kembali Saorang pulls away with more ambitious scope, appreciation of social forces, and psychological complexity, with a resolution that honors Estella’s new sponsors’ culture as much as it reflects the maturity of Philippine film artistry.

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Samseng

English Translation: Gangster
Language: Malay
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 1959 / B&W
Director: Ramon A. Estella
Screenwriter: Ralph Modder
Producer: Malay Film Productions

Cast: Zaiton, Aziz Jaafar, Jins Shamsuddin, Rosnani, Saamah, A. Rahim, Haji Mahadi, Omar Suwita, M. Rafee, Ali P.G., Mohd. Hamid, Kemat Hassan, Sharif Dol, Ismail Abdullah, Ibrahim Hasan, S. Sudharmadji

Daud serves time in prison after being arrested for forgery. His good behavior impresses the warden, who promises him a job after he is released. His younger brother Ahmad meanwhile deceives his mother by claiming to be a car dealer when he actually engages in extortion and robbery. Their neighbor Kiah sympathizes with the brothers’ mother but Ahmad ignores her and takes up with a nightclub hostess. After Daud has served his sentence, he follows up on the job offered him. It turns out to be undercover police work. Daud is assigned to shadow a troublesome criminal gang, unaware that his own brother is its ringleader.

Samseng exists in atypically poor condition, since it appears to be sourced from a TV-broadcast version. But that also attests to its effectiveness as a film-noir favorite. The primary locales—Changi Prison (now Complex), then fairly new and also featured in Ramon A. Estella’s Kembali Saorang, and the underworld hotspots of Singapore—become as much dramatic players as the performers themselves. A well-regarded member of the Philippine social-realist painters circle, Estella understandably upheld verisimilitude even in shifting to cinema, and the result in this case is a tale firmly rooted in time and place. He also apparently valued memorable resolutions (possibly a consequence of his professional musicianship), which nearly saves his Mata Hari (1958) from masculinist overvaluation. The device works whoppingly for Samseng, where the standard chases, shootouts, and heartbreaks build up to an unforgettable night in the lives of the city’s dispossessed.

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Saudagar Minyak Urat

English Translation: Massage-Oil Merchant
English Title: Love Crazy
Language: Malay
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 1959 / B&W
Director: Ramon A. Estella
Screenwriter: Ralph Modder
Producer: Malay Film Productions

Cast: S. Kadarisman, Normadiah, Aziz Sattar, Mariani, S. Shamsuddin, Leng Hussin, Ani Jasmin, Ahmad Nispu, Ibrahim Pendek, Mohd Hamid, Zainom, Saloma, S. Sudarmadji, Sharif Dol, Omar Suwita, Kemat Hassan, Ali P.G., Kassim Masdor, H.M. Busra, Omar Harun, Ismail Abdullah

Fatimah, a bossy though still-bodacious wife, has her hands full making sure her hubby stays faithful. The philandering Yusof Hamid asks his assistant to take him to a nightclub, where he meets and falls for Hamidah, even arranging to serenade her one night. Since she already has a boyfriend, she resists Hamid, forcing him to look for a miracle. He approaches a witch doctor, who arranges to cast a spell on Hamidah. When Fatimah finds out, she also asks for help from the same magician.

Only the lost Caprichosa (Whimsical Woman, 1947) and possibly Kenkoy (1950) in Ramon A. Estella’s previous film record suggest that he might have dabbled in romantic comedy. After assigning him a series of genre exercises—melodrama, horror, war, and gangster films—with generally satisfactory results, Sir Run Run Shaw must have marveled at how he came up with his best Malay-language product at that point. Saudagar Minyak Urat is a silly, rambunctious outing from start to finish, with occasional use of slapstick and sped-up footage, but like the best comedy directors, Estella ensured that a dramatically valid foundation was fully developed beforehand. He displays impressive skill in blocking and choreographing groups of performers so that the lines of action crisscross but never result in confusion, and stages a charming open-air musical interlude midway (an effervescent beach number titled “Hula Hoop” that cleverly rationalizes hip-grinding women in skimpy wear), succeeded in later scenes by a feverish song-and-dance number featuring Saloma. He also shows smart gender reversals that may have drawn on the contemporaneous full-scale treatments of Gregorio Fernandez. But until the emergence of the talents behind Juan de la Cruz Productions in the 1970s, nothing we have in available Philippine film samples has as queer a figure the way that Normadiah (as the domineering missus) is configured in SMU: garrulous, hotheaded, swaggering pugnaciously, yet winning her battles via judicious deployment of the womanly masquerade. So the great Manuel Conde movies are lost? We have this entry from Estella, and it will fulfill expectations of accomplished old-time Philippine comedy, even if it’s set in neighboring territory.

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Pusaka Pontianak

English Title: The Accursed Heritage
English Translation: The Pontianak Heritage
Language: Malay
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 1965 / B&W
Director & Screenwriter: Ramon A. Estella
Producer: Malay Film Productions

Cast: Saadiah, Ahmad Mahmud, Dayang Sofia, Salleh Kamil, Normadiah, Mariam Baharum, Aziz Sattar, Ahmad Daud, Ibrahim Pendek, Ahmad Nisfu, Haji Mahadi, Jah Hj. Mahadi, Omar Suwita, Kuswadinata

Related individuals from various walks of life keep sighting a distant uncle whom they all regard as wealthy, but the apparitions either disappear or turn scary. They then read a newspaper report that identify the man, Datu Pengiran Sutan Kudus, as having perished in a fiery automobile accident and wishing to gather all his relatives for the reading of his last will and testament. They travel to his estate on a rubber plantation where tigers roam, and await the reading at midnight. The lawyer introduces a young woman as the late datu’s wife, who should be his rightful heir. But in acknowledgment of his many descendants, he makes a revelation along with a condition: his ancestors were pontianaks destroyed by his human family and cursed thirteen generations of the human descendants, with the datu as the last of the accursed. Those wanting their share of inheritance must remain on the plantation for four weeks, with those who leave or die forfeiting their share. A few other characters introduce themselves as investigators who find the datu’s own death suspicious.

The question of how much closure Ramon A. Estella provided for the most productive phase of his career, in Malay-language cinema, must have been on his producer’s mind as well: he was given his third pontianak assignment, but with a treatment reminiscent of his most memorable achievement, the musical comedy Saudagar Minyak Urat. The further question of how far he was allowed to subvert his material might be impossible to determine by now, except from the historical record that no other pontianak movie was produced afterward until well into the next decade. Estella was also making films in Vietnam and Japan around this time, and would continue working in New York, Puerto Rico, and Italy, until finally retiring in Florida with his Japanese wife. The pontianak may be considered the Indo-Malayan counterpart of the Philippines’s manananggal although the also-female entity possesses the tragic backstory of childbirth trauma. Estella updates his narrative by introducing rock and roll music, with the theme song (translatable as “Rhythm of the Pontianak”) performed in doo-wop style by Ahmad Daud and the Swallows, consequently rationalizing the sharia-proscribed arrangement specified by the characters’ forebear. As described by film expert Amir Muhammad, the pop brashness “brought the pontianak out into the harsh modern light of parody and cynicism, away from the shadows of whispered superstition and taboo where she thrived” (120 Malay Movies, Matahari Books, 2010). The characters and their relationships are developed as a drawing-room drama, although the narrative resolution expands the setting in an unexpected yet apposite manner. An aura of gloom nevertheless suffuses the proceedings, derived as much from the nighttime settings as from our awareness that agricultural wealth will not be able to hold its own against a fast-industrializing economy.

Notes

[1] Available internet information on Ramon A. Estella is reflective of the negligence with which he has been treated in general, since he always seemed ready to move from place to place in search of work. As of this writing, the Internet Movie Database does not list this film as well as Saudagar Minyak Urat (Love Crazy, 1959), Darah-Ku (My Blood, 1963), and Bunga Tanjong (Cape of Flowers, 1963), and lists the earlier version of Raja Bersiong (The King with Fangs, 1963) in his name rather than K.M. Basker’s; it also misidentifies Pusaka Pontianak (The Accursed Heritage, 1965) under the credit of its assistant director, S. Sudarmaji. The Singapore Fillm Archives contains a comprehensive listing, including an Estella-directed Japan-set film, Melanchong ka-Tokyo (Holiday in Tokyo, 1964) also produced by Malay Film Productions. A missing Estella Filipino title is Ang Tagala (The Tagalog Woman, 1941), the Vietnam-set Kim (1957), and an unplaceable Italian work, Consiglio Costoso (Expensive Advice, no date provided)—all from the director’s entry in the Film volume of the Cultural Center of the Philippines’s Encyclopedia of Philippine Art (2nd ed., CCP & University of the Philipppines Diliman Office of the Chancellor, 2017, pp. 449–450).

[2] One rudimentary context of Estella’s relocation to Malaysia, which I am still in the process of further evaluating, is that his arrival coincided with the announcement of a strike for higher wages by film performers and technicians from Malay Film Productions, through the Singapore Malay Artists’ Union, submitted to Shaw Brothers. Although a Filipino actor-director, Eddie Infante, preceded everyone in 1955 with Gadis Liar (Elephant Girl, apparently unavailable), after an earlier notice concluded amicably in 1954, the near-simultaneous solicitation of a clutch of Noypi directors in 1957 and 1958 raises the disturbing possibility that our talents might have been envisioned to function as safeguards against the possible inactivity of Malaysian and Indian creatives. However, filmmaker, critic, and historian Amir Muhammed provided a crucial qualification: “I’ve asked three people who’ve written about the era and all of them say it was never a policy akin to hiring scabs; it was more like two things that happened in parallel. The strikes were never major enough to cripple production for long. (P. Ramlee’s Panca Delima, released in 1957, was one of the few films that got delayed; then there was a bigger strike in 1965 where Shaw had to temporarily close.) The Filipino directors were hired based on cultural similarities but also access to more sophisticated ‘Hollywood techniques’” (Facebook Messenger reply, November 5, 2025). [For essential basic resources, see the list of references at “Malay Film Productions & Cathay-Keris Studio (1943–1973),” Wiki.sg, last edited August 6, 2019.]

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Taufan

English Title: Typhoon
Language: Malay
Year of Release: 1957 / B&W
Director: Teodorico C. Santos [as T.C. Santos]
Screenwriter: T.C. Santos with dialogues by S. Sudarmadji
(From the story “A Storm on Pearl Island” by Chua Boon Hean)
Producer: Malay Film Productions

Cast: Ziaton, Ahmad Mahmud, Salleh Kamil, Mariani, Saamah, Aziz Sattar, Baby Suraini, Nyak Osman, Salbiah Kardi, Shariff Dol, Fatimah Osman, Ali Fijee, Jamilah, Mohd Rafee, Omar Suwita, Mustarjo, Kemat Hassan, H.M. Busra, Ibrahim Pendek, Mohd. Hamid

The fishermen of a coastal kampung or traditional village catch so little fish after a strong typhoon that they borrow money from Hamid, who takes advantage of their situation by charging usurious repayment rates. Hamid has set his sights on Fatimah, who has to attend to her father who’s ill but owes Hamid money; Hamid offers her medical care if she agrees to be his mistress, abusing his own wife when she criticizes his intention. He intends to get rid of Amir, Fatimah’s betrothed, by promising to write off Fatimah’s loan if Amir’s able to bring him a large pearl from the shark-infested waters. Fatimah protests, but Amir is determined to win her from Hamid and proceeds with the life-threatening mission.

One of the more highly regarded talents of the First Golden Age, with over forty titles to his name as director and several more as scriptwriter (including Gerardo de Leon’s Sisa), active through the 1970s—yet the only still-available Teodorico C. Santos-directed film, apart from Fernando Poe Jr.’s recently remastered koboy entry …At Sila’y Dumating (And They Came, 1967),[1] was the one he made for Sir Run Run Shaw. The material is old-fashioned melodrama with musical interludes, enhanced by the rural setting and made even more exotic by a cast more reticent and graceful than what we might find in a Philippine production. Santos benefited from an apparently bigger budget than Philippine-set projects could allot, and made sure none of it was wasted: any plot excuse to follow pearl-diving characters is realized with impressive underwater photography, while Santos frames and blocks his island-set actors with sufficient evidence of technical lessons learned on Gerry de Leon projects. The propensity for excess must have been the national value he brought over; it provides him with a means to revitalize the genre’s conventions and gives the story a nervy edge, like a finely woven fishnet stretched to the point where it could easily tear in several places.

Note

[1] The once-popular problematic Western genre was, in simplistic terms, a commemoration of the expansion of Euro-derived civilization from Atlantic-coast US territories into the “wild” Pacific states; the expansion of the US into independent countries such as Hawaii and Guam, leading to the successful colonization of the Philippines and unsuccessful attempt in Vietnam, may be seen as an extension of this impetus. The very first acknowledged narrative film story, Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery (1903), partook of elements that were identified with Westerns, although the overseas popularity of the genre, including the Philippines’s koboy (from cowboy) samples, may be traced to so-called Italian spaghetti Westerns. Ironically these were acknowledged as influenced by—plagiarized, in fact, from—an Asian hit, Kurosawa Akira’s Yojimbo (Bodyguard, 1961), which in turn led to such coinages as Easterns or ramen Westerns. Teodorico C. Santos’s …At Sila’y Dumating is saddled by excessive psychotic villainy, with FPJ himself arguably modifying the koboy elements in his own Panday film series and finally creating a historically inflected peak with Ang Maestro (The Master, 1981).

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Dementia

Year of Release: 2014
Director: Perci M. Intalan
Screenwriters: Renei Dimla & Jun Lana
Producer: IdeaFirst Company

Cast: Nora Aunor, Jasmine Curtis-Smith, Bing Loyzaga, Yul Servo, Chynna Ortaleza

Mara returns to Batanes with her adoptive family, who’re hoping that her memories of her childhood experience will help cure her dementia. What Mara remembers is how a couple brought her home to keep company with their biological child, Olivia, who suffers from psychotic disorder and has to be chained to furniture. Mara’s able to pacify Olivia’s violent moods, but she faces a crossroads in her life when the man she has fallen in love with asks her to be his wife.

Dementia succeeds primarily by relying on expectations that it fulfills in unexpected ways. It proceeds primarily as a supernatural horror film but brings up a social condition, that of orphaned subjects for whom exploitation is more acceptable than abandonment. It pursues a narrative throughline that brings up unreliable recollections of traumatizing events, then flashes the title credit like an afterthought, nearly an hour into the presentation; where it goes from then on will have to be part of the discovery process. Finally, it features Nora Aunor, older and wearier after her long-drawn-out sabbatical in the US—but the greater portion of her character arc is taken up and developed by younger actors. In fact, one would be misadvised to expect one of her fireworks-laden readings in this film; her comeback career teems with such treats, but Dementia is a reminder that her artistry cannot be separated from her expertise as producer and director.[1] She exercises self-restraint in order to allow the work’s various possibilities to branch out and raise further questions about the function of the mind in comprehending pain, memory, desire, and pleasure.

Note

[1] Spoiler alert: on May 21, 2025, in commemoration of Nora Aunor’s first birth anniversary after her death, the producer’s Facebook page uploaded the raw and unedited take titled “Seq. 74, Shot 2,” comprising the central revelation in the film. Mauro Feria Tumbocon Jr., who reposted the file on the same date, reported the director’s account: “I whispered to her to stare at the camera. I told her that her character will go from not remembering to remembering bits and pieces, then without understanding she remembers the pain, then slowly it all fades away. I didn’t expect her not to even blink. There was nothing in front of her except our cinematographer and the camera. She was literally only looking at the lens. But the power her eyes wield. Mackie [Galvez, cinematographer] said he couldn’t believe what he was recording. Unfortunately for the film we had to sacrifice this one long take by inserting flashbacks to better serve the story.”

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Ang Nerseri

English Title: The Nursery
Year of Release: 2009
Director & Screenwriter: Vic Acedillo Jr.
Producer: Cinemalaya Foundation

Cast: Jaclyn Jose, Timothy Castillo, Lance Raymundo, Alwyn Uytingco, Claudia Enriquez, Ynez Veneracion, Tony Mabesa, Chona Fernando, Babit de Luna, Eunice Lagusad, JM de Guzman, Carme Sanchez, Irene Llopis, Gigi Locsin, Chiqui del Carmen, Gigi Pirote, Imelda Valunsat, John Hernandez, Chona Fernando, Troy de Guzman, Carmelo Soberano, Anthony Corpus, Jayr Cerdenola, Loy Maga, Mark Macalintal, Arvin Trinidad, Jonathan Olano, Melqui Sedic Asuncion, Raymond Roman, Emma Galvez, Flor Salanga, Ma. Ozita “Chit” Pambid, Bernie Villapando, Janice Fuentes, Ian Paraiso

Mai is at her wits’ end as a single mother caring for several kids, all grownup except for Cocoy. Her eldest son moved out and refuses contact with the family, while another son, Jun, has just been recommitted to drug rehab. Still another son, Dean, is acting out also because of addiction, harassing his only sister, Lyn, who eventually suffers a nervous breakdown. Realizing that she’ll need extra funds, Mai decides to go to Bohol to sell off some property, leaving Cocoy in charge of his siblings as well as Mai’s orchid nursery. Cocoy however has also been masquerading as an outstanding student, and has to assume more than his share of responsibilities when Mai keeps extending her sojourn.

Personal projects in independent cinema are so commonplace that they have become near-synonymous with the practice. No surprise then that the material of Ang Nerseri—familial difficulties arising from a combination of psychological and financial problems—observes the expected pattern of these troubles resolving in increasing complications, with barely enough breathing space for the characters to recover from the suffering they have to endure. Yet the film sets itself off from like-minded works by being devoid of any form of narcissism, focused instead on a careful recounting of the emotional costs of the incidents that it narrates. What showiness it possesses lies in the technological risk-taking of using a then-newish digital single-lens reflex camera, the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, a full year before other productions (mostly in Europe) figured out its usefulness for their film projects; even in this undertaking, the fine arts-trained Vic Acedillo Jr. wound up muting his screen colors except for the cooler hues, providing an uncanny feeling of comfort and distance amid the internal turbulence swirling within and among the characters. Acedillo approached his material with hesitation and humility, ironically investing it with an approachability that it affirms via well-observed details and subtle unexpected humor.

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Talipandas

English Title: Traitor
Year of Release: 1958
Director: Conrado Conde
Screenwriter: Ding M. de Jesus
(From a serialized komiks story by Francisco V. Coching)
Producer: Sampaguita Pictures

Cast: Rita Gomez, Luis Gonzales, Van de Leon, Carlos Salazar, Rosa Mia, Bella Flores, Zeny Zabala, Bert Olivar, Ely Roque, Art Morado, Lydia Correa, Jaime Javier, Pablo Raymundo, Willie Dado, Sabas San Juan, Matimtiman Cruz, Marcela Garcia, Loida Medina, Apolonia Aguilar

Having taken the fall for his brother Andy, Bien Lopez confronts his sibling for betraying him by cohabiting with his wife Stella while he was still in prison. Although Stella insists that she was forced into the arrangement, Bien’s rejection drives her to stab Andy and commit suicide. Unaware so far of what his wife did, Bien watches a striptease number at Moonlite Cabaret; the performer, Esperanza, migrated to Manila to work at the same place where her mother once performed, to track down the man who ruined her mother’s life. Bien and Espie manage to provide comfort and support for each other and develop an alliance just when a besotted customer provides Espie with better lodging and a gang leader named George Mendez takes a prurient interest in the nightclub’s hit performer.

The fact that two komiks-sourced melodramas from the same year—this and Gregorio Fernandez’s Malvarosa—featured slum residents living by railroad tracks must have been more than coincidental. Intensely psychological where Malvarosa was sociological, Talipandas eventually abandons its expository locale when its central female character upgrades to better housing (courtesy of a loaded patron); but the opening scene’s train not only brought her to the city in the first place, it also ended the life of her would-have-been rival, the narrative hero’s wife. The plot’s twists and reversals affirm the serial nature of its origin, although it would take over a decade, with the emergence of Lino Brocka, before such irregular dramatic arcs could be tempered by an adequately prepared talent. What Talipandas provides in recompense for its directorial unevenness is a willingness to embrace material that Hollywood’s Hays Office would have rejected as extreme if not beyond-legal, from white slavery through suicide and fratricide to incest. The heroine contends with a pair of concerned surrogate mothers, one benevolent (Ely Roque) and another malignant (Bella Flores); but Rita Gomez’s sensuous and fiery reading ultimately draws the strands together in an impressive braid, while making it clear why the directors of the next Golden Age considered it a treat to work with her.

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Die Beautiful

Additional Languages: English, “Swardspeak” [Philippine gay lingo]
Year of Release: 2016
Director: Jun Robles Lana
Screenwriter: Rody Vera
(From a story by Jun Robles Lana, with Fudge Silva as consultant)
Producers: The IdeaFirst Company & Octobertrain Films

Cast: Paolo Ballesteros, Christian Bables, Joel Torre, Gladys Reyes, Adrian Alandy, Albie Casiño, Inah de Belen, IC Mendoza, Cedrick Juan, Lou Veloso, Mimi Juareza, Iza Calzado, Eugene Domingo, Jade Lopez, Kokoy de Santos, Juris Ocampo, Rica Paras, Kyle Gabrielle, Adrianna So, Lui Manansala, Sue Prado, Mel Martinez, Bekimon, Patricia Ismael, Lito “Shalala” Reyes, Karen delos Reyes, Jace Flores, Erlinda Villalobos, Star Orjaliza, Lao Rodriguez, Giovanni Baldisseri, Steeve Fernandez, Khalid Ruiz, Sunshine Teodoro, Joy Desales, Perry Escaño, Ernie Enriquez, Bing Yumang, Laurence Mossman, Kenshee Montefalcon, Christine Joy de Guzman, Jordhen Suan, Faye Alhambra

Upon fulfilling her lifelong dream of winning a televised gay beauty contest, Trisha literally drops dead. Her best friend Barbs strives to fulfill her final wish, which is to be dressed and made up as a famous celebrity for each day of her week-long wake. Each costume change occasions a recollection by the people in her life, of Trisha’s struggle as a destitute transgender woman, banished from home by her homophobic father and abused (though occasionally also loved) by the straight men she falls for—though she nevertheless remains focused on the goal, difficult for someone in her station, of being recognized and celebrated as someone with beauty, wit, and chutzpah.

Most pop-culture experts might wonder about the advisability of presenting a trans person’s narrative as an epic tale, considering its intensely private dimensions and its psychoanalytic conflicts. Like its central character, Die Beautiful might come across as too loud, strong, insistent, confusing even; but like the Entwicklungsroman, or development narrative, that it actually is, it will be capable of fully rewarding those who may have resisted it initially but return to it after a while, preferably with some intervening maturity. Jun Robles Lana’s careful (sometimes overcareful) cultivation of his handling of queer material over a long period of time has resulted, with this film, in the fulfillment of the promise that the always well-patronized outings of our comedy stars, from Dolphy onward, kept pursuing: a life in full, from an always-queer awakening, through adversity in the pursuit of happiness and pleasure, to a too-early though fittingly fabulous ending (though sometimes with ill-advised—because unnatural, unlikely, and moralistic—conversion to the straight option). A structural marvel, the Die Beautiful screenplay enlightens the audience just enough to be able to “get” Trisha’s emotional placement through the various stages in her life, with the prospect of further, often painful but always well-earned insight serving as narrative cliffhanger. Paolo Ballesteros and Christian Bables, the actors who appear in nearly all the major scenes, provide the unexpected bonus of fomenting an interactive chemistry, overflowing with confidence, humor, and humanity, that effortlessly diffuses through the rest of the cast. It may sound ironic, but Trisha’s truly beautiful death betokens a life well-lived in the only way a genuinely heroic citizen could make it.

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Alapaap

Additional Language: Ilocano
English Title: Clouds
Year of Release: 1984
Director: Tata Esteban
Screenwriter: Rei Nicandro
(From a story by Tata Esteban)
Producers: Aces Films International, Oro Vista Motion Pictures, Rare Breed Ltd.

Cast: William Martinez, Mark Gil, Michael de Mesa, Tanya Gomez, Isadora, Eva Rose Palma, Ed Villapol, Rosemarie Gil, Liza Lorena, Jabbar, Jose Cortez, Benny Resurreccion, Jerry O’Hara, Rez Cortez

After a present-day death certificate is filled out, we inexplicably flash forward to September 28, 1986, when Jake links up with the brothers Dave and Donald, to ask their help in completing a film that he needs to submit as his thesis project in an American university. The two suggest taking a trip to Baguio (bringing their girlfriends along), where they can search for material and possibly even shoot some footage there. After they persuade a reluctant old man to allow them to stay at his guesthouse, increasingly strange events begin to happen. When the brothers show Jake the shot they secretly filmed of him making out with a native lass outdoors, and realize that he had no one with him, they have no choice but to conclude that an otherworldly force is bent on messing up with their lives.

Anyone who can explain why 1984 was the most artistically productive year in Philippine film history might also have to account for why the critics of that time took it for granted. The yearend Metro Manila Film Festival, as an example, was so spoiled for great choices, dominated primarily by the films scripted by Ricky Lee for the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, that it could afford to toss a few token awards to an exceptionally creative debut film and forget about it for good. Directed by the fairly obscure actor Steve Paolo (who was also producer and production designer) using his actual name, Alapaap took the ECP’s name literally, ensured audience patronage by banking on sex scenes and the upper-body female nudity then-exempted by censorship for depictions of indigenous practice, and scored largely on the basis of its skillful appropriation of giallo-horror principles. Its spectacle of unsurprisingly above-average performances aided significantly in overriding a few instances of anachronisms and illogical developments—with also a then-unremarked exceptional casting of the Eigenmann brothers (Michael de Mesa and Mark Gil) as well as topflight delivery by Tanya Gomez; this must also be the only canonizable entry with an animal in the cast list. As in countless other Philippine horror samples, the City of Pines embodies the collision between modernity and ancestral culture, but in harsher terms than usual. The ending is meant to provide some respite from the conflict, but the film is clever enough to take as much as it gives.

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Still Lives

Year of Release: 1999
Director & Screenwriter: Jon Red
Producers: Pelipula Film Productions & Blue Cord

Cast: Joel Torre, Nonie Buencamino, Ray Ventura, Ynez Veneracion, Alan Paule, Caridad Sanchez, Archi Adamos, Soliman Cruz, Mel Martinez, Raymond Keannu, Mon Confiado, Richard Quan, Nathan Forrest, Randy Punsal, Benjie Felipe, Leon Miguel, Jun Ureta, Ian Victoriano, Raul Morit, Michael Angelo Dagñalan, Ruben Lee, Bombi Plata, Roberto Pangan, Larry Manda, Bong Rosario, Jason Red, Michael Red

Badong, a neighborhood drug dealer, seeks to maintain his dominance via the standard carrot-and-stick approach. He exudes friendly warmth toward his most productive earners, but metes lethal punishment when his clients displease him. He warns Enteng, his clean-cut personal assistant, that he cannot bow out of the business mainly because of the trouble caused by Paul, his thieving friend. An associate, Nardo, wishes to propose a money-making scheme although he also owes Badong for past unpaid transactions. Badong proceeds confidently, having paid off influential officials, but fails to contend with the reality that government authority never really operates as a monolithic entity.

Acknowledged as the work that initiated the independent-digital trend in the Philippines, Still Lives has managed to live up to its promise, despite a narrative resolution whose twist may have seemed too clever by half. Its longer-lasting feat is enabled by strategies that several generations of successors tended to take for granted from the get-go, thus resulting in more failures than necessary: an intimate familiarity with the culture that it engages with, and a commitment by its creative forces to serve the best interests of said social context, including a willingness to suspend judgment in order to more accurately depict its most difficult-to-access aspects. The facts that digital technology itself still had to evolve more fully and that the team could have benefited from a budget several times larger than what the presentation languished on: these become moot points when set against the onslaught of an inspired cast and offbeat elements introduced ostensibly to prop up a controlling gimmick, but ultimately implemented in order to augment the film’s entertainment value. When Philippine historical incidents began to mirror the film’s concerns, that should have served as proof that Still Lives was aiming at much more than purveying transient amusement.

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They Call Her … Cleopatra Wong

Alternate Titles: Cleopatra Wong; Female Big Boss
Language: English
Year of Release: 1978
Director: Bobby A. Suarez [as George Richardson]
Screenwriter: Romeo N. Galang
(From a story by Bobby A. Suarez)
Producer: BAS Film Productions

Cast: Marrie Lee, George Estregan, Dante Varona, Johnny Wilson, Kerry Chandler, Franco Guerrero, Alex Pecate, Philip Gamboa, Danny Rojo, Bobby Greenwood, Jesse Lee, Joaquin Fajardo, Victor Romero, Joe Cunanan, Steve Havarro, Avel Morado, Romy Misa, Bernie Bernardo, Joe Canlas, Tony Castro, Mark Sherak, Clem Persons, Paul Mejares, Robert Mendez, Buddy Philipps, Don Gordon Bell, Robert Mallet, Skip Kriegel, Mike Youngblood, Bill James, John Stewart, Thunderboys Stuntmen, PIS Stuntmen

Instructed by Manila Interpol, Cleo hies off to Singapore to investigate the proliferation of fake currencies across the major ASEAN countries; she passes herself off as a counterfeiter so she could be picked up by a middleman. After subduing him and his goons, she’s then assigned to Hong Kong, to track the arrival of fake money in jars of strawberry jam. This leads her and her Interpol detectives to a convent in Baguio, where they attempt to uncover the mystery of why a religious order would engage in a global criminal operation.

Long appreciated more outside than within his home country, Bobby A. Suarez turned out to be just the right candidate to export for overseas film production. An ardent B-movie aficionado, familiar with the latest contrivances that popular entertainment had on offer, he lucked out with an assignment that enabled him, though on an apparently tight budget, to shoot in three countries with a large cast. The resulting poverty-row epic featured some of the wildest flights of imagination ever witnessed in a Filipino-directed action film, complemented by the wit and charm of Singaporean actress Marrie Lee, who was sharp enough to know that the entire enterprise shouldn’t be taken too seriously, but provides just the right amount of nimble-footed intensity to be able to foreground the work’s campy elements. Subsequent Suarez projects affirmed his belief in the transnational crime-control function of Interpol, but Cleopatra Wong marks the point right before his professional competence and influential outreach overpowered the several mésalliances that managed to proliferate in the present narrative.

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Red Roses for a Call Girl

Alternate Titles: The True Confession of Diana; Rose Tattoo
Language: English
Year of Release: 1988
Director & Screenwriter: Bobby A. Suarez
Producer: BAS Film Productions

Cast: Maria Isabel Lopez, Robert Marius, Werner Pochat, Julia Kent, Manfred Seipold, Amanda Amores, Pia Moran, Arnold Mendoza, Vangie Labalan

In Germany, a streetwalker named Marian gets abducted because she hasn’t been able to repay the money she owes her pimp, Ringo. The same woman, who now calls herself Barbara, reappears at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and makes the acquaintance of Klaus Timberg, who arrives because his profligate son, Peter, is given over to drag racing and nightlife. Klaus secretly hires a local sex worker, Diana, to induce his son to fall in love. As it turns out, Diana’s procurer is Ringo, who relocated to evade criminal prosecution in Germany. When Barbara, via Klaus, learns about this, she attempts to seek vengeance; Klaus’s predicament gets even more complicated when Peter discovers that Diana is really a sex professional.

The first notable element in Red Roses for a Call Girl is how it departs from the usual war-set or futuristic action (and even horror) material that foreign coproductions insisted on when they selected the Philippines as location for their film investment, in the wake of the initial success of the Marcos-era Manila International Film Festival. Opting for a loose reworking of La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils, Bobby A. Suarez instead devised a low-budget drama that nevertheless expands on the original’s themes of exploitation, familial bonds, and cross-cultural romance. The far-from-ideal production values and performances (excepting the native talents, unsurprisingly) accrue their own level of charm, the way that Third World ventures occasionally succeed in doing, in contrast with the Hollywoodish aspirations of the typical local productions of the period.

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Hubad na Pangarap

English Translation: Naked Ambition
Year of Release: 1987
Director: Abbo Q. dela Cruz
Screenwriter: Armando Lao
Producer: Golden Pearl Production

Cast: Michael de Mesa, Julio Diaz, Anna Marie Gutierrez, Lola, Vangie Labalan, Archi Adamos, Dante Castro, Chris Daluz, Tony Angeles, Tony Martinez, Stella Strada II, Jesse dela Paz, Lina Anota, Dick Morados

Miguel arrives at his rural rest house with several of his swinger friends, including a good-time girl with whom he hooks up. When his volatile girlfriend Cindy arrives, she throws a fit and drives all the visitors away, allowing Miguel to appease her by making out with her. All by themselves, they turn their attention to the place’s caretakers, Nelia and Ador, a poor but attractive couple engaged to each other. Miguel and Ador are childhood chums, but Miguel’s interest in Nelia starts to strain their friendship. Cindy’s exploitative regard toward Ador meanwhile leads to a bloody resolution in which the police are forced to intervene.

Abbo Q. dela Cruz’s debut film, Misteryo sa Tuwa (Joyful Mystery, 1984), was a film maudit that will always be worth at least one viewing, but that will probably be defensible as strictly a late-era Cold War masterpiece—patriarchal, myopic, and desperate. It was so overblown that it came close to shutting down the film production division of the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, which nevertheless came up with one last debut piece, Pio de Castro III’s Soltero (Bachelor, 1984), a film that replicated its shortcomings, albeit on a decidedly more intimate scale. Dela Cruz had better timing with his sophomore project, written by one of the winners of the next batch’s scriptwriting contest (which were never produced because of the preceding year’s follies). The Misteryo sa Tuwa connection provides the first step in comprehending the offbeat properties of Hubad na Pangarap: its misanthropy is unmistakeable, but this time more carefully skewed against its privileged characters, so that its ineluctable misogyny is favorably contrasted with its masculine characters’ meanness or feeble-mindedness. The libertarian spell occasioned by ECP-screened entries also fostered the busting of the final Catholic taboo against displaying the male form, so Hubad na Pangarap enables a more-than-game Julio Diaz to cocktease not just his onscreen female master but an unsuspecting general audience as well. More productively, the film can be regarded as the middle entry in a trilogy scripted by Armando Lao, bookended by William Pascual’s Takaw Tukso (Constant Craving, 1986) and Chito S. Roño’s Itanong Mo sa Buwan (Moon Child, 1987), depicting increasing narrative complexity where working-class masculinities are confronted with and confounded by the well-laid schemes of the femme fatale.

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