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Halaw

Alternate Title: Ways of the Sea
Additional Languages: Cebuano, Tausug, Zamboangueño Chavacano
Year of Release: 2010
Director & Screenwriter: Sheron R. Dayoc
Producers: Cinemalaya Foundation & Los Peliculas Linterna Studio

Cast: John Arcilla, Maria Isabel Lopez, Arnalyn Ismael, Ross-Ann Dalkis, Aljimar Hajilol, Rodaine Avalie, Hadja Nursiya Darangina, Edgardo Sumicad Jr., Randy Amodia, Hadji Amman Sahi, Nasri Tawasil, Anelyn Carino, Justies Love Matchon, Reden Silven, Fharwis Amil, Joel Bustamante, Maimuna Mutos

Hernand encounters a whole set of difficulties in organizing his latest attempt to transport Philippine natives illegally to Malaysia on a motorized outrigger boat, via the southern backdoor. Some of the young women he recruited to work as entertainers got cold feet and backed out, while Khalil, who’s in charge of one of their stopovers, wants to collect on a loan he lent out earlier. Mercedes, a veteran hospitality worker, joins their group and provides assurance and confidence to some of the understandably anxious women. Their passage through the Malaysian area of responsibility is fraught with danger, with their prospective country’s coast guard on the alert for their type of intrusion.

The reason why Halaw endures over the passage of time has to do with the several balancing acts it executes in delineating its passengers’ sea trip (in contrast with the road trips of New American Cinema); since there can only be pitifully few possible conclusions at the end, none of them worth accepting, the journey becomes the whole point of the narrative. The collection of passengers is distinguished by social gaps that each one tries to overcome, as casually and painlessly as possible, though this turns out to be easy only for the most privileged among them. At the head of their group are two Manila-bred Tagalog-speaking migrants (played by the “name” members of the cast): Hernand has his hands full ensuring that everyone gets on board, while Mercedes uses wilier ways to persuade the understandably reluctant female recruits. At the other extreme is a prepubescent girl, Daying, identified by the others as a Badjao native; she may be the only character who does not speak her native tongue, since no one else would understand her—but she also literally upstages everyone by performing the celebrated Pangalay dance. These rounds of simple, lighthearted distractions, including exchanges of gossip, jokes, and beauty tips, will be recognizable to any native confronted by the looming prospect of overseas alienation and danger. Most of the action increasingly takes place in the dark, since the group has to travel by night through pre-electrified islands. The film provides a visual counterpart to forestall the anguish that inevitably awaits, by enabling us to occasionally glimpse natural scapes of quiet beauty, with none more ravishing than the very destination that marks their transformation from citizens to illegal entities.

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1—Birdshot

Year of Release: 2016
Director: Mikhail Red
Screenwriters: Mikhail Red & Rae Red
Producers: Pelikulared, Tuko Film Productions, Buchi Boy Films

Cast: Mary Joy Apostol, Manuel Aquino, John Arcilla, Arnold Reyes, Dido de la Paz, Elora Españo, Ronnie Quizon, Rolando Inocencio, Suzette Ranillo, Angelica C. Ferro

A busload of passengers is passing through an abandoned field at night. Next day, Maya is taught by her father Diego, the sole tenant of a plot of farmland, to handle a gun. Against her father’s warning, she crosses the fence of a forest sanctuary and, once inside, shoots and kills an endangered Philippine eagle. In order to investigate the whereabouts of the missing animal, Domingo, a rookie police officer, is instructed by his station commander to drop his investigation of the disappearance of a bus of farmers who were planning to go to Manila to protest the harsh conditions that landowners, in collusion with corrupt government officials, were imposing on them. Domingo persists in following up the earlier case but is pressured into focusing on the disappearance of the eagle, leading him on a collision course with Maya and her father.

2—Neomanila

Year of Release: 2017
Director: Mikhail Red
Screenwriters: Zig Madamba Dulay, Mikhail Red, Rae Red
Producers: TBA Studios, Artikulo Uno Productions, Buchi Boy Films

Cast: Timothy Castillo, Eula Valdes, Rocky Salumbides, Jess Mendoza, Ross Pesigan, Angeline Andoy, Angeli Bayani, Ron Villas, Raul Morit, Shandii Bacolod, Donna Cariaga, Astrid Hernandez

Toto’s capable of running fast because as a street kid, he earns a living from snatching. His older brother, imprisoned for some unspecified petty crime, asks him to report a well-known drug pusher, since one of the standard covert practices in fascist President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs is palit-ulo (literally head-swapping), where a suspect surrenders a higher-ranking criminal in exchange for favors or freedom. After his girlfriend informs him that the guy he has to find is dead, a plainclothes narc named Irma, who was his mother’s friend, checks up on him. When he discovers next day that his brother’s jail was bombed, he confronts the gang that he suspects of the act but they proceed to mess him up. Irma saves him from getting killed and, since he no longer has any family left, he accompanies her on the extrajudicial rubouts that she and her partner and lover Raul have to accomplish. However, Toto is still unused to cold-blooded killing and protests when one of their targets is a mother who brought her infant child with her.

The problems that confront the country’s dispossessed offer no reprieve regardless of political regime. This principle plays out in the two consecutive works by Mikhail Red that happened to straddle the end of the last liberal-democratic President and the start of the first authoritarian President since the earlier Ferdinand Marcos. As it turned out, Birdshot was set in a distant rural locale while Neomanila was in a slum community adjacent to the business district. The promise that Birdshot’s filmmaking talent holds forth is a throwback to the heady days of the then still relatively benign years of the 1970s military dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, when the country’s most gifted aspirants could propose subject matter that implicitly criticized the political system by insistently focusing on narratives of survival. This resulted in a few instances of verisimilitude that martial-law authorities were quick to seize on, so Filipino filmmakers during the Second Golden Age managed (for the most part) to be subtle and ambivalent whenever their material came too close to mirroring real-life events. Such considerations no longer impinge on the generation of talents since then, so Birdshot’s presentation of a local reality so insulated that the disappearance of a busload of politically significant passengers can be successfully hidden from outside investigators, does not fully square with the traumatic real-life horror of the 2009 Maguindanao massacre that it apparently references. The narrative’s seriocomic factual incident of an older male peasant shooting down an endangered eagle to be able to cook tinola, or poultry stew with green papaya and chili leaves, is transformed here into the case of a young maiden similarly unaware of the consequence of killing wildlife—in a government sanctuary that she entered surreptitiously, against her father’s injunction. The plot opts instead to turn on character transformations that affect the protagonists: frustrated by his superior officers’ corruption, an idealistic policeman vents his anger on the wildlife-killing suspect’s father by torturing the latter; the daughter then responds by killing the policeman, along with any prospect for moral clarity. Neomanila’s dramatis personae, in contrast, respond to the terrors of an openly oppressive political system either by banding together in gangs or, where family is still available, by fulfilling whatever filial injunctions may be passed on to them. When the protagonist, still barely an adolescent, finds himself divested of relations and rejected by his would-be homies, he turns toward parental figures who welcome him for his ability to run, during the historical moment when emergency situations could profit from such a skill. None of these safety-in-numbers options works out satisfactorily for anyone concerned—although the movie’s canniness lies in how it offers glimpses of affective connection between substitute mother and abandoned son, enough to prepare us to empathize with the latter’s insistence that children are any war’s true victims, and to dread the easy prospect of rupture. The country’s film output as a whole attains a certain salience during periods of authoritarian repression, although this property will still have to be described, explained, and evaluated; when cinema of the Duterte drug-war gets defined, preferably in comparison with the Marcos martial-law era, Neomanila deserves to be one of the foremost items to be sampled.

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Krimen: Kayo ang Humatol

English Translation: Crime: You Be the Judge
Year of Release: 1974
Director: Jun Raquiza
Screenwriter: Jose F. Sibal
(From a story by Jun Raquiza)
Producer: Ilocandia Productions

Cast: Jun Raquiza, Gina Pareño, Marianne de la Riva, Maribel Aunor, Shongho, Omar Camar, Tony Gosalvez, Edison Lee, Bob Breult, Eddie Villamayor, Susanna Navarro, Leila Hermosa, Nick Romano, Arnold Mendoza

Newly freed after a stint in jail, Angel discovers that his wallet has been lifted by underage pickpockets. He tracks the thieves to their mastermind Toni, a tomboy who dutifully returns what they stole. As Toni and her den of petty criminals begin to get fond of Angel, he hooks up with Myra, an affluent but rebellious daughter whose parents abandoned her to her vices. Myra consorts with a number of shady characters who drag Angel into their conflicts with her and even attack Toni and her wards, leaving Angel with no choice but to exact revenge.

A deceptively light-handed exercise involving the reconfiguration of generic tropes that has unexpectedly worn well through its half-century of being more admired than respected, Krimen: Kayo ang Humatol refutes Bienvenido Lumbera’s claim that a “new” Philippine cinema started only two years later.[1] Even if we discount the self-serving coincidence that the award-giving critics group he founded was launched in 1976, Lino Brocka’s impactful two-in-a-row juggernaut had already made its mark before then, and enjoyed healthy competition from Ishmael Bernal, Celso Ad. Castillo, Elwood Perez, and the unfortunate Jun Raquiza, who died too early and whose well-received debut, Dalawang Mukha ng Tagumpay (Two Faces of Triumph, 1973)—which featured Nora Aunor in a first of a series of reflexive projects—can no longer be found. Raquiza nearly pulls off the director-actor stunt in Krimen, but had a sufficiently healthy appreciation for good performances to allow Gina Pareño to run away with the presentation. Despite her Toni being saddled with the generic containment of being condemned and punished for her several transgressions against her gender and civic tasks, she navigates the potentially awkward transitions with remarkable aplomb and makes her presence in Krimen an indispensable precursor to her masterstroke in Jeffrey Jeturian’s Kubrador (The Bet Collector) over three decades later.

Note

[1] Bienvenido Lumbera’s periodization, which has no end date, appears in at least two of his most widely quoted sources: “New Forces in Contemporary Cinema” from Revaluation: Essays on Philippine Literature, Cinema and Popular Culture (Index, 1984); and “Brocka, Bernal and Co.: The Arrival of New Filipino Cinema” from Re-Viewing Filipino Cinema (Anvil Publishing, 2011).

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Giliw Ko

English Translation: My Beloved
English Title: Beloved
Year of Release: 1939 / B&W
Director & Screenwrtier: Carlos Vander Tolosa
Producer: LVN Pictures

Cast: Fernando Poe, Mila del Sol, Fleur de Lis (Mona Lisa), Ben Rubio, Precioso Palma, Cecilio Joaquin, Vita Ortega, Nieves Obieta, SSS Trio, Kiko and Conde, Jose Garcia

Guia, a poor but high-spirited country maiden, is entranced by the prospect of wealth and fame via radio stardom. Her devoted childhood sweetheart, Jose, is considerate about her ambition, but dismayed when she starts falling for Antonio, the son of their landlord, who sponsors her trip to audition in Manila. She makes a splash in the big city but realizes that an urban sophisticate already lays claim to Antonio’s affections. When an impressed producer offers to further her singing career, she realizes she has to choose between love and success.

Giliw Ko may appear to be lightweight entertainment, brightened by the presence of Mila del Sol in a film-debut performance that remains as luminous as when it was first screened. It features charming melodies, earnestly delighting in love and the simple life, delivered with all the pleasure that only the best popular performers can bring to musical numbers that they know will gratify audiences in need of exceptional diversions. One may resolve to forget the viewing experience as soon as it ends, but history has been careful enough to add a couple of kicks: This was the first film of LVN Pictures, possibly the quintessential First Golden Age studio, and its polished production values were to persist through a quarter century of active filmmaking. More poignantly, it came out during a time when war clouds were looming in all corners of the world, with the Philippines poised to suffer severely—again!—from foreign incursion because of the presence of a previous invader that the forthcoming masters considered their enemy. No wonder that the most famous admirer of the film, President Manuel L. Quezon, demanded that the US President grant Philippine independence immediately so the country could be spared the ruthless anger of the Japanese Imperial Army.[1] Quezon died in US exile, the Japanese forces were vanquished via nuclear annihilation in their home country, a one-sided dependency relationship with the US was enforced after independence, and the country continues to stagger toward seemingly unattainable prosperity. All the more reason to be grateful that Giliw Ko endures as a reminder that at some point in the past, the dream of a happy existence did not seem too good to be true.

Note

[1] Addressed to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Manuel L. Quezon’s correspondence said that, because the US was prioritizing its war commitments in Europe, the Philippines should be allowed to declare its neutrality as the Pacific equivalent of Switzerland. William Manchester, in his biography of Douglas MacArthur, described “this historic communication [as] the first peal of the Third World liberty bell” (American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, Dell, 1978, page 281). This insight can be related to Vivek Chibber’s provocative assessment of the Vietnam War, where he argues that, despite its pronouncement, the US did not so much fear the domino effect of the spread of Communism, but rather the specter of neutrality, where “other countries will take inspiration from a successful nationalist endeavor and decide on a neutral path” (“Not the Fall of Saigon—Its Liberation,” interview with Melissa Naschek, Jacobin, April 30, 2025, jacobin.com/2025/04/vietnam-war-communists-us-empire).

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Pauwi Na

English Translation: On the Way Home
English Title: Pedicab
Year of Release: 2016 / Color with B&W
Director: Paolo Villaluna
Screenwriters: Paolo Villaluna & Ellen Ramos
(“Inspired by a news feature article which appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on September 7, 2003,” per opening credit title)
Producer: Universal Harvester

Cast: Bembol Roco, Cherry Pie Picache, Meryll Soriano, Jerald Napoles, Jess Mendoza, Chai Fonacier, Bimbo Bautista, Jack the Dog, Shamaine Buencamino, Melinda Tan de Guzman, John Paul Dragin, Emmanuel Dela Cruz, Marichu Belarmino-Cariño, Bombi Plata, Raul Morit, Jam Nhaze Canciller

Suffering from a cough that he knows will never get better because of his smoking habit, Pepe convinces his family to ride all the way back to their rural hometown by using rickshaws. His opportunity arrives when he’s able to swipe a packet of money from one of his regular customers. His wife Remedios objects initially but agrees that their hand-to-mouth existence is no way to live. Their eldest son JP earns ocasionally from pickpocketing and stealing, nicking a smaller motorized rickshaw to complement his father’s pedal-driven pedicab. JP’s wife Isabel is blind, heavy with child, and regarded as screwy for occasionally conversing with someone she addresses as Jesus. Their younger daughter Pina is a street vendor who plans to hook an AFAM (originally “a foreigner assigned in Manila,” currently any white American male) in the red-light district; she goes along, bringing their dog Kikay, although she easily complains when she gets hungry or wants to bathe. They encounter difficulties with traffic rules on the expressway leading southward and endure bouts of hunger. When they find a hand-pumped well at the side of a street, they take the opportunity to wash and fill up their containers. A woman comes up and demands that they pay for the water, and a priest intervenes to pacify the lady and offer the family a place to rest.

Nearly a decade since its emergence, Pauwi Na has lost none of its ability to masterfully delineate a national condition thrown into stark relief by the attempt of members of a typical Philippine family, trapped in desperate straits, to better their condition. A major factor toward accomplishing this tour de force is the assemblage of what must be the most impressive ensemble of performers in the present millennium, each of them resolute in depicting the multilayered suffering of the most neglected citizens around, while ensuring that their character’s basic humanity remains perceptible. Unsurprisingly, the query that one of these players raises toward the end, whether their story will ever have a happy ending, has already been answered by the mere fact that it has to be asked in the first place. (Felicitously, the narrative’s source material appears to have a less downbeat resolution—but then the family traveled even farther, to another island in fact, becoming a national sensation as a result, so one should not begrudge them such a closure.) The means by which PN morphs into a road movie worth the trip is the standard decent-artist approach of leavening heartbreaking tragedy with irony and humor, but it distinguishes itself by refusing the sanctification which is commonly bestowed on these subjects. Fantasy passages that interrupt the plot suggest how the family members, in a better world, might have handled the challenges they confront; but in acknowledging how old-fashioned and conventional these notions are, the film executes these excerpts in early-cinema style—black and white, slow-motion, actors facing the audience, accompanied by achingly evocative native love songs. In the film’s actual world, the men of the family are not above two-timing friends and strangers alike, much as the barely mature daughter casually contemplates sex work, and the mother opts for an inhumane option in order to assuage everyone’s hunger. An even more daring move is literalizing the Jesus that the family’s blind daughter-in-law keeps addressing (no spoilers, since he shows up from the beginning): he dresses up like a well-groomed slum resident save for the crown of thorns on his head and spouts contemporary lingo. When his real-life counterpart shows up, he tells his collocutor that things will take a turn for the worse, a warning that surprises her as much as it places the audience on alert, inasmuch as the parish priest the family meets initially behaves exactly as anyone would expect. A final symbolic touch, the small plastic chamber pot from which emergency funds are drawn to save the family’s grandchild, should be no surprise since we already know from early on what it looks like; what’s remarkable is how it transforms from a light semihumorous prop into an arbiter of survival, when its contents, though impressing the character who witnesses it, will suffice in covering only one life. How long before this item, alongside even the film itself, becomes a relic of a better-forgotten past, doesn’t seem to be a possibility for both characters and viewers, which is the far less laughable tragedy.

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Ang Paglalakbay ng mga Bituin sa Gabing Madilim

Language: Cebuano [theme song in Filipino]
English Title: The Journey of Stars into the Dark Night
Year of Release: 2012
Director & screenwriter: Arnel Mardoquio
Producers: Cinema One Originals, Skyweaver Productions, Red Motion Media, HYDEntertainment, Alchemy of Vision and Light Film and TV Productions, Conrad Cejoco

Cast: Fe Ginging Hyde, Glorypearl Dy, Irish Karl Monsanto, Roger Gonzales, Perry Dizon, Christine Lim, Darling Curay, Ethan Smith, Joffrey delos Santos, Dionalon Macalinao, Ruel Dalagan, Leony Diaz, Bagwani Amplayo, Rallaon Monsanto, Annabelle Beldua, Dave Ibao, Victor Fernandez

Led by an armed but wounded man, Amrayda Mundalana and Fatima Gumbajali traverse the forest by wading through a creek, presumably so that their tracks can’t be traced. Their guide however realizes he has been spotted and approaches an elderly man, who stabs him dead. The women avoid getting caught and make their way to the house of ten-year-old Faidal, whom his mother saved from killing by using a zip line. They bring the orphaned boy, still traveling surreptitiously, until they reach Papa Indo, to whom they want to entrust Faidal. Indo refuses but escorts the three of them to find a boat that will take them to Zamboanga. When he asks them why they don’t follow the Bangsa Moro leadership’s order to proceed to Lanao so they can organize womenfolk, they respond that they no longer wish to participate in the armed secessionist struggle. Via radio reports, Indo realizes that Faidal’s parents engaged in kidnapping for ransom while Amrayda and Fatima tell Faidal that the money his parents gave him is difficult to dispose of because it’s in dollars. When they reach a hacienda, they realize that Fatima lied about her mobile phone being unable to receive messages; Amrayda reads instructions from Amgar, Fatima’s boyfriend, telling her to live with him. Amrayda is devastated by Fatima’s betrayal while Faidal raises questions about same-sex desire conflicting with the Quran.

Ang Paglalakbay ng mga Bituin sa Gabing Madilim might seem no different from the usual run of well-intended contemporary film commentaries on Philippine tribal minorities, in the sense that it upholds the primacy of the people and their causes by refusing to spell out these details as the narrative commences. Complete outsiders will be able to pick up the information that the central characters are Tausug tribespeople and that their locale may be neither in Zamboanga nor Sabah (Jolo would be the likeliest possibility) since they discuss the feasibilities of taking boat rides to either destination. The wordless passages define the covert nature of their flight and yield fascinating discoveries, crowned by the mountainside wreckage of a drone whose roar kept them awake the night before. Yet enough information gets proffered in the course of conversations and radio broadcasts, as well as in the reading of clandestine text messages that wind up outing the same-sex relationship that would have been apparent in retrospect for viewers attentive enough to notice this dynamic. The proscribed liaison not only helps explain but also parallels its protagonists’ rebellion against the rebellion, even as the film maintains its larger critique of authoritarian systems, with imperial Manila impinging on our marginal brethren via the constant incursion of army soldiers. The definitive commentary (originally in Filipino) in JPaul S. Manzanilla’s review articulates the film’s remarkable thesis that dwells on the tension between the film’s loverly shots of wilderness and astronomical bodies vis-à-vis its urgent human conflicts: “While the fight against the government to achieve self-determination for the Moros is just, the freedom to love anyone is being suppressed in this instance. This is a problem that should be solved by a war waged in the name of love for country and this is where the democratic goal of any struggle can be tested…. Bapa Indo, the leader of the group, suggested that [the women lovers] need to understand the complications of war, that everyone must make sacrifices. Fatima, on the other hand, kindly explains to Faidal—a child whose biases and decisions in life are just being formed—the pleasures brought by a different kind of love, the stars that are also partners of the moon and the sun” (from “Danas ng Digma, Digmaan ng Pagnanasa [Experience of Conflict, War of Desire],” Young Critics Circle Film Desk, August 19, 2013, posted online).

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The Boy Foretold by the Stars

Year of Release: 2020
Director & Screenwriter: Dolly Dulu
Producers: Clever Minds, The Dolly Collection, & Brainstormers Lab

Cast: Adrian Lindayag, Keann Johnson, Iyah Mina, Rissey Reyes, John Leinard Ramos, Jan Rey Escaño, Victor Robinson III, Jemuel Satumba, Renshi de Guzman, Kalil Almonte, Jethro Tenorio

Dominic, an out gay student in a boys’ high school, asks a fortune-teller, Baby R, about his still-nonexistent love life. Baby R tells him to watch out for three signs in a forthcoming relationship. Dominic then makes the acquaintance of Luke, a basketball player who feels dejected because he just broke up with his girlfriend. He invites Luke to participate in the school retreat and conducts himself properly as a religious counselor. That includes providing Luke with the necessary emotional support that his newfound friend needs.

A beacon of hope and grace amid calamitous devastation, The Boy Foretold by the Stars arrived at the end of the year when the Covid-19 global pandemic succeeded in stalling development projects and personal pursuits alike, and forced film audiences to watch all kinds of material on their mobile devices. One of the unexpected novelties was the proliferation of so-called Boys Love series, originating in Japan and arriving in Pinas via Thai versions uploaded to streaming websites including YouTube. Originally a subversive innovation in manga culture, BL addressed itself to women consumers who would have otherwise been alienated by the overtly normalized (and occasionally violent) sexism in Japanese comics. TBFBTS (an abbreviation sanctioned by the film’s gender-fluid director-writer[1]) recuperates the butch-femme and woman-positive terms of Japanese yaoi, providing its own resistance to the queer-cinema standardized exclusion of femininity via mutually conventional masculinities (as exemplified in works like Ang Lee’s 2005 film Brokeback Mountain). In fact, as pointed out by BL scholar Jerrick Josue David, TBFBTS hews closer to the romantic-comedy genre. Dolly Dulu also provides certain further departures, one in which their narrative’s religious-retreat setting is reconfigured as nurturing rather than oppressive, and in which their characters’ final kiss is not really their first one. The cast members also display a facility for switching between English and Filipino that harks back to the glory days of the Second Golden Age, affirming that the film, with all its intimate awareness and seemingly casual handling of craft, is essentially an autobiographical recollection of intently observed and intensely cherished private-school experience. It may be an unrealistically rose-colored way of moving on from the trauma of Covid-19, but since the world that TBFBTS represents is rooted in a past, then all that we may need to do, as the film proposes, is look back at the best that we all once used to be. For their part, Dulu announced that their film will be extended in the format that gave rise to it: a BL series, not exactly foretold by the stars, but still a way of living through their unusual, insistent, and newly resistive vision of a better future.

Note

[1] Dolly Dulu’s pronoun preference is for the singular they.

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Ang Lihim ni Antonio

English Title: Antonio’s Secret
Year of Release: 2008
Director: Joselito Altarejos
Screenwriter: Lex Bonife
(From a story by Lex Bonife & Joselito Altarejos)
Producers: Digital Viva & BeyondtheBox

Cast: Kenjie Garcia, Jiro Manio, Nino Fernandez, Honey Grace Capili, Shamaine Buencamino, Ricky Ibe, Kurt Martinez, Jay Perillo, Ajit Hardasani, A.A. Fernandez, Aimee Fernandez, Agatha Behar, Josh Ivan Morales, Lui Manansala, Ernie Zarate, May-i Fabros, Annelle Durano, Wilfredo Quejencio, Franklin Junbic, Lex Bonife, Almhir Rahib, Marvin Reyes, Arkee Tunisia, Liza Bergencillo, Gamaica Mel Pilar, Wilma Lusanta, Mirafe dela Cruz, Dindo Flores, JM Cobarrubias, Nick Pichay, Brent Fernandez, Cel Santiago

Antonio, 15, discusses the rudiments of budding sexuality with his contemporary Nathan and their much younger friend Mike. Living with his mother who works at the community health center, he’s typically hesitant about admitting his same-sex attractions. After a bout of drinks, when Nathan spends the night in his bed, Antonio starts caressing his friend—who reciprocates his advances. Although they wind up having sex, Nathan starts avoiding him afterward. Mike asks Antonio about Nathan’s distance so he’s forced to confess what happened. One day, his father’s parents drop off his uncle Jonbert, who plans to join Antonio’s father in Dubai but has to work on his documents first. The irresponsible and sexually active Jonbert hangs out nightly with his friends, drinking and carousing, and occasionally agrees to have sex with gay men for extra cash. Jonbert finds his uncle irresistible and sees an opportunity to expand his range of experience.

Headlined by a youtful-looking lead actor who was of age when the film was produced (just in case anyone might wonder), Ang Lihim ni Antonio emblematizes the peak of Joselito Altarejos’s explorations of queer-male erotics in the present millennium, right before social media would intensify experimentations with sexualities of all types. Even with an openness to various possibilities, negotiations with oneself and others would still always be a mightily involved and conflictive process, akin to traversing an emotional and psychological minefield. Altarejos is careful enough to withhold judgment on his male characters’ actuations, so that Antonio’s queer curiosity, his childhood friend’s homophobia, and his uncle’s machismo-induced horniness are all arrayed for those who wish to inspect each one more closely. In fact, he endows the most empathy in the plight of Antonio’s mother—and for good reason beyond standard feminist commitment, considering the plot twist assigned to her. Throughout a nearly three-decade career, he has also been able to develop into a topnotch soft-core filmmaker, far and away the country’s best when it comes to MSM scenes. This enables him to invest his work with a unique tension between erotic fascination and social anxiety, evocative of the cherished values of film noir even when all the other elements of noir are missing.

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Unfriend

Year of Release: 2014
Director: Joselito Altarejos [as J Altarejos]
Screenwriter: Zig Madamba Dulay
Producers: Center Stage Productions & Solar Entertainment

Cast: Sandino Martin, Angelo Ilagan, Boots Anson-Roa, Shamaine Buencamino, Jay Enriquez, Maichel Fideles, Jill Singson Urdaneta, Angeli Bayani, Richard Quan, Arlene Pilapil, Philippine Drag-Ons, Lex Bonife

On Christmas Eve, David has breakup sex with his older partner Jonathan but has difficulty letting go. He lives with his grandma Ester because his mother works overseas. The tolerant but distracted Ester asks David to observe their family rituals and bring along Jonathan but David makes excuses for his ex. On Christmas Day, David finds that Jonathan has announced his new relationship on his internet account. Despondent, David wanders the streets and enters a bar, where he leaves with a stranger with whom he has a one-night stand in an unfinished building. Since Jonathan seems intent on shutting him out, David begins indulging in self-harm activities while maintaining a semblance of normality.

Responding to an actual news report about an internet-obsessed teen shooting his same-sex ex-lover as well as himself in a shopping mall, Joselito Altarejos devised a feature that departs from the typical cautionary tale in subtle but effective aspects. The expected condemnation of constant social-media usage is avoided; everyone in the film, as in real life, shares as much of their lives as they can with the worldwide web, although the fact that several of us do so as public figures, where even strangers can partake of events in our personal affairs, may be cause for concern for those who wish to draw lessons from the film. The one point where Altarejos makes known his partiality is in his depiction of David’s mounting instability. Unfriend makes its postqueer position clear when the tender and sentimental lovemaking between the lovers at the start becomes, in retrospect, more harmful for David’s disposition than the rough and carelessly mounted anonymous sex he has with a bar stranger later on. Altarejos wisely refuses to replicate all the specifics of the real-life incident that inspired the movie (transplanting the action to a working-class milieu in Manila instead of a provincial capital), possibly from the recognition that in the age of the internet, socially impactful events tend to occur only once before they acquire the potential for parody. He carefully inscribes the visible marks of inner turmoil on the face and body of his intrepid lead actor, Sandino Martin, who upholds the indie spirit of pursuing histrionic truth regardless of how far he may have to depart from himself.

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Jino to Mari

English Title: Gino and Marie
Alternate Title: Death by Gokkun
Additional Language: Japanese
Year of Release: 2019
Director: Joselito Altarejos
Screenwriters: John Paul Bedia & Joselito Altarejos
(From a story by Brillante Mendoza)
Producers: Solar Entertainment, Center Stage Productions, Beyond the Box

Cast: Oliver Aquino, Angela Cortez, Ruby Ruiz, Sherry Lara, Perry Escaño, Mitsuaki Morishita, Aubrhie Carpio, Sophie Warne, Maureen Mauricio, Emmanuel De la Cruz

Unknown to each other, Gino and Marie perform casual sex work in order to support their respective families—i.e., Gino’s younger sister and Marie’s daughter respectively. Both are instructed by Eric, their mutual procurer, to board a bus for an out-of-town resort, where a film crew is ready to record their sex-work performance, this time (and for the first and last time) as a couple.

Jino to Mari is best viewed minus spoilers, but the sensational material makes that a nearly impossible condition. Joselito Altarejos, however, has been the country’s most prominent mainstream queer pioneer, his leftist orientation evolving alongside his critiques of genders and sexualities. Jino to Mari finds his fervency at the fullest passionate level, questions of sociohistorical nuances be damned. We find working-class characters who enable the two frankly attractive innocents, but the narrative refuses to condemn folks who merely recognize and appreciate when others of their kind are able to fulfill what potential they’ve been gifted with. This sets us up for an encounter that’s best left for audiences to discover, as Gino and Marie do as well. The terrible paradox at this juncture is that one may regret the turnout of events, having sympathized with the couple up to this point; but in addition, one could also be grateful for having seen, from the safe distance that film art provides, the monstrous reach of global privilege.

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Meet Me in St. Gallen

Year of Release: 2018
Director & Screenwriter: Irene Villamor
Producers: Spring Films & Viva Films

Cast: Bela Padilla, Carlo Aquino, Angelica Panganiban, Nonie Buencamino, Lilet Esteban, Kat Galang, Sean Padlan, Happy Laderas, Joel Vitor, Joseph Manuel Hernandez, Wenah Nagales, Eljhay Gonzales, Nino Aquino, Welwel Silvestre, Arvin Trinidad, Paeng Sudayan, Barry Gonzales, Xyrus Rodriguez, Edwin Serrano, Kevin Almodiente, Kian Dionisio, Nicole Johanntgen, Sputnik, Chanel, Rhedd de Guzman, Jonathan Bausas, Patricia Tan, Sarah Ereneo, Mark Cai

After being asked to return to office for an urgent last-minute revision of her advertising design, Celeste leaves when her computer breaks down and informs her boss of her resignation. Jesse, on the other hand, performs with his band on an open-air stage and gets scolded by his parents, who want him to review for a med-school exam. Stranded by the rain, the two converse and find enough in common but pledge to keep apart after a farewell kiss, so as not to ruin the memory of their acquaintance. Four years later, Jesse encounters Celeste in a coffee shop and attends her exhibit; she shares how she realized he was getting married from his social-network post, but they decide on having a one-time fling. A few more years later Jesse, having heard that Celeste was in Switzerland, flies to St. Gallen to see her.

Meet Me in St. Gallen manages several tricky maneuvers that apparently escaped the appreciation of local evaluators when it came out. It was an indie production that had enough commercial potential to be distributed by a mainstream studio; it presented a variation on the manic pixie dream girl rom-com familiar, but somehow managed to reverse gender expectations; finally it presented the aspirational lifestyles (a no-no for the original critics group) of millennial kids, but provided its characters with enough exceptionality to make their status credible as rebellious struggling citizens. Ironically the jurors of the Filipino Arts & Cinema International’s annual film competition, comprising foreigners including a Fil-Am, were sufficiently impressed with the film to even explain why they gave it top prize. The passage of time has proved which critical perspective fell short. MMSG still manages to sustain enough interest in its interpersonal intrigues and pack its final mixed-feelings jolt even with the viewer aware of its plot twists. Lesson for serious appreciators: listen to elderly critics at your own risk. The auteurial voice announced by MMSG will be among the strongest in global cinema for some time to come.

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Ulan

English Translation: Rain
Year of Release: 2019
Director & Screenwriter: Irene Villamor
Producers: Viva Films, N² Productions, Hooq

Cast: Nadine Lustre, Carlo Aquino, Ella Ilano, Perla Bautista, AJ Muhlach, Marco Gumabao, Josef Elizalde, Limer Veloso, Andrea del Rosario, William Martinez, Leo Martinez, Angeli Bayani, Meghan Dee, Kylie Verzosa, Keagan de Jesus, Dingdong Dantes, Mercedes Cabral, John Roe Apolis, Antonette Garcia, Lotlot Bustamante, Hazel Valera, Lauren Rei, Nathan Khatibi, Jourdanne Castillo, Vangie Martelle, Kristine Mangle, Daniela Carolino, Aries Go, Aerone Mendoza, Tim Macardle, Gayle Maxine Villamor, Dennah Bautista, Jeremiah Cruz, Andy Kunz, Olan Chan, Irene Celebre, Jenny Silvino, Fhayeng Alarcon, Marlyvic Suavillo, Bruce Venida, Joshua Cillo, Aldrin Pababero, Mitch de Guzman, Reynalyn Bermejo, Jimmy Tesorero, Kiko Paglilauan, Christian Pianar, Peter Gabrielle, Archie Ventosa

Bright and impressionable, Maya thrives on her grandmother’s tales of native mythological creatures, particularly fascinated by sunshowers, which supposedly occur when kapres, or horse-headed tree giants, are getting married. Her imagination is strong enough to steer her through the mockery of her contemporaries and elders, but then she grows up an attractive but socially awkward woman, her closest confidant a gay best friend. She becomes the girlfriend of a sportsman, but he dumps her when she asks him about a trip he’ll be taking with a female athlete without informing her beforehand. She takes on a writing assignment and covers an educational program for indigent children, where Peter, the teacher, explains the premises and dynamics of the setup. Maya and Peter find their mutual respect and attraction growing, upon which Peter informs her that he’s a seminarian under regency, meaning he’s allowed to circulate in civil society but only until he has to fully commit to the priesthood.

The filmic fairy tale unadopted from preexisting sources is such a rare occurrence that Ulan will seem even more exceptional in having been produced and released as a mainstream-studio entry. The narrative moreover apprises adult audiences, with the central character’s childhood scenes only serving to provide backstory when necessary. The presentation turns on the contributions of authoritative performers, who deliver the goods—specifically Perla Bautista as the eccentric granny doing what she thinks is best to protect her now-orphaned charge from the harsh realities of life; and Carlo Aquino as the reserved but smitten admirer who recognizes in Maya the ability to appreciate metaphysical concepts since he’d been trained along a similar line for years. But the film’s crown jewel is Nadine Lustre, who succeeds in the highwire challenge of embodying weirdness without being offputting and without soliciting audience sympathy either. Like all responsible realist dramas, Ulan allows the so-called real world to supersede the fantastic, but its triumph remains visionary, enabling audiences to glimpse an existence that would be counted as intolerable (queer in the nonsexual sense) in anyone’s experience of contemporary normality.

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On Vodka, Beers, and Regrets

Year of Release: 2020
Director & Screenwriter: Irene Villamor
Producer: Viva Films

Cast: Bela Padilla, JC Santos, Matteo Guidicelli, Rio Locsin, Kean Cipriano, Jasmine Hollingworth, Danita Paner, Kathleen Paton, Phoebe Villamor, Lucho Beech, Jiad Arroyo, Bridge Martin, Brian Sombero, Timothy Abbott, Jeffrey Castro, Carrie Lopez, Clay Mercado, Ronald Regala, Candy Arcangel, Carmela Faye Viray, Edwin Serrano, Meryl Margaux Bunyi, Rod Marmol

An actress declining in popularity and saddled with a colorful past that marks her as a target for abusive men, Jane relies on alcohol more heavily than she used to. She even forgets how Francis, an aspiring band member, once dedicated a song number to her. Realizing that Francis’s romantic motives are genuine, she starts hanging out with him although her violent steady, Ronnie, insists on his privileges with her. Friends and family insist that she needs rehab intervention in order to solve her addiction, but she keeps finding ways to evade their influence, even Francis’s. When she loses a minor role in a plum assignment, she meets a former flame who also burned out like she did, and they go on a drinking binge which lands her in jail. Francis tells her that he’s unlike the privileged crowd she hangs with and feels helpless about handling her problem.

Non-Filipino audiences (including members of the native bourgeoisie alienated by their own culture) might need some historical preparation for the variation that On Vodka, Beers, and Regrets performs on the standard alcohol-addiction treatment emblematized by such Hollywood samples as Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend (1945). That is, one of the distinctions of the Second Golden Age of Philippine cinema was not just the emergence of previously marginalized racial types (i.e. everyone who failed to conform to the Euro-mestizo preference of the fresh-off-the-ark elite) but also the predominance of women actors as top stars, in contrast with men in all preceding eras. Hence what might appear to be a masochistic male persona is really nothing more than an adjustment to contemporary realities that span across a wide swath of local experience, including even overseas work. In fact, what might count as a weakness of OVBR would be its unavoidable reliance on quotidian exchanges between the dominant-but-dissipated celebrity and her committed-but-frustrated fan. The film mitigates this situation via the twin-pronged strategy of utilizing a near-documentary level of credibility in its range of options, as well as casting a mature and equally matched acting pair well-versed in each other’s capabilities and responses.

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