Neomanila (Mikhail Red, 2017)

Mother and son

(Available for free on Youtube, with English subtitles)

Mikhail Red continues his oddward journey with his third feature set in Metro Manila's mean streets--to be more precise in the city of Pasig, one of the more eccentric corners of the National Capital Region. 

Pasig looks new feels new, the colonial Spanish architecture you see in the rest of the metropolis largely absent; Pasig in my childhood was cogon fields and farmlands till they sprouted neighborhoods then factories then (in the 90s) commercial hubs. Once started the growth barely paused; have not visited in seventeen years but the urban setting of Red's film is an alarming combination of Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell and an upgraded Maynila Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag. I mean--even the slums look new, the grime just smeared across concrete walls, the garbage freshly deposited down narrow alleyways.

Father and veteran indie filmmaker Raymond Red is a self-professed admirer of Ridley Scott's science fiction epic, and wouldn't be surprised if he has at least seen Mamoru Oshii's equally influential anime feature; safe bet that son Mikhail has inherited that enthusiasm, and poured it into this production. The script (by Mikhail, cousin Rae Red, and Zig Dulay) is not so much a vigilante killers film as it is a stray child story, focusing on the nascent relationship forming between gang courier Toto (Timothy Castillo) and self-appointed guardian and mother figure Irma (Eula Valdez). Toto needs money; his brother is in jail, not necessarily because he committed a crime but because he's connected to a crime figure they seek, and the cops demand either the aforementioned figure or an unaffordably large sum of money (the practice, called 'palit-ulo' (or literally 'swap-heads'), is not legal but it is common). Toto approaches Irma for a job; Irma (a friend of his late mother, she claims) gives him one, the film goes from there.

Irma works as vigilante killer for the police. Duterte's drug war EJKs (extra judicial killings) and the practice of 'palit-ulo' are used as armatures in the plot; the latter drives Toto and the former draws the two together. The details are fairly persuasive: the pose and presentation of corpses--bound by duct tape, sporting cardboard signs that read "I AM A PUSHER; DO NOT IMITATE"--seem inspired by the series of harrowing photographs taken from actual murder sites. Red doesn't play coy--Irma's boss is clearly a high-placed police officer, and many of the victims are either street dealers few will miss or (in a specific case) an 'asset' (informer) the police want silenced. 

As Toto, Timothy Castillo represents our point of view and does so with unfussy directness. He doesn't have a pretty-boy face and thank goodness for that; his is a face of the streets, tough-looking with a hint of vulnerable youth, a face you feel expresses what's inside--no technique, no filter, no prevarication. That said, the performance is miles away from the wide-grinning unsettlingly nonhuman Nathan Winston Payumo he played in Eduardo Dayao's Violator--you can't help being impressed by the acting range, or at least the eclectic choice of roles.

As Irma, Eula Valdez owns the film. I remember her being a striking beauty; I don't remember an accomplished actress (to be fair I wasn't looking). Her Irma has the hardened look of a veteran professional, used to taking a life in the course of a day's work, her strongest emotional register being cynical amusement at matters grotesque or ironic. When the strain of the job gets to her, when she despite herself betrays glimmerings of a hidden humanity--the searching look she gives Toto, or the tenderness with which she leaves a baby along the aisle of a 24-hour convenience store--we are quietly surprised. 

I mentioned Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell as probable visual influences, and one may question if this kind of story--standard-issue assassin-for-hire and her boy assistant--justifies the elaborate extravagant backdrop. I think so: Red (I submit) presents a futuristic landscape not primarily in the spirit of Scott or Oshii (though they make significant contributions) but in the spirit of Jean-Luc Godard, who can gaze upon Paris in the '60s and in Alphaville realize the far future without using a single made-up set or prop. The structures and streetlamps are all the city of Pasig's; the framing and sensibility is all Red's. And at the foot of these neonlit buildings, along streets illuminated by the glow of sodium lamps, these petty creatures--these human roaches if you will--scatter and struggle and do their best to survive. Not a bad contribution to the genre of neo-noir and (in my book) Red's best to date. 

First published in Businessworld 6.5.20