Haunted
Mike de Leon's scarily assured debut Itim (The Rites of May, 1976) is about the ache of memory, the weight of religious faith, the slow poison of male entitlement in a patriarchy. Naturally, it's a ghost story.
It's about Teresa (Charo Santos, also her debut), a young woman haunted by the disappearance of her sister Rosa (Susan Valdez, another debut); it's about Jun (Tommy Abuel), a photographer from the big city, visiting his paralytic father Dr. Torres (Mario Montenegro) in the countryside while taking pictures of Holy Week rituals for his magazine. When Jun spots Teresa through a doorway he decides to snap her picture-- and matters proceed from there.
Actually there's no compelling reason for Jun to be a photographer; the director's lost first short Monologo (Monologue) was about a man who may or may not have captured the image of a ghost-- this apparently inspired by a similar episode in Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up-- and de Leon presumably developed his story from that initial premise. Jun captures no ghost nor murder with his camera; at most he uses Teresa's picture to introduce himself to her, eventually developing a nascent little romance.
Teresa tho is a strange creature: her eyes go blank and she isn't exactly ignoring those immediately around her so much as she seems to be listening to someone who isn't there at all. Aling Angelina (Sarah Joaquin) the spiritualist holding the seance that opens the picture explains to Teresa and her mother Aling Pining (Mona Lisa) that Rosa is actually dead, and they can speak to her at length (presumably to demand an explanation from her) in four days' time, on Good Friday.
All oddly specific and to be honest a little contrived. Why Good Friday? Why four days? Why when Teresa goes into one of her trances does Dr. Torres so many miles away feel perturbed? Who grabbed Jun's hand? Who walked through Dr. Torres' house in the middle of the night? How did Jun and the rest learn the truth about the car crash that paralyzed Dr. Torres-- if in fact they ever learn the truth? Why, while we're at it, the title? Rites of May is a poetic little phrase, but Holy Week (when the film is supposedly set) is set in March or April; nothing in the film suggests any relationship to the month of May.
Actually the script feels more like a framework, an excuse on which de Leon hangs his first feature; the real picture is made up of Mario Montenegro's Dr. Torres, Charo Santos' Teresa, Dr. Torres' shadowy mansion (actually de Leon's ancestral home) and the directors's sinuous camerawork (with Ely Cruz and Rody Lacap as cinematographer).
As the chairbound doctor, Montenegro is all intense glares and saucer-eyed terror; he suggests an intelligence burdened with guilt seeking some kind of release if not actual redemption, yet terrified he actually might find it. I don't think this is Montenegro's finest late performance-- he cuts a fiery figure in Mario O'Hara's mutilated epic Mga Bilanggong Birhen a year later-- but it's a nice wordless turn, with some deft wheelchair acrobatics if (far as I can see) that isn't some stuntman doing his wheelies for him.
Charo Santos is by far the most fascinating figure, not because of her character so much as how the camera treats her: beautiful and distant and already part phantom, the constant object of Jun's double gaze, his eyes and his unblinking lens. You can tell from the way Santos is framed and lit that the camera has fallen in love or is doing its level best to appear to be in love, and she can't help but respond with a near-transcendent glow. That thousand-yard stare is only partly explained by the script; the film has mesmerized her, compelled her to see only what it wants her to see, and what she sees is not entirely of this world.
The house and its shadows are the film's third major character. Housekeeper Aling Bebeng (Moody Diaz) pads through it and her footsteps are lost in all that space; Jun stalking its dim rooms and descending its high staircase looks diminished by its gleaming darkwood presence. When Jun walks through the main sala sliding windows open the symbolism is clear: he's the modern Torres coming home to let in the light of rationality and science; next time he looks around the windows have all been shut.
Tying Dr. Torres and Teresa and the house together is Mike de Leon's camera, which fills the sketchy script with an atmosphere of dread, smooths over holes in the plot with quick cuts and whirling motion. De Leon in an interview mentions Antonioni's Blow Up with its sense of mystery and Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now with its air of pervasive corruption and The Innocents with its barely-glimpsed spirits as influences but Itim in turn has inspired other filmmakers-- Erik Matti's Pa Siyam, Rico Ilarde's Altar, Kenneth Lim Dagatan's Ma to name a few; rumor even has it Hideo Nakata saw this and his viewing informs early sequences of Ringu.
For all its flaws Itim remains an impressive watch, a triumph of de Leon's fledgling abilities over an awkward if intriguing script. His treatment of Filipino machismo-- here a mere exposure of past sins-- will eventually rise up from its wheelchair to assume fullblown malevolence as Sgt. Diosdado Carandang, the patriarch at the center of de Leon's masterpiece, Kispamata.
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