Dahling Nick (Sari Dalena, 2015)

The write stuff

I remember the 1988 UP Creative Writing Workshop, the panelists and guest panelists including among others NVM Gonzalez, Amelia Lapena-Bonifacio, Jimmy Abad, Elmer Ordonez, and the intimidating Domeng Landicho--intimidating because Landicho at one point, having had enough of the workshoppers' brash insolence, stood up and on the spot delivered a fiery five-minute rap about (if I remember right) the stupid insolence of youth. I remember my fellow workshoppers and I leaning back against Sir Landicho's onslaught and, when he finally sat down satisfied he had pinned our collective ears to the rear wall, giving him (despite our burning lobes) a standing ovation. 

Some of my fellow workshoppers managed to rise to prominence: poet-playwright-novelist Vim Nadera; playwright-turned-filmmaker Auraeus Solito (aka Kanakan Balintagos).*

*(Perhaps the bestknown of my batch but I must say there were others who--because of lack of drive or of luck--failed to achieve fame but were equally talented if not more so) 

I remember the invitational dinner that closed the workshop, and the group picture we finally mustered the discipline and patience to assemble for. And I remember this elderly man with a bottle of San Miguel Pale Pilsen sweating in one hand shuffled up to one side of our group, draped an arm across a young Turk's shoulder, and grinned with us at the camera. 

As he shuffled away I whispered to my companion: "Who's that?" in a tone suggesting "Who does he think he is?!"

My companion stared. "That?" she said in a tone suggesting disbelief. "That's Nick Joaquin." 

I looked around wondering if I could catch sight of him again but he was gone. I've asked about that photograph ever since but lost contact with the photographer; last I heard she's gone too, tho I keep asking and looking and hoping. Forgive the longish anecdote, but that's the kind of keenness this man--shambling old, possibly drunk--can inspire in Filipinos.

Tayo Muna Habang Hindi Pa Tayo (Dating Not Dating, Denise O'Hara, 2019)

Should I stay or should I go?

Denise O'Hara's Mamang--part Gothic character study, part memory play, part comedy of accommodation--was one of the best films of 2018, I thought. Her sophomore effort Tayo Muna Habang Hindi Pa Tayo (Dating Not Dating) is at first glance a slick exercise in the Philippines' most popular genre of the moment (the romcom) at second glance develops (nonfans might say 'devolves') into something messier more troubling.

Salvage (Sherad Anthony Sanchez 2015)

Handhell

Sherad Anthony Sanchez's Salvage (2015) takes its title from the common Filipino slang word for summary execution, which Pete Lacaba in his Manila Times column "Carabeef Lengua" explains: "It was during martial rule that salvaging came to acquire its present Filipino meaning. To salvage is to save things from a wreckage, but the visual similarity of the word to the Tagalog salbahe (naughty, abusive), which is itself derived from the Spanish salvaje (savage), inevitably led to the present denotation of salvaging as extrajudicial or summary execution of both criminal and subversive elements."

I remember a simpler explanation, though I can't remember where I got it nor find any documentary basis online: that the military is 'saving' or 'salvaging' the victim's soul from the evils of communism.

Violator (Eduardo Dayao)

Horrorshow

The horror genre is experiencing some kind of renaissance, interesting premises hurled at our faces right left fore aft, with varying degrees of success. Leo Gabriadze's Unfriended (2015) had a brilliant idea--tell its story entirely through a computer's many popup screens--but dissolves quickly in a sea of tired cliches, of the 'found footage' variety. Jennifer Kent's The Babadook (2014) starts out strong as a harrowing portrait of a single mother and her troubled child, but doesn't seem to know how to direct its focus properly (who's in danger, who's the danger: mother or child?). Genre outlier David Robert Mitchell's It Follows takes its cue from John Carpenter's gliding-camera sense of menace to record the constant approach of a vengeful shape-changing wraith, only to stage a silly swimming pool climax that undercuts much of what went before (to its credit the victimized teenagers are fascinating fatalists--if anyone can survive or even thrive under such circumstances they probably would).  

Best of the lot is relative old-timer M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit, who uses the aforementioned found-footage cliches--done with a more stylish camera than is standard for the genre--to tell the touching story of a fragmented family's attempt to pull together. The plot's all kinds of nonsense--if you look too closely it immediately falls apart--but the movie's emotional thread, at least, feels strong.   

Esprit De Corps (Kanakanan Balintagos, 2014)

Soldier boi

Kanakanan Balintagos' (a.k.a. Auraeus Solito) latest film Esprit de Corps (2014), based on one of his own stage dramas written over twenty years ago, is an odd choice for adaptation: the play's clearly meant to function as a metaphor for the fascistic Marcos Administration (overthrown before the play was written), and written back when the director was fresh out of high school (the Reserve Officer's Training Program today is no longer mandatory in colleges and attendance--not to mention sense of relevance--has diminished).

But the kind of mindset that demands recruits be tested physically and mentally to the point of cruelty is still present,in both the Philippine military and educational system (we still have hazing deaths: that sophomore in De La Salle - College of St. Benilde, for example); and the notion of 'male machismo'--of strong bull warriors to be celebrated and weak 'faggots' (as the young men in the film so vividly call them) to be winnowed--still thrives in Philippine society.

Yanggaw (Affliction, Richard Somes, 2008)

This is not a horror film

Working definition of a horror film: a narrative feature using Gothic-style storytelling to provoke fear and revulsion, or a sense of dread. Plenty the matter with that statement, but for the purposes of this article it'll do.

Richard Somes' Yanggaw (2008) starts slow but recognizably in that mode. We're introduced to Amor Villacin (Aleera Montalla) tossing in bed, deliriously sick; a friend brings an arbolaryo (an herbalist) who examines her, tells the friend that she needs to go home immediately--a nicely understated opening note of foreboding. 

Then family: Amor's father Junior Villacin (the always excellent Ronnie Lazaro); her mother Inday (the superb Tetchie Agbayani, too rarely seen on the big screen nowadays); her put-upon brother Toto (Gio Respall); his subdued wife Irma (Monet Gaston); their lively son Abner (Keith Cabanez). Junior chases Abner round their tiny nipa hut, scoops the child up, sniffs his armpit; Inday prepares the family meal, with Irma helping. Toto sits to eat and Junior immediately bristles--Irma gently reminds Toto that he should wear a shirt to dinner. 

Somes sketches a picture of domesticity--to what effect? Horror films are not known for detailed characterization, much less extended scenes of familial bliss; Somes' footage verges on home-movie pointlessness, the kind of leisurely meandering--literally evoking the sense of provincial time, of a measureless countryside existence--you'd expect from Lav Diaz.

And yet you come to know these people. You learn that Junior likes to assert his authority over Toto, that Toto has learned to knuckle under without much fuss, that Toto and Irma love each other and their son (though the prospect of another child, and the consequent expenses, has Toto upset), that Inday quietly cares for everyone in her own unostentatious yet unquestioned way. 

We learn more about Junior, and part of Somes' skill is in shading in details with minimum fuss: that Junior is something of a sore loser (he insists on an extra game when a (nicely shot and edited) community volleyball match doesn't go his way); that he ran for baranggay (barrio) captain once but was probably cheated; that he is waging some kind of pissing contest with his best friend Dulpo (the just-as-excellent Joel Torre), who did win the position of captain, but can't seem to understand Junior's tangled knot of feelings, his unspoken jealousy. 

What does any of this have to do with the aswang, the fabled vampire of Ilonggo lore, known to suck the blood of humans and feast on their innards, especially those of children? Nothing really except Somes seems to be playing the long game, patiently introducing his characters, cluing us in on how they feel, how they feel about each other, how they might respond to a crisis--in this case sickly Amor staggering up to their doorstep, to collapse in a faint.

I'll tell you this much: Somes offers nothing new in the way of horror. His aswang is from childhood memory (his own), with no revisionist powers or cunning digital upgrades; if anything the creature hearkens back to Peque Gallaga's manananggal sequence in the first Shake Rattle 'n Roll horror omnibus--not my favorite sequence (that would be Ishmael Bernal's), but gloriously retro with its cunningly angled shots, its carefully edited flying footage, its proudly low-tech flapping wings.

Somes doesn't bother with flapping wings, or with the impossibly long tongue that sucks blood (de rigeur for onscreen aswangs); substitute a young woman turned feral or a nubile serial killer and you'd have pretty much the same situation: their daughter has turned bloodthirsty (not spoiling anything, it's after all what we've bought tickets--or rented a DVD--for) and the Villacins don't know what to do. 

What Somes does offer is what Mike De Leon once did with his Gothic masterpiece Kispmata: turn a sordid tale of death and despair into a psychodrama that cracks the Filipino family open along its social and psychological faultlines. With the Villacin it's the uneasy relationship between family and general community (Junior lost the election so he must have been cheated...plus you can't help but sense a trace of condescension in the way Dulpo treats his loser of a best friend); it's the unremarked tension between father and son ("you think you're old enough to raise your hand against me?"); it's the mother's hardheaded practicality against the father's stubborn idealism; most of all it's the father's ponderous love for his family--all his family, even those given to nocturnal cannibalistic snacking.

To be fair Somes doesn't turn his face completely away from the genre--he makes superb use of low-level lighting and shadows, his sound effects (particularly when we listen to the snarling chained aswang) are appropriately slobbery and uh wet, and his human innards seem too cheaply rancid to be prosthetic or digital effects (guessing they're the real thing, probably from some butchered animal). At one point he pixilates Amor's movement (the way Murnau pixilated the arriving carriage in his vampire classic Nosferatu) so that she seems unnaturally awkward, unsettlingly swift, decidedly unhuman. 

But when all is said and done I can't quite call it a horror film, though it does fulfill the conditions of my opening definition nicely (less a sense of revulsion, really, than a sense of gathering dread), more faithfully in fact than some of Somes' fellow filmmakers (Rico Ilarde's genre-benders for example: wonderfully scary fun, not as easy to achieve as you might think). No, it's more--the drama of a man who cared for nothing in the world except his family, the film itself a demonstration of Philippine cinema's great theme (the love of a mother and struggle for survival of the family) inverted; perverted if you like.

Is the picture frightening? It has its moments. But I've stopped looking for mere scares in a horror film; it's only too easy to inspire an audience to jump using shock cuts and loud sound effects (Hollywood movies nowadays are nothing but shock cuts and sound effects). I need more from my genre films, a sense of horror that arises not from blood or gore or violence or even sadism but from a sense of unease, of souls being corrupted, of moral universes being upended, slowly. I need a genuine sense of evil nowadays--nothing less will do--and if, say, that evil was driven by a profound sense of family? A profound sense of amour?

You might say the genre elements in Yanggaw are a distraction, almost: a man whose love guarantees the destruction of what he loves, that's the source of the film's tragic power. Need I say it? Easily the best Filipino horror film--one of the best of any country, actually--this side of the new millennium. 

First published in Businessworld, 10.23.14

Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay (Antoinette Jadaone, 2011)

My debut article for Cinemas of Asia (a journal of the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC)):

Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay (Antoinette Jadaone, 2011)

It was a blast to watch, and write about.

9.30.12

Best of 2011

(Updated 1/22/12)

Was the year so bad? It had its moments. Film availability was so erratic you never knew what would be suddenly available, or what needed a wait of weeks or months. Foreign and Filipino films continued to be hard to obtain and slow in coming, and for the first time I found myself going online regularly to watch what I needed to see. Frustrating and fascinating, sometimes both at the same time; at least a few heroes (O'Hara, Hellman, Carpenter) managed to work. 

Some 2010 titles I include because most people saw them much later, usually on DVD (and they deserve to be seen).

Some interesting runner-ups (in alphabetical order):

The Adventures of Tintin - Steven Spielberg's gaudy Christmas ornament of a picture, a breathlessly paced action-adventure that can barely afford the time to pause and regard itself, much less generate human interest. Easily one of Spielberg's most kinetically complex works, if not exactly his most involving. 

Anatomiya ng Korupsyon (Anatomy of Corruption) - Dennis Marasigan's beautifully understated adaptation of Malou Jacob's play captures the atmosphere and dynamics of a Filipino white-collar workplace better than any filmmaker I can think of since Ishmael Bernal (Working Girls, 1984), down to the secretary operating a cigarettes-and-candy store literally under the table. In Maricar Reyes' fresh new lawyer we see the near-fanatic idealism of the truly innocent, the strength that allows them to defy pressure for so long, that makes their eventual descent such  compelling drama. With Sid Lucero, terrific as Reyes' kindly, reasonable, fully implicated immediate superior.

Animal Kingdom - Would be a disservice to call David Michod's gangster picture an Outback The Godfather; it's more interesting than that, a crime noir with a strong sense of place and family dynamics, a bleak spirit appropriate to the bleak desert setting.

Cars 2 - Now this is more Pixar's speed: action and comedy served up with few pretenses (leave 'heart' to people who actually know something about it like, say, Studio Ghibli). Larry the Cable Guy is inoffensive as the voice of the movie's putative hero; Michael Caine steals the show playing an Aston Martin too cool to be a fool. My vote for Pixar's best feature to date--which isn't saying much, but there you are.

Casino Jack and the United States of Money - Alex Gibney's documentary doesn't have interviews of the man  to work on, and Gibney himself isn't enough like Michael Moore to give the picture the larger-than-life clown protagonist it needs to laugh with (or at), but the eponymous subject (superlobbyist Jack Abramoff) is so compellingly bizarre you keep watching anyway.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams - As beautiful a documentary as anything Herzog has done, with the cave's contours (and Herzog's gliding handheld lamps) bringing the thirty thousand year old artworks back to eerie, startling life. Did not see the 3D version, unfortunately, which is said to go a long way towards justifying the use of the gimmick.

Contagion - Outbreak for the intelligent. Steven Soderbergh directs his always smart sensibility at the disaster movie and produces (with help from experts) the most persuasive and scientifically accurate depiction of a deadly plague--and a government's reasonably swift response to it--yet made (we're talking best-case scenario here, though). Don't cough while watching with others: the sense of paranoia generated can be catching.

The Debt - No handheld shots; no chop-suey editing. John Madden's thriller, about three Israeli intelligence operatives who capture an infamous Nazi officer--is so old-fashioned it's refreshing. Of course the Nazi steals the show with the slyest, funniest performance in the picture.

The Descendants - Alexander Payne doing a novel by Kaui Hart Hemming. The plot is secondary--something about a man discovering his wife is unfaithful--to the opportunity to know a family, its fairly dysfunctional dynamics, and the weird way they warp and bend to the stresses imposed the novel's plot. Wonderfully performed, subtly told.

Drive - Nicolas Refn's first American feature has an embarrassingly awkward love story written into the heart of it and both Cary Mulligan and Ron Perlman are criminally underused, but Albert Brooks is a hoot as an amiable sociopathic gangster, and Refns in the various chase and action sequences proves himself to be a more skillful filmmaker than Quentin Tarantino (not saying much again, I know).

Exit Through The Gift Shop - Artistic terrorist Banksy's debut film is partially a hoax, not as elaborate as Welles' F is for Fake, but elaborate enough to impress. As a small bonus the film is also a brief survey of the best and most striking contemporary street art, circa 2010. 

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Noomi Rapace is sorely missed as the eponymous girl (Rooney Mara is a far softer alternative), but otherwise David Fincher successfully evokes with a visual style all his own the obsessive determination of a pair of sleuths hunting down a serial killer. 

The Green Hornet - Not a big fan of the original show (other than Bruce Lee); not a fan of Seth Rogen's whiny self-centered schtick; not a fan of Michel Gondry's non-Charles Kaufman work--but I am a (somewhat surprised, somewhat reluctant, somewhat stunned) fan of this. A deconstruction of the superhero movie flick that leaves no headstone unturned, no latex underwear unstained.

Hall Pass - Bob and Peter Farelly's take on the need for the overgrown male child to "just grow up and get on with it" isn't quite like Judd Apatow's--and thank God for that. Not their best--that would be the scathingly funny Kingpin--but not bad, for an overgrown male child comedy.

Happy Feet 2 - George Miller's sequel to his epic penguin movie is, like the original, a touch too wholesome. But one senses something visionary about the whole enterprise, and the sight of community action on both a grand and plankton scale is inspiring indeed.

The Illusionist - Sylvain Chomet's realization of Jacques Tati's unproduced script doesn't have the wit or grace or timing of Tati, but it does have the gorgeous colors and Gallic despair of a Chomet animated feature (a lesser thing, true, but not negligible).

Immortals - Tarsem Singh's retelling of Theseus' myth should have been yet another Clash of the Titans ripoff; instead I found a stylish (if severely underwritten) adventure epic ingeniously staged, intensely shot and edited.

J. Edgar - Clint Eastwood's Hoover biopic is a skillfully rendered production, written by Dustin Lance Black (Milk, 2008) as an unacknowledged love story between Hoover and his longtime companion Clyde Tolson. Well done for what it is, but one has to question if Hoover deserves this kind of treatment, or if Eastwood should have put the man's career in a broader, clearer context (in short: one of the most terrorizing, corrupting influences in 20th century American politics).

Meek's Cutoff - Kelly Reichardt's fascinatingly elliptical drama takes a historically true event (a guide named Stephen Meek did lead a group of settlers off of the Oregon Trail, and they did meet a Native American) and turns it into an allegorical / metaphysical drama on the uncertainty of life, the inscrutability of others (or Others).

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - Brad Bird's first live-action feature is fun, more fun in fact than Steven Spielberg's first foray into animated feature filmmaking (see above). Spielberg is the incomparably more talented filmmaker (his fight and chase sequences are lucid and beautifully staged, while Bird's are a handheld mess), but Bird does seem to possess the funnier, more inventive script (despite Spielberg having Dr. Who head writer Steven Moffat on his side), the funnier, more inventive cast (Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg).

Moneyball - Bennett Miller's true-life drama is easily the best sports movie I've seen in years, mainly because of what it is and what it isn't. It isn't an underdog-team-makes-good story; it isn't a low comedy about players' hi-jinks; it is the story of a statistical tactic that somehow upends all thinking about the game of baseball. Any time smarts trumps sports jocks, I'm so there. 

My Paranormal Romance - Victor Villanueva's supernatural rom-com is a delight, though not effortlessly so. It's the story of a girl who inherits the ability to see dead people and the various men who desire her abilities, her self, her whatever. Too long by about twenty minutes, but it has energy and imagination to spare (perhaps too much so), not to mention evidence of a warmly beating heart.

Never Let Me Go - Mark Romanek's adaptation of the Kazuo Ishiguro novel is understated to the point of somnolence--at least that's how some people might take this little drama; for others it's an oblique trip into heartbreak. With excellent performances by Andrew Garfield and Carey Mulligan.

Rango - Johnny Depp proves to be as nimble verbally as he is physically; the tone, a mix of mildly bizarre humor and American frontier tall-tale telling, is sustained for the length of the picture--not an easy feat. Undoubtedly Gore Verbinski's masterpiece which, yet again, isn't saying much.

Road to Nowhere - Monte Hellman's first feature in twenty years, about a film production doing the story of a fraud and possible double-suicide crime case, is as metaphysically slippery as anything anyone's ever done. The film eventually gathers hypnotic force and drama, but not before leading you through a mirror maze of misleading imagery and narrative ambiguities (Is the lead actress involved in the actual case? Who died and who's still alive? Which scenes are of the movie production and which of the real-life case?).

13 Assassins - Takashi Miike's take on the jidai-geki genre features one of the most baroquely memorable villains this side of Richard Widmark, and a massive climax staged and executed with what-the-fuck flair. Not quite the clarity and complexity of Seven Samurai, but it'll do till something better comes along.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - Tomas Alfredson moves away from vampires towards something far more sinister: espionage agents wading through the murk of '70s geopolitics. The production doesn't have the room to let John le Carre's classic spy thriller breathe properly, and Gary Oldman at best captures an echo of Alec Guinness' definitive interpretation of George Smiley (the master spy brought out of retirement to uncover a mole). But Alfredson does give the picture a beautiful stone-and-iron color palette, and at certain moments achieves the kind of airless silence that goes a long way towards enhancing the film's sense of paranoia.

War Horse - Spielberg again, this time galloping in the opposite direction with the more leisurely told, more emotionally direct story of a horse wandering through the battlefields of World War I. The material is sticky enough without the director trying to whack us over the head with the poignancy of it all; one is moved, but eventually, after a struggle. Think what Carroll Ballard could have done with this.

The Ward - John Carpenter's supposed feature comeback wasn't what everyone hoped for, but it wasn't total garbage either--mostly a master of modern American horror playing the postmodern game his way, with a tiny budget and even less pretensions.

You Don't Know Jack - A hushed look at Jack Kevorkian (a.k.a. Dr. Death, outspoken champion of assisted suicides). The film presents Kevorkian's many facets: the honesty, the stubbornness, even the hubris that eventually brought him down. Easily both Al Pacino and Barry Levinson's best work in years.

Zombadings 1: Patayin sa shokot si Remington (Rough translation: Scare Remington to death) - Director Jade Castro and screenwriter-producer Michiko Yamamoto's horror parody takes its inspiration from Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell, and does it one better: instead of Eternal Damnation we're threatened with Eternal Pansification, and it's the film's conceit that This May Not Be an Entirely Bad Thing. Like My Paranormal Romance it suffers from one idea too many, and the narrative line can at times be obscured by the punchline, but personally I prefer this surfeit (of ideas, of gags, of energy) to its opposite...

Plus six titles that I thought were especially fine (in ascending order):

Tree of Life - Easily one of the most ambitious, most breathlessly beautiful films this year, in parts. The creation sequence has sweep and grandeur; the brief dinosaur sequence mystery and an elusive poignancy. The family sequences are intensely felt drama--one suspects Malick brought a lot of his personal life into these scenes. I feel the two halves belong in entirely different films, however; Malick hasn't even halfway bothered to integrate them. Then there's that beach scene, which plays like Federico Fellini's 8 1/2, only without the rueful irony (you suspect Malick for all his talent is missing a few key hues on his palette). Ultimately a failure, but what a failure!

Hugo - To paraphrase what film critic David Ehrenstein said, Mean Streets and Goodfellas was what Scorsese saw around him when he was young; Hugo was what he felt inside. An intricate clockwork of a movie that spins and shudders, chimes and chatters, striking a brassy bell for the cult of cinephilia. Martin Scorsese's film is possibly one of the most exuberant, most charming pictures of the year, and arguably the best use of digital 3D I've seen to date.

Ka Oryang - Sari Lluch Dalena's harrowing work presents in full what Lino Brocka, Mike De Leon, Mario O'Hara could only deal with tangentially in their films: the incarceration, interrogation, and torture of women during the Marcos era. Only Dalena tells the story through her inimitable experimental filmmaker's sensibility, with brief forays into surrealism and the occasional striking image.

Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay - And I thought Hugo was the most spirited, most exuberant, most cinephilic film of the year! Antoinette Jadaone's mockumentary follows veteran character actress Lilia Cuntapay (star of such Filipino horror classics as Aswang (Vampire); Shake, Rattle and Roll Part III; Shake, Rattle and Roll Part IV; Shake, Rattle and Roll Part V, and Pangarap ng Puso (Demons)) as she immerses herself Methodically in her bit parts and polishes endlessly her acceptance speech for the first-ever acting award nomination in her long and varied career. Pathos and hilarity ensue.

Certified Copy - Abbas Kiarostami's latest feature--his first to be shot outside of Iran--is a perfectly mysterious little gem, about a man and a woman wandering through the streets of Tuscany. Are they newly met acquaintances? Long-separated husband and wife? Acquaintances who have suddenly assumed the role of husband and wife? One hurries after them, trying to puzzle both the film and their relationship out while Kiarostami sits back and keeps the entire bewildering affair whirring on the palm of his confident hand. 

Poetry - Lee Chang Dong's film follows a grandmother as she attempts to belatedly learn how to write poetry, and as she attempts to deal with a possible rape conviction for her grandson. Lee's achievement is to make both storylines not just complementary, but compelling; as with the very best poetry, every detail carries more than its own weight in meaning. One of the best films not just of the year, but of several years.

Sa Ngalan ng Ina (In the Name of the Mother) - My vote for best of the year goes not to a movie but to a TV mini-series; not just any mini-series but a teleserye--a TV soap. Mario O'Hara and Jon Red's take on Philippine politics of the last thirty or so years is by turns hilarious, thrilling, shameless, and sad; in effect, exactly like Philippine politics of the last thirty years. With an understated yet ultimately monumental turn from Nora Aunor, the literal face of Philippine cinema.

1.14.12