Make Me Blush: Karel Marquez

Local residents and foreign visitors converge in a bar in Palawan’s Cuyo Island on the eve of All Soul’s Day. A band plays its raucous number as music slices through the lull of the night. The place comes alive when the bar owner’s daughter (Angelica Panganiban) arrives clearly inebriated, and offers every one free drinks. But wait, the town is also celebrating the feast of “Pangangaluluwa” (a traditional welcome to All Soul’s Day). The feast would have revelers move from house to house, singing verses that threaten to steal from the living and offer them to the dead (usually livestock like chicken, eggs, and even pigs). The bar owner’s daughter offers P10,000 - and herself for a night of pleasure - to the one who presents the best loot before the night is over. Every soul in the restaurant soon scatters around. This opens a venue to introduce a bevy of characters.

An aging father (Buboy Garovillo) teams up with a skeptical guitarist (Rocco Nacino) to steal and collect coconut crabs. But all the father desires is a guitar lesson – so he could impress his daughter. A French tourist (DJ David Callum) enlists the help of the waiter (Alchris Galura) to find the anonymous girl (Glaiza de Castro) with whom he’s had a one-night stand. A couple of dope heads (Kean Cipriano and Edgar Allan Guzman) bump into a sophisticated cougar (Cherie Gil) who’s rushing for her rendezvous with her lover, her best friend’s husband. An effete, but virginal waiter (Dominic Roco) runs after a group of customers who sneaks away from their bill – with the help of the band’s lead singer (Karel Marquez). A band member (Tutti Karingal) along with an Indian national (Eric Tai) decides to steal a valuable painting in a rural bank, disarming the security guard (Lou Veloso) in the process. Problem is, the painting is nowhere found. A disparaged Cosplayer (Bojong Fernandez) takes the likeness of anime’ personality Krisma to prove his worth to his gang (Regine Angeles, et.al.)

Director Dante Nico Garcia’s “Madaling Araw, Mahabang Gabi” is a cornucopia of situational sketches replete with extraneous narrative elements that are too disparate to piece together. Most of the strains are fashioned like tepid pseudo-comedies without commensurate punch lines. In fact, Garcia peppers his ouvre with loads of characters too eccentric to root for. He weaves them without much empathy. Like "kwentong lasing", these are easily discardable anecdotes with their unretentive preponderance.

Angelica Panganiban, one of the industry's most prolific actresses, makes a grave career misstep, depicting herself like some beerhouse airhead hosting an episode of "Banana Split". The difference being: this one's several times morose and capricious. In fact, whoever fashions this like some high profile comedy deserves to be sent to some dungeon and locked 'til eternity. The unamusing strains remind me of Adolf Alix's "D' Survivors" where hilarity of situation is limited within the cast members. Let's not go far: the director's 2009 flick "Oh! My Girl! (A Laugh Story)" starring Judy Anne Santos and Ogie Alcasid was painfully ludicrous - and one of the decade's worst. Garcia just doesn't have the comedic flair - nor the insightful cinematic acumen that allows his movie goers to sit back and enjoy. He instead peppers his canvas with a dizzying array of elements believing somehow that "more is better". He is able to gather a great number of stars who fails to parlay an iota of gravitas because... well, each of their narrative milieu is ridiculous.

Cherie Gil, for example, makes her career's most graceless and embarrassing cameo. Her scenes with Edgar Allan Guzman and Kean Cipriano have the augury akin to a pig sty. It was like a chapter straight out of a bad acting workshop exercise with personalities who couldn't generate chemistry nor a sense of authenticity. Likewise, Dominic Roco appears in one of his worst performances. His virginal gay waiter drips with cardboard caricature, and it doesn't help that his narrative strain with Karel Marquez is a cauldron of fallacy. Which waiter tells his customer, "Baka ma reprimand ka ng dad mo?" Huh? And in which universe do you get a line like, "Kaya ka bakla, kasi 'di ka pa nakakatikim ng babae?" You mean gay men should sleep with a woman first to corroborate the obvious? I'd have thought there were easier, albeit less painful ways of knowing for sure. Someone's overthinking the uncomplicated. Why did Karel and Dominic end up shagging each other? There was nothing in the narrative that could readily validate this twist. The list of these head scratchers are a plenty. And I've never seen these actors in their worst. What a waste!

Glaiza de Castro's story with the Frenchman was curiously more complete than the other stories. Yet in its form, we see the most glaring weakness of the writer. He fabricates melodrama crisscrossing serendipitous romance and tragedy. Why was it so hard to find Glaiza? It wasn't like she migrated to Sorbonne or Belize or somewhere exotic for the wandering Frenchman. All he had to do was retrace his itinerary. Go back to Sabang and ask the boatmen about this nameless girl. Surely, the one and only Vietnamese Restaurant in Vietville could have identified and located the girl who lived just a block away. And why nameless? Was it a secret, otherwise national security is put at risk? Search me. Was the Frenchman mute that he couldn't ask her name? More importantly, wasn't that miscarriage scene too unnaturally concocted? I thought I was daydreaming, watching a continuation of Coco Martin and Julia Montes' "Walang Hanggan".

"Madaling Araw, Mahabang Gabi" is as directionless as its busy poster, and as vague and unfocused as it's ambiguous title. For some strange conceit, Garcia won't even name his characters, further alienating his audience. How else does one relate to anonymous characters? Such ploy could have worked if your film making skill was sufficient; not when you're frittering away in your exposition. The writer and director badly needs a moment to contemplate career changes for his own good. Fielding ones' story with high profile names doesn't necessarily make a great movie - and this flick is a testament to that.

Why are directors of GMA's "Survivor" reality show horrible film makers? Is it in their diet? Are they subconsciously programmed to be borderline directors? Or do the GMA executives have an affinity towards mediocre talent?

The part where Bojong Fernandez dresses up into his favorite lady anime character was particularly agonizing. His psychobabble about dressing up and homosexual tendencies were mere ramblings of a scatterbrain with nothing worth saying. These diarrheic ideations were so expendable, you could have stricken out his character and lose nothing to move the film. All I could think of was how my cinema entrance could have been spent better as donation to a children's charity. Not like this. I wanted to scoop out the director, tie him upside down on a tree until he comes to his senses. Stay away from a movie camera. Do something more fruitful. Plant a sineguelas maybe. Volunteer to join the missionaries who travel to Djibouti. Anything but making movies. Do not waste the moviegoers' hard earned money. Please!

Inebriated

A religious girl falls under the spell of the wandering Frenchman.

A French traveler is looking for an anonymous girl. How can he not know her name? She went with him to visit the Underground River, not to mention their salubrious lay in the hay.