Roderick Lindayag's Dito Lang Ako - Shades of Mediocre and Nostalgia

In Nelia's mind, the 70's happened yesterday when the sweet-talking mechanic Delfin started to court her. He would show up where she worked, at a car accessories shop in Timog, and lavish her with attention - and hopia (bean-filled, mooncake-like pastry)! But yesterday happened 40 years ago.

For the hard working lass, Delfin (Jon Lucas) was an enigma. He showered Nelia (Michelle Vito) with affection, but he would disappear for long spells without much of an explanation. Despite all these, Nelia ignored the charming shop owner's son Victor (Akihiro Blanco) with his own romantic agenda. One day, Delfin disappears again. Nelia eventually learns that Delfin is afflicted with leukemia. Nothing short of a miracle can save the strapping lad. As a last resort, Delfin's family decides to take him to the U.S. to seek further medical intervention. Nelia never heard from him again.

As the years pass, an older Nelia (Boots Anson Roa) emerges from the ravages of time. Her memory intermittently takes her back to the tree outside the store where Delfin would usually meet her. She was willing to wait until he comes back again.

There's a certain charm in its basic narrative structure. Nostalgia after all is a delectable cinematic tool that's hard to brush off.

Unfortunately, there's little hint of artistic competence in telling the story. The whole production basically feels like a bad film thesis. It doesn't help that 70% of the scenes has "Blade" staring in your face, and shoving down your gut like an impacted stool.

If product placements were a legitimate practice in movie making, this wasn't the way to go about it. As you leave the cinema, you've overloaded your senses with Blade, and you don't want anything to do with it until you're Nelia's ripe age.

With a decent cast that also includes Freddie Webb, Rey PJ Abellana, DJ Durano, Roadfill, Garie Concepcion, and even James Deakin, the whole effort is a wasted opportunity. Michelle Vito and Jon Lucas are an adorable pair who work hard to make their flimsy excuse of a relationship look believable. Akihiro Blanco was the irrelevant third wheel. His character didn't have much traction. Parang wala lang! Remove him from the story, and it wouldn't make a difference.

Using non-actors, which I presume included owners of the Blade shop, to perform different characters on screen was painful to watch. I'd rather have root canal than endure their stolid or overly dramatic turns. One, in particular, was the actor portraying Delfin's brother - and the surly mother! Another robotic cameo was turned in by the guy portraying Victor's dad who could hardly make his facial muscles move! It was like witnessing how "cogwheel rigidity" looks like - for people with Parkinson's Disease. Like Richard Yap, without the charm!

There were several ideas that could have worked but didn't - like the poetic bantering of Nelia and Delfin, which was short-lived. What horribly written lines! The side stories had shoddy treatment and didn't contribute to the movement of the story (an asthmatic father played by Rey PJ Abellana). It would have made Nelia's story richer and more engaging.

If there was anything barely watchable about the film, it's the music video played at the credits, featuring the spirited cast taking turns singing the radio-friendly "Iisang Pangarap". In the music video, you'd find a relaxed cast monkeying around. Surely, the production didn't scrimp on its actors. And if you want to watch James Deakin shimmy a bit, this is a rare chance. Yes, Mr. Deakin, "the Filipino is worth driving for" - he's made to say it. But don't push it. We did not appreciate your fraternizing with the son of a tyrant who indeed pilfered the country's coffers, and tortured and killed thousands of Filipinos. There.

As for the music video we were talking about, click on the Youtube link below. It's more entertaining than the movie itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtleb-h7RUQ

Elwood Perez's "Esoterika Maynila" - Contemporary Realities

In Manila, there’s a healthy dose of mayhem and magic.

Who knows this better than Mario (Ronnie Liang), a naïve nursing student who's on a trail of self discovery. While working as a cook in a Chinese restaurant, he meets Donato (Federico Olbes) and Mona (Adelle Aura). In their presence, Mario discovers his penchant for the arts and an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Enamored by the beautiful Mona, the strapping lad starts a relationship with the besotted “widow”. Meanwhile, Donato introduces him to a motley of eccentric characters, including a photographer, a tourist guide, a writer, and a graphic artist. Then comes Raul (Vince Tanada), a frustrated opera singer who’s desperate for work. 

Donato is in love with Raul who begrudgingly sleeps with his elderly benefactor in exchange for favors: Donato lends him a car; takes him to meet prospective producers; offers a room in his apartment, etc. But unknown to Raul, Donato has plans of moving overseas. To make matters worse, the elder gentleman’s fortunes are fast dwindling. 

Out of Raul’s chagrin, he submits himself into the dark corners of the city, losing himself in drugs and the lure of seedy cinemas where the flesh trade takes him to a netherworld.

One day, while on a train, Mario sees Solita (Solita del Sol), an enigmatic girl who has infatuated him so. He breaks up with the disgruntled Mona (who turns out to be a transgender), and starts pursuing the elusive Solita. Mario is further introduced to exciting experiences so foreign from his sensibilities - and he likes them. He meets Carlos (Carlos Celdran), a tourist guide, who reminds him that what molds people is his past. This is a country that spent “300 years in a convent and 50 years in Hollywood”. Carlos takes Mario to his lover Tessa (Tesa Martinez), a photographer who convinces Mario to model for her. But what Mario belatedly finds out is that Carlos and Tessa are “frustrated vampires”. On occasion, they wear fangs and role-play the part.

Things come to a head when Mario gets pursued by Raul who’s agonizing over his sexual relationship with Donato, unaware of the latter's love for him. Things downspiral when Raul learns that his movie project isn’t pushing through. Will Mario find his way in the realm of artists and the elite? How will Raul survive without Donato’s money or influence?
 

Elwood Perez’s “Esoterika Maynila” isn't for everyone, thus the apropos titling. But its unlikely charm rests in its idiosyncratic story telling and psychedelic vibe. It is whimsical and occasionally bewildering. The script, co-written by Perez and Jessica Zafra, has an astute sense of dynamism and intelligence. The story could have benefited from a judicious splicing of a number of narrative strains. But Perez imbues it with adequate verve and dedication that despite its flaws, the audience is taken for a capricious, albeit captivating ride. It veers into “Crying Game” territory (and you see this a mile away) then gets right back to its intended course.

You can’t miss the film's homoerotic flourishes. Three of its characters are transgenders (Gilda played by Boots Anson-Roa, Mona and Solita); there are fellating scenes between Raul and Donato, then again between Raul and a male prostitute inside a cinema; and there’s Solita’s full frontal revelation. (Yup, no need to blink. It hangs down in its full flaccid glory.)

Liang’s liplocking scenes with the epileptic Tanada feel irrelevant. You have a sneaking suspicion that they're set up for Tanada's amusement than to move the narrative. It would have been easier to swallow if Tanada studied his convulsive fits more realistically. Like a true patron of modern day Pink Cinema, Perez unnecessarily includes a nocturnal scene with Liang waking up while one of his cousins masturbate on his bed. And the point being...? But the film’s brave indulgences are refreshing. If anything, this is largely unforeseen because I absolutely hated Perez’s pretentious opus “Otso” (2013).  

Ronnie Liang has an imposing presence. His handsome face and sculpted frame make him a worthy protagonist because despite his passive demeanor, he is able to command attention. While it is true that Liang is occasionally too stolid and too tentative to persuade us of his character, he benefits from the early “innocent demeanor” of the naive provinciano. After all, his character is on a journey of self discovery. On paper, it's easy to believe that he represents the chaste soul who eventually gets corrupted by the inherent vices and conceit of the big city. He required coaching in some scenes, like when he suddenly jeers, "Abominable! But that's sodomy!" It was too awkwardly and painfully delivered that for the rest of the screening, I suffered from diction-induced visceral toothache.

Vince Tanada, on the other hand, continues to repel us with his over-the-top histrionics. It would be instructive to tell him to temper down his theatrics because his emotive skills are too obvious, too crass that at some point he comes off as either annoying or just plain silly. Federico Olbes, in his geriatric debut, is a find. His skill is raw and at times gawky, but his look and stance (not to mention his vacillations to French, Spanish and English lines) provide a delectable character to the twisted story.

The film likewise gathers an enviable line-up of personalities doing cameos: John Hall, Snooky, Serna (her scenes are from Lance Raymundo’s indie flick, “Fidel”); Cecile Guidote-Alvarez, Jessica Zafra (who looked too pained to be in front of the camera), Tessa-Prieto-Valdez, singer OJ Mariano, et.al.  

Perez has painted a cinematic canvas of an urban landscape where impossibilities unravel. It isn't always a pretty picture, but they are part of contemporary reality. In the film, there’s an unsettling acknowledgement of the presence of fetishes and of what others would deem as deviant. Somewhere in its exposition is a subtle appeal for acceptance or tolerance. They don't make hindrances to one's notion of success.   

The Depressive Effect of Watching "Ang Babae Sa Sementeryo"

It's uncanny the way a film can drive a person to depression. So I was in my cinema seat, slouched down feeling so sorry for myself and thinking, that yet again, I have to blog about yet another horrible Tagalog film. For a while there I was honestly feeling dejected. It had been one bad Tagalog film after another, and this is driving me bonkers!

Such is the state of the local film industry! When the most prodigious and most exhibited works on commercial theaters are from one of the following: Neal Tan, Crisaldo Pablo and those shameless Pink Film-directors, oh boy, we are indeed fucked!

The Philippine Movie Industry is in deep shit! Just thumb through the list of Tagalog films being reviewed in this blog from January 2010 alone. It would make you wonder why I even bother to write about them when directors of films like "Fidel" can't even grasp the fact that the artistic merits of his film go beyond horrid and non-existent. Yet week after week, we are served up vomit-inducing ouvres hailed like masterpieces (read: "Tarima"). There evidently is no accounting for taste these days!

It's also getting tricky to write a discourse about films with thematic substance as thin as a clarinet reed. It's like rendering flesh and meat to an otherwise emaciated tuberculosis-afflicted patient. But if I were to really complain about the state of the local movie industry, I can only do so if I've actually watched these films. Any person who huffs and puffs about the state of Philippine Cinema doesn't deserve to do so if they didn't even bother to watch any. Sasabihin mong pangit, wala ka ngang napanood, which should make you a pretentious twat not dissimilar to director Mark Shandii Bacolod discoursing about what a good cinema is - and even using his own work "Fidel" as specimen of great cinema. Of course we are aware that maybe he was just exercising his right to be either a humorist or a ironist.

Director Neal Tan, prolific in his dim-witted artistry, is once again fielding another gag-inducing fiasco with "Ang Babae sa Sementeryo" (The Graveyard).

The film follows a northern town's chief of police (Roi Vinzon) investigating a series of murders around the vicinity of the local cemetery. But it isn't the itinerant souls rustling around. Uming, the caretaker (Mon Confiado) takes advantage of the empty tombs to expand his burgeoning prostitution metier. While Uming is cashing in on Aliway (Mercedes Cabral) and her friends, we are introduced to a bumbling duo of journalists (Jigo Garcia and Bryle Mondejar resurrected from oblivion) who navigate the bowels of the departed with a video camera, you somehow wonder if they're just perverts afflicted with Hayden Kho-syndrome. Moreover, flashbacks take us back to Barbara (Ma. Isabel Lopez), the erstwhile iconic hooker "mysteriously" murdered by a monster! The plot is even made thicker than lard when her story opens with her incestous affair with her father. And yeah, lest we forget, she bore a daughter Agnes (Ella Guevarra) from this apocryphal affair. Agnes grows up witnessing the indiscretions of her prostitute mother. She would beg her mother for food while she's in the nick of her salacious trade. "Gutom na gutom na po ako," she'd implore while being reverently ignored. Despite all her pleadings, we actually see a beautiful and healthy child with rosy cheeks and Pantene-dabbed hair. Isn't that peachy?

Once again, Neal Tan's cofferful of riches is able to gather a formidable cast - Tommy Abuel (who plays a Joonee Gamboa-like narrator), Boots Anson Roa (as a clueless nun), et.al. But this a testament to the obvious that money cannot buy intelligence or directorial expertise! Tan's technique is easily summarized - he gathers a series of incipient ideas, throw them all together in a pan, add a dash of unemployed local actors and a couple of veterans to render it a mainstream veneer - voila! You have a semblance of a movie! Lamentably, there is nothing in this film that is worth even one peso of your movie admission's time!

Let's take for example some of the lines:

While the chief was interrogating Uming, he asked, "Maraming patay dito, di ka ba natatakot?" (Duh! It's a cemetery, you twat!)

A nun remarked about child Agnes, "Ni hindi ko sya nakitang nagsalita o umiyak," yet when she came to the convent, she was bawling her hearts out! (The nun should be deaf, dontcha think?)

When the child was caught "eating" people, the chief's assistant rationalized, "Di kasi pinapakain ng tama." (Oh my god, have you ever heard of such idiocy?)

When they found carcasses filled with fingers, eyeballs and other body parts from Agnes' bag, an assistant once again offered his enlightened commentary: "Ano naman ang kinalaman ng bata?" (There are dismembered body parts in her bag, you idiot! Doesn't solid evidence ring a bell?)

These are just a few from a long list of asinine details that litter this clutter! The director is wildly conflicted regarding his theme so he writes up scenes that would check out both "psychological thriller" and "horror flick" into it. The more themes, the merrier, right? LOL

Yet there were more brain numbing scenes without resolutions: whatever happened to the daughter of the landlady (you would see her dressed in baro't saya with a veil up her head, then she'd disappear at second glance). Mr. Tan's head is so full of random ideas he doesn't know what to do with them. My suggestion would be to rest it all away... forever!

I was dazed coming out from the movie theater. From hereon, I am dedicating a portion of my prayers so that the heavens would send Neal Tan somewhere really really far from the destructive effects of his mediocrity! Somewhere remote and somewhere he couldn't depress people with his works. Oh heavens, please take Neal Tan to Burundi, Nigeria or Zimbabwe! Or anywhere far from his high-definition movie camera!