Lem Lorca's "Bola" - Lessons in Basketball

In the poverty stricken seaside fringes of the city, Lester (Kenneth Paul Salva) and his friend Brat (Jacob Miller) weave their ambition of playing professional basketball. But such are mere pipedreams. Lester cannot afford to enroll in college, while Brat turns tricks by accommodating liaisons with lascivious homosexuals. Meanwhile, they content themselves with their barangay basketball league which is in need of a manager who will provide their jerseys.

When Lester gets the idea from girlfriend Angel (Sofia Valdez) with whom he’s nurtured a strong 6 year relationship, Lester and Brat turn to couturier Pandy (Arnell Ignacio) who’s only too willing to manage the league. What’s more, the besotted philantrophist even offers to pay for Lester’s college education. Pandy even enveigles the help of the university’s coach Rito (Dustin Jose) to get the boys playing for the varsity team. With these earlier encumbrances remedied, their dreams start taking shape.

But Lester is slowly unsettled by Pandy’s suffocating presence: he makes a hundred calls; extends numerous invitations; he’s everywhere, even during team practices. Even the coach, who was once Pandy’s protégé and lover, starts to resent Pandy’s distracting ubiquity. He starts prohibiting outsiders, Pandy especially, from watching his team practice.

But a collegiate life isn’t as easy for our beleaguered protagonist – Lester is failing his subjects. His mother (Suzette Ranillo) suggests the option offered by his cousin to migrate to Canada – to become a nanny! “Ayokong maging yayo,” Lester adamantly refuses. It would seem understandable for a young, 6-footer to emasculate himself by even considering the option, di ba? His way to redemption is staying in the varsity – but what about his failing grades? Coach Rito offers a winking solution: “Ako’ng bahala. Kakausapin ko ang professors mo.” How convenient, right? But this generous offer doesn’t come without a price – like a coach and his player sharing a shower together. With his luck briskly running out, Lester acquiesces.

When Pandy learns of the coach’s ministrations, he is grief stricken. Sheldon (Simon Ibarra), Pandy’s confidant, offers a solution: “Gusto mong makaganti?” So Sheldon offers Brat the chance to pay for the latter’s debt. Would Brat betray Lester? Will Lester extricate himself from his piling misfortune? Will Pandy get his retribution?

Another pink trash?

The first hint of this production's motive comes from its theatrical poster which has a dramatically placed basketball floating on mid-air as it casts a heart-shaped shadow on the ground below. Had this been commercially bent on attracting the hormone-crazy pink crowd, it would have been more convenient to use the fetching images of its well sculpted stars - have them stand half naked with enticing gazes directed at the camera, instead of using a sexless inanimate object.

Much like Miko Jacinto's "Salo", I was mildly surprised to find this to be a compelling watch. Sure, there are a few conscious artistic contrivance meant to satisfy a subset of its intended audience (in separate scenes, the camera pans over Lester and Brat's half naked body while their hand gently reach down their crotches and enticingly insert a finger under their briefs - while asleep!). But most of the sexually-charged scenes were never gratuitous. In fact, these cinematic teasing felt sexier than the brainless fodder that the Pink Industry has been churning out!

Arnell Ignacio delivers a nuanced performance, richly contextual and adequately tempered although his concluding scenes needed restraint. His obsession with Lester becomes a believable entity. Some attractions, after all, need resolution. Kenneth Paul Salva, a former Viva Hotmen, occasionally feels tentative and unsure, but watchable. Though not particularly drop-dead gorgeous, he oozes with sex appeal and his shirtless scenes scorches the screen like a well-done baby back ribs!:) Yum! Am I really writing this? LOL

My point here is, titillating an audience doesn't rest solely on indiscreet flashing of genitalia. The art of seduction goes way beyond full frontals. This isn't even saying that "Bola" is the quintessential erotica - it isn't! This is a film that doesn't desperately exploit its actors - like most of the 30 Pink Films that was shown in 2011.

"Bola's" most unexpected achiever is the amerasian Jacob Miller, playing the willful Brat. Miller, despite his beguiling looks, acts naturally on screen. He is comfortable with his declarative lines as it it when the thespic degree of difficulty is raised. After a scene where Sheldon, the scorned gay man, confronts him in front of Brat's basketball team mates then expropriates the gifts given to him by his benefactor: shoes, cell phone, wrist watch - the scene cuts to a heart broken and absolutely embarrassed Brat drinking his heart away. He bawls like a child and there was never a hint of hesitation how he depicted his character. This guy can act! Seriously!

There are, of course, reckless narrative strains and hints of social commentary: the egregious misappropriation of SK funds; government officials who can't be bothered, etc. But these were harmlessly grazed upon. Even sociological statements like "Gay men should fall in love with fellow gay men, not straights" spring out of nowhere. The vengeful plot is also imprudent. They will first have you thinking that an assassination plot is in the offing. Then it turns out to be a mere video scandal in front of a basketball audience! Video scandals almost never "kills" anyone, does it? Katrina Halili is alive. Hayden Kho is selling Parisian perfumes. Toffee Calma and Mark Herras still have their lives. So much for nefarious schemes.

There is a lesson to be learned from "Bola". An artist cannot be adept in all aspects of film making. Heard about the adage, "jack of all trades, master of none"? It is a valid statement even in the cinematic process. Director Lem Lorca benefits from Jerry Gracio's writing. Script constitutes half of the artistic success of a film. Technical proficiency completes that. This really makes multi-hyphenated artists somehow failing somewhere, although there are a few exceptions. This should not stop directors from tweaking with a script on hand. After all, his is the vision behind the movie. He can collaborate, but someone should step up to concentrate on the basics of a narrative, its contents and more importantly, the designed structure.

After watching "Bola", I went out of the cinema feeling light. It was far from being a masterpiece, but it didn't dumb me down. In fact, I went out of the cinema not feeling badgered or embarrassed. There is hope - even for the Pink Film industry! I hope Crisaldo Pablo and his cohorts take note.

Dustin Jose is Coach Rito: troublesome English delivery. Time and again, I've been saying don't compromise and expose your actor's limitations by having them deliver in the Queen's language. Tagalugin po! It doesn't make a character less authoritative by speaking the vernacular! Otherwise, I slide deeper and deeper into my seat while he painfully wrestles with his lines!





Jacob Miller: Surprisingly good!


Lester and mother (Kenneth Paul Salva and Suzette Ranillo)


Simon Ibarra as the scorned and vengeful gay man Sheldon.


The coach jumps shower stalls for an intimate errrr... stroke? P.S. Pink Cinema's "it" boy, Jeff Luna has a blink-and-he's gone cameo.

Miller and Salva: Both models hail from Davao! What's with Mindanao waters?


Kenneth Paul Salva: Decent cinematic starrer!

Kenneth Paul Salva


Sofia Valdez in "Talong". Her other films include "Ang Kapitbahay", "Anakan Mo Ako" and "Kangkong". Don't you just miss the exquisite taste of Seiko Films' title-making machinery? How about "Sitaw ni Sofia"? Or "Bola at Mani"?


Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to google and find any other photos of Sofia. She's more beautiful now in "Bola" than when she was a nubile nymphet in Robbie Tan's masterpieces. Yes, there's a couple of mammary peekaboos here. :)

Note:

Please read our featured post on Cinema Bravo and why Web Criticism isn't always about good and reliable writing.

- http://makemeblush2.blogspot.com/2016/10/cinema-bravo-film-criticisms-execrable.html

My Cactus Heart - Ephemeral Popcorn Romance

Sandy Macalintal (Maja Salvador) has long brushed off romance ever since her father has chosen to live a life away from their family. Sure, he would occasionally show up - a couple of times a year with his current girlfriend awkwardly tagging along. Sandy had to live with a mother (Rosanna Roces) who eternally pines for that day when her husband (Ricky Davao) would find his way back to the fold - where he belongs. Sandy is cautious. Though she entertains suitors, she would eventually nip these budding romances in the bud once they get too close for comfort. Might as well cut her impending and perceived loses before they harm her fragile heart, right?

Meanwhile, Carlo (Matteo Guidicelli) is gradually falling for his boss' daughter Sandy. He occasionally waits tables for a catering business - and moonlights as a singer for a band. He dreams for a lot of things: to visit the grave of her fallen mother (Pinky Amador) in Singapore and to earn a decent living; one that would approximate his worth in the eyes of Sandy who's upbeat and charming. In fact, she takes his breath away. Unfortunately for Carlo, Sandy's twice shy about romantic intimacy. She comes from left of center - and is even wary of her irrefutable attraction to the strapping lad. What's worse: Sandy is entertaining another suitor, Benedict (Xian Lim) who's a formidable competition. What becomes of Sandy and Carlo?



Director Enrico Santos comes up with a winsome formula reeking with frothy narrative embellishments. In fact, if you've seen the trailer alone, it would make you want to rush to the nearest cinema to watch it. The film has an adorable heroine who steals your heart even when she furtively denies affection: "No as in no" indeed! Moreover, it has a romantic consort brimming with asian-italian charm. Heck, even the third wheel's as delectable as a sophisticated version of tikoy and hopia and pansit. Xian Lim is a dashing milk curdler: he is tall, sexy, and looks at girls with earnest heed. The romantic broth couldn't be perfect, right?

But there's this quibble: remember the note for the anonymous soul mate that's meant to find its way back to you? If love was indeed such a fallacy, why rest your romantic faith on a carelessly placed note inside a guitar? Or inside a bottle? The idea feels incongruous to Sandy's apathetic ideas about relationship. If having ones heart broken turns you into a tumbleweed of disaster, then it's evident you don't deserve to be happy. No one deserves to get hurt, more especially if it's a deliberate or expedient strategem.

Maja Salvador is splendid like she's always been, her tongue in cheek rendition always uttered in exquisite comic cadence. Most everyone in the cast tries to duplicate her verve, but her leading men suffer in comparison. Beside Salvador, they appear lightweight... like eye candies - and cotton candy, lovely to gaze at, but they dissipate in the mouth within seconds, easily washing off in our gustatory senses forever.

"My Cactus Heart" is ephemeral pleasure. Everything feels part of an ingredient that, in the scheme of things, don't quite linger for long. Like chips, cotton candy or popcorn, you masticate on them - then you eventually forget the heady pleasures of partaking.


Darna and the art of checking out someone else's hygiene.

Sandy meets the overeager Benedict.


Maja Salvador: perfect


Matteo Guidicelli as Carlo


Xian Lim as Benedict. he is once again "introduced" in this film though he has appeared in Gil Portes' "Two Funerals". This gross overlook spells either ignorance (for not knowing) or arrogance (for not considering Xian's first film part of his resume).

Lucas Mercado's Hiram na Ama - Lipsticks, White Briefs and Natural Insemination

Baguio City - Ross and Peachy (Brando Madrigal and Angel del Rio respectively) are a young couple who learn a day before their wedding that Ross has azoospermia, a medical condition where a male doesn’t have a measurable level of sperm in his semen. This is associated with sterility – the inability to bear children through natural means. Distraught, the couple turns to a physician (Dr. Lito de la Merced) who advises on artificial insemination; an anonymous sperm donor is required for the procedure.

One day, Ross meets Rico and Bimbo (Ian Mencias and Luigi Romero), two chirpy, but cash-strapped college freshmen. Not an hour later, the three guys become fast friends. Ross unravels his dilemma and, in the process, recruits two willing sperm donors. He hands them a thousand bucks each (a donor will supposedly fetch P20,000 for his “uncomplicated and professional” services) – without even getting their full name, mind you – then he runs back home to inform his wife.

Unfortunately, there’s another hitch: Ross realizes that he couldn’t afford the expensive procedure. So he hatches a plan: the whole baby-making scheme turns au naturel! He pays the guys 50% of the agreed rate, then the two guys get it on with the enthusiastic young wife! To render participatory role, Ross even joins the sexual syntagma. “Para naman maramdaman kong meron akong partisipasyon,” he enthuses. Convenient, yes? Will Ross and Peachy succeed with their plan?

Brando Madrigal and Angel del Rio as young couple Ross and Peachy

Like most of his movies, director Lucas Mercado grapples in the dark while he laboriously expounds on his incipient idea. He navigates his narrative with blind skills and tentative exposition. What’s more tragic is how spare he paints his cinematic canvas with vacuous motives and one-dimensional characters as clueless as he is. To accommodate the requirement of the Pink genre, Rico and Bimbo intermittently turn gay whenever they’re in the privacy of their room, which they share! In fact, if you’re that part of the population who considers genital sighting a mark of quality film making, then you’re in for an “excellent movie”. Ian Mencias, now rechristened Jeremy Ian, somehow mimics a slumbering snake, if you won’t blink for 10 seconds! LOL

The actors – heavily made up in every frame - sleepwalk through most of their scenes. When Brando Madrigal implores the heavens for a miracle (he constantly prays at the Grotto), he might as well recite the alphabet; at least we could relate to that than his gibberish! It doesn’t help that sound is mostly drowned out by either noise or unregulated music. Yes, there’s a degree of sacrifice where auditory sensation is concerned too.

Romero as Bimbo and Mencias as Rico

Film editing is none but a brainless calisthenics. Some scenes are recklessly misplaced. Consider this: You see Rico and Bimbo inside their room, half naked on their bed. The next frame cuts to another scene where the guys arrive from class, while they “report” to their landlord (Dr. Wally Perez) who dispenses “maternal” words of wisdom. Cut to: both guys, once again on their separate beds; Bimbo is preoccupied tintinnabulating his “bells”, oblivious to his friend just an arm stretch away! Once Bimbo finishes, Rico follows suit! How swell! No pun intended!

The camera work is horrendous. When Madrigal delivers a line (with Burnham Park’s lake behind him), the camera struggles to linger on his face which remains unfocused throughout his spiel. We instead get to see fragments of people boating behind Madrigal’s mug! Isn’t camera proficiency basic in a visual medium like cinema? Or has professional cinema made mediocrity acceptable? Of course we know the answer. It’s pure rhetoric. We just needed to stress the futility of it all.

Then there’s the thick accent of Ian: “May prublima ka ba?”, “Ayaw ku ng alak, di nakaka sulb ng prublima!”, “Di dapat kilala ang dunur”, “Tutuu, kilangan namin ng pira!” While his character hails from the south, there’s stark carelessness in the execution of scenes, like they were in desperate rush before the world is decimated by an oncoming moon in the vein of Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia”!

Even the doctor (Dr. de la Merced), who’s heavily made up – donning a thick paste of blood red lipstick - is prone to such distracting accent: “sperm washing” becomes “sperm WASSING”! If you thought you misheard it, he shall repeat it again for your peace of mind – “SPERM WASSING”! Oh Jeeves! The insightful doctor was going to perform the procedure (artificial insemination), but when asked how much it would cost the couple, his reply: “Hindi ko alam!” I almost broke my lovely nails as I gripped my arm rest in utter disgust. If you’re not the authority, what were you doing there in the first place?

What’s this movie doing in a commercial cinema anyway? This remains an inscrutable mystery.

Ian Mencias is now Jeremy Ian. The film was in the can as early as 2 years ago.


Luigi Romero

Tahanan - Sappy and Shallow in Crapland

As part of her class assignment, Samantha Benitez (Lauren Young), a 22 year old student, must undertake a two-month immersion at an orphanage. In the program, she has to live and help out in the activities of the orphanage called Bahay Kanlungan. Though initially cautious of her acquaintances, Sam gradually warms up to the motley characters that populate this subcommunity of disavowed children. Sam is also introduced to the dedicated Mama Precy (Angelina Kanapi), one of the foster mothers. Precy stays with the children 4x a week. But unknown to the children, Sam’s earlier animosity roots from a domestic issue: her mother abandoned the family for another man. She hasn’t heard from her mother since.

The orphanage is home to 12 children, but she is drawn to three of the kids: there’s Kyla (Sabrina Man) who treats her like a big sister; Rey (Miguell Tanfelix) whose father is preoccupied attending to his bed-ridden mother; and sprightly Efren (Khen Aldovino) who has trouble staying in school. Sam would eventually get emotionally attached to the children. One day, she receives word from her dad (Mark Gil) that her mother has returned, but the latter lies comatose at the hospital. Why should Sam care? She abandoned her, didn’t she?

Among the three entries from this year’s Big Shot Filmfest, Krizzie Syfu’s “Tahanan” was the most messy. It is blotchy in presentation, not to mention exceedingly zealous where emotionality is concerned. Everything is loud and unfettered. Not only were the characters reflective of overdrawn depictions, they were also excessively overeager in temperament. In short, “OA na OA!” Angelina Kanapi, for example, keeps forgetting that this isn’t a comic material where she could just ham it up and resort to her scene stealing afflictions – as she does in every single film she’s in. Listen to her prayer, you’d think she's a stand-up comic standing before an Apollo Theater crowd. She would speak in high sing-song pitches, then suddenly latch into clipped giggles, as though an orgasm is briskly underway while she was serving lunch. It’s unnerving. If she’s out of the frame, their other foster mother Myrna takes the “stage” with her high strung demeanor. And you wonder why the children are so effed up?

Lauren Young delivers a perfunctory performance from an otherwise mediocre script. She barely buoys a briskly sagging narrative. Fact is, Young is a gifted performer and she never resorts to brimming sentimentality, but there's so much one can do with a trite script and an even dour characterization.

When cloyingly adorable Kyla confronts Sam, the once-clingy and delightful teenager suddenly morphs into a cantankerous bitch from hell, spewing acid like a possessed soul. And everyone just stares at her. No one even dared to stop her from her constipated bravado, not even the authoritative figure in the room – Mama Precy. They were just frozen stiff. Why is it so hard to understand Sam’s dilemma? Her mother is on death’s bed, for pete’s sake! Even a 6 year old would be able to discern the right thing to do! Then there’s the ever annoying Efren – Khen Aldovino – who is prone to acting out like an overcharged version of a clown! Most times he’s in front of the screen, he behaves like an amused epileptic, I just wanted to throw darts at the screen.

When the action turns to Sam’s scenes at the hospital, the movie shifts to a different film altogether. The sense of disconnect is so palpable, I suddenly missed watching MMK. You then realize the unfocused attention of a film maker who: 1) is clueless on thespic executions, thus she is ill equipped to direct her actors, 2) cannot tell a legible story without resorting to unnecessary, albeit protracted detours, 3) drawn to melodrama – and not even succeeding to a coax a single tear from her audience after all the incessant caterwauling!

SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOYANCES

While I was watching, 5 rows ahead of me were two ladies freely discussing the film, oblivious to the rest of the paying crowd. For the duration of this painful experience, you could hear them annotating scene per scene what went on during the filming. One would say, “Naka ilang take kami dyan.” And so on. So it’s safe to refer to these dingbats as part of the production team.

This begs the question: Isn’t cinema etiquette taught in their university (DLSU)? Did they think they were immune to good manners by chatting up overtime like they were in their own story conference? Such uncouth behavior from the makers of the film itself makes you wonder why they can’t even render due respect that their film required. I began to comprehend why. Because they knew they were in crapland! And only still waters run deep!

So they kept making noise!

What's with film graduates from New York Film Academy? This is the second disappointing work we've seen from an alumnus of that institution.


Khen Aldovino needs restraint... or medication... or electroconvulsive therapy! He was distracting and annoying!


Lauren Young: insightful


Miguell Tanfelix reminds me of Derick Monasterio

Suntok sa Buwan - Fight of the Broken

Al (Joem Bascon) is a prized pugilist. He is young, strong, focused and willful. He supports a younger sibling and a capricious father Dante (Noni Buencamino) who keeps getting into trouble. In fact, Al has to save Dante from impending harm – by paying off his debts from a blustering loan shark (Roldan Aquino) who has began to terrorize Dante.

Lauro (Daniel Fernando) is an over-the-hill boxer at the twilight of his career. He has overstayed where others his age should have decamped and retired. Sporting a pot belly, a brittle resolve, and the stamina that’s seen better days, Lauro is desperate for a win. It’s his last grasp at glory – and employment, what with his piling debts and a rent that’s three months due. The two boxers gear up for the fight of their lives.

A few days before the match, Lauro encounters personal tragedy, while Al hurts his fist after once again redeeming his father from impending doom. How will this stir what could have been an uneven match? Who will come out victorious?

The narrative catch in directors Bianca Catbagan and Jose Antonio de Rivera’s “Suntok sa Buwan” gradually unravels as we follow the opponent’s days leading to the match. The buildup is deliberate and strings us to the necessary empathy. After all, we can’t be an unconcerned audience. We are tasked to somehow take a side which becomes an arduous dilemma after witnessing each of the fighter’s domestic conflicts.

“Suntok sa Buwan’s” structure is initially imprudent. You inadvertently notice Buencamino’s flawed character from the start and realize that he would tip the uneven balance between the fighters. He provides a nugget of inevitable tragedy. In fact, when Al hands him a wad of cash for the monthly amortization of his tricycle, Dante instead said: “Itatabi ko sa ibang bayarin!” (I’ll save it up for other expenses.) Al should have emphatically reminded him that it was intended for the tricycle. In some scenes, you notice the lines somehow adlibbed by the veteran performers, falling into incongruence with some situation in the story.

Some film making choices feel hackneyed obviously designed to provoke emotion. When coins from a piggy bank (well, a tin box) fall down the floor, the scene lingers longer than necessary to create a mood of despondency for Lauro who’s on his last few centavos. The very same tack is noticed when Lauro learns that his dog has died. Yes, we get it. He is riding the unlucky streak, and this could be a foreshadowing for his boxing match. These scenes could have been cogent had they not irreverently “milked” these moments, instead of briskly plunging into vestiges of melodrama. “Gusto mo ibili kita ng bagong tuta,” offers Maricel (Jacinta Remulla) who plays Lauro’s young wife. You can’t even pay rent of three months, honey.

There are sparks of inspiration too. When Al learns of his father’s vices, he shouts: “Paano ako aangat kung palagi kayong pabigat.” And I wanted to stand up for a well deserved ovation. But just when I was ready to brush the film off, it shifts gears and perks up as the boxing match begins. In the harrowing stage of the desperate, we get glimpses of emotions that remind us of ourselves; of specific moments in our lives when we feel we have to give it all we got. That we might lose, but we fight and persevere anyway. And with deft charisma and emotional investment, Joem Bascon and Daniel Fernando maneuver a thespic match that gives this film the punch that eventually won us over.

Joem Bascon as hardworking Al


Joem Bascon


Daniel Fernando, playing aging boxer Lauro, essays an almost broken spirit.


Jacinta Remulla plays Maricel, miscast as Lauro's wife.

Balang Araw - Hopeful Cinematic Effort

After another threat of getting fired from work, Paul (Carlo Cruz, photo below), a call center agent, impulsively buys a ticket for New Zealand and quits his job much to the consternation of his boss. Jubilant from his departure, Paul hails a cab with a chatty driver (Jao Mapa). But before he gets home, he asks to pass by a convenience store for a pack of cigarette. Meanwhile, Jeric and Benjo, a couple of street thugs (Shielbert Manuel and Alex Vincent Medina) concoct a fast heist. As Paul steps into the store, he inadvertently plunges into the pillage. Inside the store, he joins a pregnant woman (Aleera Montalla) and the two store clerks.

While the robbers muster their haul, a cop leisurely saunters inside the store. Will the victims be able to get the latter’s attention?

Archie Dimaculangan and his co-directors Franne Cheska Ramos and Jono de Rivera come up with a solid work that baits you from the start as the film gradually introduces their characters in narrative vignettes, one strain more interesting than the other. The cinematography (Ice Idanan) is quite decent. But it somehow bogs down while maneuvering for an appropriate conclusion. The earlier story telling vigor eventually loses steam and unfortunately slides into an anti-climactic epilogue – or the lack of it. In fact, you somehow feel that it’s an uncompleted work; that it deserves a better ending. What was the taxi driver’s weight into the story if he were to be made aware of a robbery and he instead drives away without doing a thing about it? Is this a depiction of the moral vacuity that pervades this society? I doubt if this is such case. Not when the running time isn’t quite 60 minutes yet. Budget, probably?

Among its performers, it’s Carlo Cruz (playing call center agent Paul) who registers strongly. In fact, you root for him way before he gets inside the convenience store. Tarhata Rico, the nursing student who sidelines as a store clerk, could do well in the business too. Aleera Montalla plays the pregnant woman, but she could have fared better with a less meretricious character. If you recall, she played the creepy Amor in Richard Somes’ “Yanggaw”. It’s unfortunate that the film wasn’t able to enveigle more sinister antagonists - bumbling but willful enough to be believable - that the film sorely needed. In fact, the concluding scenes felt more lost than intended.

A taxi driver and a couple of thugs with nothing better to do.


A feisty call center agent (Cruz) and a store clerk (Rico).

“Balang Araw” (Bullet Day) is one of the three winning scripts that won half a million grant from the first Big Shot Festival, sponsored by SM Group of Cinemas. Besting 50 other hopefuls from colleges and universities all over the country, the film clearly makes the grade. Alongside mediocre independent commercial releases, it’s a testament that there’s hope for local cinema if we produce film students like these. But is it groundbreaking? Far from it. Surely there should be better ouvres to come out from this student film festival. But this one rightfully earns its stripes.

A pregnant woman (Aleera Montalla) and a couple of store clerks (Juan Miguel Severo and Tarhata Rico).


Tarhata Rico


Alex Vincent Medina


Aleera Montalla

Miko Jacinto's Salo - Accommodating Affections

Rene (Paolo Rivero) is 30. Every day, he routinely leaves his steaming cup of coffee on his way to work. He runs a business that his family has left for him. Though relatively well off, Rene keeps to himself. He leads a solitary, albeit lonely life. He also employs a driver Levi (Kristofer King) who waits for him all day. Back home, his grandmother Mila (Anita Linda) lies on her sick bed in a coma. Rene gets regular visits from his “tita” (Perla Bautista) who does odd things for them: she (supposedly) takes care of her bedridden friend and occasionally sets the bashful Rene for blind dates. But he never quite connects with anyone. He in fact harbors a secret that had dire consequences one time he unraveled it. He is gay. And he harbors affection on Levi who unfortunately is in a committed relationship.

When another of Rene's blind dates doesn’t materialize at a beachside resort in Pangasinan, this opens an opportunity for Rene to spend time with Levi who, conveniently, prefers a naked frolic while he enjoys the ocean waves. Will Rene’s wistful glances come to a fruition? Will tattooed Levi entertain his closeted employer? Guess.

Miko Jacinto’s “Salo” (Share) is a surprising work. Unlike most pink films, Jacinto engages and dives into his narrative - frame after frame - with hardly a spoken word. In fact, most of the spoken lines are left hanging, i.e. there’s hardly an exchange of words. This eventually creates semblance of mood and nuances. “Salo” also benefits from Romy Suzara’s beautifully composed scenes, giving the impression that this isn’t your hurried, shoddy, one-take production.

But there is a problem where narrative details are concerned. Perla Bautista’s character, for example, bewilders. She’s the coquettish “tita” who “barks” loudly, spewing lines like: “Bumangon ka na. Masaya ang mundo. Naalala mo pa ba, dati sabay tayong nanlalalaki?” You aren’t sure this was meant to be spoken by an elderly matron. In another scene (where she gazes at the driver washing the car), she said: “Type ko siya. Matrona ba, magaling ding maghugas.” When told that Levi’s spoken for, she replied: “Kahit gawin mo pa akong kerida, ok lang!” And as if to seal the real identity – or sexual preference – of the character: “Nakadami ka na ba?” Though I understand that her character was meant to stir vitality to an otherwise dour story, her character is a tad too uncouth to be believable. You only have to see how matronly she dresses to feel this incongruence to her peculiar manner of speaking.

Spoilers!

Then there’s Anita Linda, Lola Mila, who’s confined to her sick bed. She doesn't move, doesn't open her eyes, doesn't speak. She was never given a line - not even for a short flashback. And the essence of Anita Linda lies in her expositions which were curiously clipped making this cameo nothing short of befuddling.

When her grandson Rene confessed that he’s actually gay, the news so distraught her, she went into coma. Yes, it's a homosexual-induced comatose it's one for the medical books! This spotlights the gravity of “coming out” – it can drive people to coma! J Moreover, the whole time she lay on her bed, we don’t see her with an IV line or a nasogastric tube. Since she never wakes up; how then does she feed? What’s funnier was when Mila eventually expired, this was when we find evidence of life: a pulsating jugular neck veins and the flickering of lashes. Wee.

Paolo Rivero and Kristoffer King have been around in the business so it doesn’t surprise that they lend their scenes a degree of realism and natural grace. Director Jacinto seems also aware of the thespic limitations of Jeff Luna (who plays King’s live-in partner Manny) so his spoken scenes have been played down; his dramatic lines are cleverly shot with half of his body partially covered by frames or shadows.

Because of its genre, de rigueur scenes of nudity find Rivero and King in states of undress, each has 4 bathing scenes, while King shares a shower with Jeff Luna. Showers and bathing scenes constitute a salient feature of a Pinoy Pink, didn’t you know? But consider King’s amusing scenes at the beach: he runs towards the shore then gradually takes his clothes off as he plunges into the waters. Between huge boulders, he pulls down his briefs then sits on a rough bed of pointy, sandy, scratchy corals. Can you imagine what particles get lodged in his anatomical crevices? Ouch.

Despite carefully planned scenes and artistic experimentations, there’s something gravely disturbing about an elder lady – a “tita” – who advocates polygamy. I was having second thoughts if Perla Bautista wasn’t meant to play a transvestite. Let me cogitate on that.

Jeff Luna, the sexy king of monotones.

Note:

Please read our featured post on Cinema Bravo and why we're sometimes nginig about Web Criticism:
- http://makemeblush2.blogspot.com/2016/10/cinema-bravo-film-criticisms-execrable.html