SARI-SARING SINENG PINOY

     Everybody hustles, but in Monti Puno Parungao's The Escort (Lexuality Entertainment, Treemount Pictures, 2011) hustling (in the hard core sense of selling your body for sex) is a way of life. For all its depiction of lurid subject matter, The Escort also balances its heavy drama with a strong dose of romance. It's a precarious and potentially disastrous juggling act and one that The Escort pulls off with genuine flair. There was a time when most people didn't know men sold sex and didn't want to know. The Escort dramatizes the lifestyle at the same time it tells a cautionary tale. The viewer gets to meet the escorts while keeping a safe distance. The world of The Escort seems terribly real,  it even smells that way. Parungao does a good job of capturing the unsprung rhythm of the street. The characters form a loose-knit community at the mercy of strangers. They may spend hours together and not see one another for a week. Parungao shows Karlo’s encounters, one is an old man with peculiar tastes. Miko Pasamonte finds the right note for Karlo. He has plans and dreams, but vague ones and he's often sort of detached, maybe because his life is on hold in between tricks. Karlo has fallen into a lifestyle that offers him up during every waking moment for any stranger. He does it for money, but it pays so badly, he can't save up enough to pay his rent. 

     A film driven by atmosphere and a sense of foreboding dread, Pasahero (Viva Films, JPHILX, 2024)  proves that even though you may think you are done with the past, the past isn’t always necessarily done with you. There’s very little surprise to the movie, as Juvy Galamiton’s screenplay pretty much lays out just who is stalking the six passengers on the last trip of an MMR train and what the apparition’s ultimate intent is rather early on. Instead, director Roman Perez Jr. makes this an affair that’s a bit more about creating a palpable mood filled with tension and dreamlike uncertainty, where viewers are never quite sure just what is fantasy and what is reality. The film’s ensemble of actors all do a wondrous job bringing a sense of gravitas to the picture. Bea Binene (Angel) and Louise delos Reyes (Michelle) give intriguing performances, especially the former, who plays her role with an indescribable, transcendental quality. The mystery driving the haunting is so cold-blooded and practical that you won’t even think twice about its motivation. The movie is told with style. It goes without saying that style is the most important single element in every ghost story, since without it even the most ominous events disintegrate into silliness. And Pasahero, is aware that if characters talk too much they disperse the tension, adopting a very economical story-telling approach. Dialogue comes in straightforward sentences. Background is provided without distracting from the story. Characters are established with quick, subtle strokes. 

     Pasahero adds an extra layer through it’s sense of melancholy. Angel’s personal grief gives a stronger emotional link between her and the spirit - she sympathizes with the dead by trying to help solve their issues so they can be at peace. In lesser films, the heroine simply gets frightened and wants to stop the ghost in order to save her own skin. There’s a sense of wrongness throughout Perez’s film. It feels like a race against time as Angel tries to expose the crime before becoming the next victim. While real life violence provides the aura of dread that pervades the movie, the restraint shown by Perez is just as responsible for the effectiveness of the tale. Instead of inundating us with over-the-top hijinks, he bides his time before introducing the ghostly happenings - a weird noise here, a horrifying vision there - which provides a satisfyingly ominous atmosphere. Perez shot Pasahero in a manner that puts the viewer constantly on edge, with lots of odd angles, perspectives and sound design. Extremely stylish in execution, it’s convincing in a way that few ghost stories are — not in the least because the crime at the bottom of the haunting is particularly nasty. The images we create in our heads to explain bumps in the night as well as everything else horrifying are far more frightening than anything a director can put on screen. Even stripped of the ethereal elements, Pasahero would have made for a compelling murder-mystery, but the supernatural sheen only adds to its power and unexpected poignancy. 

Sound Designer: Lamberto Casas Jr., Alex Tomboc

Musical Director: Dek Margaja

Editor: Aaron Alegre

Production Design: JC Catiggay

Director of Photography: Neil Bion

Screenplay: Juvy Galamiton

Directed By: Roman Perez, Jr.

     In Joel C. Lamangan's Walker (New Sunrise Films, 2022), the spectator is lured into the lives of women who, for various reasons, have been forced into prostitution. Strangely, the single-take sequences and the richness of detail in the mise-en-scène are all in place, but the only movement in Walker is cyclical and back-and-forth, like the lives of its characters, perpetually leaving and returning to their profession. Discursive sequences in which the characters discuss the social causes and effects of prostitution suddenly give way to the conduct of the business itself where prostitutes are literally dragged by their patrons. Through his own obscure passageways, Lamangan charts the various fates of his protagonists as they struggle under the social and economic burdens of their occupation. Most abhor their work and more than one schemes, usually unsuccessfully, to leave it. Lamangan and screenwriter Troy Espiritu creates a diverse range of characters who have varying back-stories but are selling their bodies in one way or another, because of men. Lamangan is anchored by its cast of characters, making Walker a true ensemble effort. Unlike more conventional dramas of the time, which had one or two protagonists and then a larger supporting cast, Lamangan employs a group of performers and gives them equal weight. These women vary in age, possessing different outlooks in life. Lamangan works extremely well with his cast, making  sure to never portray them as anything other than unflinchingly human. These women being in a profession that requires them to sell their bodies doesn’t negate their humanity, the film becomes less about their line of work and more about their inner qualities, which drives both the injustice and the necessity of prostitution, but never stops short of portraying it as tragedy allowing glimmers of possibility and even agency for the characters. 

     Lamangan gives his heroines love and sympathy, pointing his finger at the repressive patriarchal society for allowing the exploitation of women and for reflecting society’s hypocritical attitude towards them. It’s a polished, poignant and unsentimental account of the women who resiliently live in the streets awaiting a better future. There is no doubt whose side Lamangan is on. One by one, in interwoven detail, he shows us how each of the women live. His attention to the trials of womanhood is sustained over his career and yet its meaning is less obvious—and perhaps less laudable —than many would like to believe. The psycho-biographical interpretation of Lamangan—rhymes nicely with the Western conception of a feminist filmmaker. But his attitude toward women is more of an aestheticizer of female suffering, extolling and reveling in the strength and resilience of women, than one who fights against the causes of their hardship. But in watching Walker, there is little doubt where Lamangan's sympathies lie. The film is at once politically engaged and emotionally subtle. Although it puts forth a particularly complex understanding of gender politics, it never seems to relate to any immediate context. The film closes on a note of hope and heartbreak. The brief final scene in which a man takes his first step into a life that has ruined him, evoking a heartbreaking vision of hell is a mark of Lamangan’s genius. Walker is inscribed with a rare urgency that is nonetheless balanced by humanist understanding, an understanding that is remarkable even for him.

Screenplay: Troy Espiritu

Director of Photography: T.M. Malones

Editing: Gilbert Obispo

Production Designer: Jay Custodio

Music: Von de Guzman

Sound: Christopher Mendoza

Direction: Joel C. Lamangan

     Unlike the most memorable entries into the horror genre, Nokturno (Evolve Studios, Viva Films, 2024) offers only the most superficial of thrills. Director Mikhail Red's Deleter (2022) utilizes the genre’s framework to not only examine its characters in a unique way, but also to interrogate our relationship to the media we consume. Through the intense voyeurism and cinema in general, Red makes us unwitting culprits in the increasingly disturbing actions of its characters, adding an uncomfortable angle to what could’ve otherwise been a fairly conventional psychological horror story. Nokturno offers little in the way of fresh twists on the stale formula and even the well-established tropes are handled poorly. It all feels painfully familiar: vague folk religion, loud shrieks, slamming doors, flickering lights — it’s basically a non-stop barrage of tired genre clichés. It even has that shot of a character violently banging his head against the wall that has inexplicably become so popular with horror films of this kind. While the relationship between Lilet (Eula Valdez) and her daughter, Jamie (Nadine Lustre) does provide rooting interest and emotional resonance, Red struggles to bridge the protagonist’s past to her present. Admittedly, Nokturno handles some of its family drama better than a lot of films of its ilk, but even that eventually devolves into cheap sentimentalism. The film’s horror elements are primarily derivative and reliant on shock, rather than nuanced or subtle sense of dread that would have ultimately made it scarier. 

     Other characters, such as Manu (Wilbert Ross), Jamie's sister Jo's (Bea Binene) boyfriend and Tito Jun (Ku Aquino), are undeveloped. As such, the viewer is given few reasons to emotionally invest in any of them, before they are caught up in a series of supernatural events beyond their control. Some sections can be tedious as Red keeps secrets about the curse for a long time instead of revealing them early on as an inciting incident. The use of Filipino religion and folklore lends a sense of authenticity. Nokturno explores something old and folkloric by exploiting the technology of cinema, making it immediate and visceral. Lustre is a compelling presence capable of displaying vulnerability without ever seeming naive, a derivative screenplay that can’t stick the landing doesn’t so much fail her gifts, she outshines it. The way this story unfolds and how it unpeels its protagonist is too predictable to be scary, despite a striking tableaux involving Jamie in moments of terror. It would be wrong to say that Red squandered any potentially intriguing ideas because there is nothing here that would indicate this rote and painfully unoriginal exercise could’ve ever been more than it is. Nokturno might offer some surprises for non-horror fans looking for a quick and simple scare, but everyone else is likely to be profoundly underwhelmed.

Directed By: Mikhail Red

Sound Designers: Emilio Bien Sparks, Michaela Docena, Michael Keanu Cruz

Scorer: Paul Sigua, Myka Magsaysay-Sigua

Editor: Nikolas Red

Co-Editor: Timothy Axibal

Production Designer: Ana Lou Sanchez

Director of Photography: Ian Alexander Guevara, LPS

Screenplay: Rae Red, Nikolas Red

     Much has already been written about the bravery of Ang Duyan ng Magiting (Cinemalaya, Sine Metu, 2023). I wish the movie had been even brave enough to risk a clear, unequivocal, uncompromised statement of its beliefs, instead of losing itself in a cluttered mishmash of stylistic excesses. Ang Duyan ng Magiting might have really been powerful, if it could have gotten out of its own way. The best scenes, the ones that make this movie worth seeing despite its shortcomings are the ones in which Jill Sebastian's (Dolly de Leon) tired government functionary hacks her way through a bureaucratic jungle in an attempt to get someone to make a simple statement of fact, those scenes are masterful. If Ang Duyan ng Magiting had started with Jose Santos's (Miggy Jimenez) disappearance, and followed his mother, Helen (Agot Isidro) and Professor Victor Angeles (Jojit Lorenzo) in a straightforward narrative, this film might have generated overwhelming tension and anger. But the movie never develops the power it should have had, because writer/director Dustin Celestino lacked confidence in the strength of his story. He has achieved the unhappy feat of upstaging his own film losing it in a thicket of visual and editing stunts. We get to know Jose a little while in prison with his friend Simon Manuel (Dylan Ray Talon). In something of a mild panic, the two loses it only to calm down when Jill enters the picture. Ang Duyan ng Magiting truly excels in the scenes where Jill and Police Chief Gabriel Ventura (Paolo O'Hara) try to work out what really happened. All of his views that she despises such as a condemnatory questioning of the system and disbelief of the officer standing in front of her, so brazen. Ignorance is bliss and Jill's world has been covered in a shroud of darkness. 

     Edgy and belligerent, De Leon is constrained but fully believable. She can slay you with a look and complements her co-star in truthful ways. O'Hara's character perhaps goes on the longest journey in the movie. Testy and judgmental, Officer Ventura has to deal with the sharpest and most toxic human emotion, the one that eventually kills you; hope. Jose, played with modest simplicity by Jimenez is a dedicated, somewhat guilt-ridden young man whose optimism is unshakable. Isidro perfectly captures Helen's internal strife as her world comes tumbling down. She holds truth to be at the heart of faith. Lorenzo is superior as a man facing up to issues he never wanted to confront personally. Ang Duyan ng Magiting has no room for revenge plots or of any other kind of simple gratification. Helen and Victor learn that their own instincts were right and they overcome imposing obstacles to learn what they need to learn, but it's hard to imagine any scenario where such validation could taste more sour. Uneven and a little pre-packaged, Ang Duyan ng Magiting is still a haunting film and it ignites a sharp desire for civic engagement, for public accountability, for knowledge that matters instead of knowledge that distracts. It earns your admiration, even as you wish it were a little better and that the world were much, much better. By following two individuals who learn to ask tough questions, to confront their fears, to insist on the highest standards, it's as good a movie as I can think of at demonstrating what you can do during a time of crisis. As a superbly acted political drama, Ang Duyan ng Magiting is also well worth your time.

Sound Engineers: Andrea Teresa T. Idioma, Nicole Rosacay

Musical Composer: Pao Protacio

Editor: Janel Gutierrez

Production Designer: Josiah Hiponia

Director of Photohraphy: Kara Moreno

Writer & Director: Dustin Celestino