Stylized and visually arresting, Lawrence Fajardo's Mahjong Nights (Viva Films, 2021) complicates and perverts the simplest of interactions. It unfolds at a languorous pace, ultimately leaving viewers with a haunted feeling, an uneasy sense of always having something to worry about, some constraint on expression or behavior. The perversion of natural impulse begins with Angeli Khang whose achievement ultimately comes from how she renders Alexa. We’ve all seen the film where an actor chooses to dramatize the relationship between a performative character and the role they’ve taken on by underlining skill and barely contained nerves. Khang avoids this route entirely and instead shows us a performer with an intuitive, bodily understanding of who she’s playing. When we first see Alexa we don’t get the sense of a technically immaculate interpreter but of an instinctive, in-the-moment performer so committed to the goal she’s been given. In the rare moments she looks distracted, we get the sense of a performer stuck in her own head. We never forget the stakes that inform her ever-evolving crisis, yet Khang communicates all of this cleanly and dexterously. Jay Manalo's Leo is stern and forbidding, rarely letting the cold mask drop. Fajardo’s cast (which also features Mickey Ferriols as Leo’s wife Esther) is exceptional and Tad Tadioan gives an impassioned performance as Big Boy. Like Fajardo’s other films, Mahjong Nights grows out of a tension between essence and form—between a person’s emotions and the role he or she must play.
What made the second half so mesmerizing was the interplay of glances between Sean de Guzman’s Gaspar and Alexa. Much of appreciating the choreography of looks has to do with understanding the history of electric eyes. There's a specific moment when the battle of the stares begin. It's at a mahjong table where the characters communicate on two levels. Through speech as they exchange pleasantries and talk about the game, but true intentions are spoken with their eyes. Some may find the film excruciatingly dull, but pay close attention - beneath the surface, there's usually more going on. The underlying plot gradually reveals itself. We do not see Leo at work, but Manalo is able to project the man's capability for menace and begins to do that in bed with Alexa. Mahjong Nights is a film of deceptive subtlety that springs shut in its final moments like a steel trap. Fajardo is clearly having fun with audience preconceptions with a mahjong game that reveals plenty about the milieu we’re about to move in while balancing all sorts of layers effortlessly. Mahjong and Fajardo are a good fit—which I don’t mean remotely as an insult. The game is elegant, formal, and deliberate, but with a hint of repressed violence. As the story unfolds, Leo's cruelty stops being simply vile and starts to become fascinating and even paradoxical, infusing a potentially two-dimensional villain with humanity and pathos, leading to a terrific, unexpectedly amusing scene when Alexa’s conflicting emotions finally boil over and when her facade eventually breaks down, Fajardo’s story finally jerks into focus. It may seem like a long time getting there, but when Mahjong Nights finally reels you in, the payoff is both provocative and satisfying.
Directed By: Lawrence Fajardo
Screenplay: Byron Bryant, Lawrence Fajardo
Cinematography: T.M. Malones
Editing: Lawrence Fajardo
Production Design: Lawrence Fajardo
Musical Scorer: Peter Legaste
Sound Design: Alex Tomboc, Pietro Marco Javier
