Not many movies can lay claim to being a cultural phenomenon. There are certainly hit movies—the ones that make a lot of money at the box office and stir a lot of initial interest—but even the biggest of those often slide from memory after a few years, replaced by the next big thing. True cultural phenomena ties multiple strands of popular and political culture and becoming symbols of an era. There aren’t many of these, but Maryo J. de los Reyes' Annie Batungbakal (NV Productions) is without doubt one of the most memorable. Released in 1979, it encapsulated the surface attitudes, fashions and musical stylings of the disco era. The rhythmic beats of The Hotdog’s hit songs is a thin veneer over the story’s fundamentally despondent nature; it is, after all, a work whose epilogue is minor salve for all the dreams and frustration that fills the rest of the narrative. The story revolves around Annie (Nora Aunor), a young woman working a dead-end job at a record store all week to help her Aunt Beatrice (Chichay). She befriends eccentric neighbor, Gilda Bermudez (Nida Blanca) who invites her to go dancing at the Banana. Annie is like a lot of other ’70s movie protagonists, she struggles to make it in life, but at night on the dance floor, she is the Queen. For now, Annie is content dancing her heart out at the disco. It would seem that the discord between the socially aware and largely despairing narrative and the dance sequences inside the disco would produce a film that is fundamentally at odds with itself, but De Los Reyes merges them quite seamlessly by emphasizing the neon space inside the Banana as a kind of fantasy world of escape.
The film functions very much like a traditional musical, with the musical sequences offering a fantastical alternative to the workaday world, even if characters don't break out into diegetic singing. In the movie’s most romantic dance number scored to The Hotdog’s version of Langit na Naman, Annie and Eric (Lloyd Samartino) comes off as a working class disco-era Astaire and Rogers. The number climaxes when the two hold each other’s hands and spin around and around. They’re like young lovers consummating their partnership. Annie’s saving grace is her dancing. To be clear, Aunor is not a great dancer. Unlike Nida Blanca, she lacks natural talent and grace. What distinguishes Aunor is that she’s a better actor. She acts like someone who loves to dance. This is apparent in the movie’s centerpiece dance number, filmed in an unbroken full-frame shot in order for us to see that Aunor is doing all the dancing. The song used for the sequence is the disco banger Bongga Ka Day. It has a propulsive energy that is matched by Aunor’s fluid dance moves. This is what made the sequence an instant classic. De Los Reyes proved that Annie Batungbakal is more than just the soundtrack, it’s a movie filled with rich performances that has both flair and subtlety. The music is everywhere, and when it kicks in, you know that Annie is entering the world in which she reigns, yet it offers no real advancement; her reign evaporates with the morning light. It’s not hard to see how kids in the late ’70s could separate the film’s two parts from each, ignoring the narrative and losing themselves in the disco music but it’s a much richer, more evocative film when those two halves are seen as fundamentally integrated, with the dance-floor as temporary respite from life’s realities.
Production Design and Art Direction: Fiel Zabat
Choreography: Geleen Eugenio
Film Editor: Edgardo "Boy" Vinarao
Musical Director: The Hotdog
Director of Photography: Joe Batac, Jr.
Screenplay: Jake Tordesillas
Directed By: Maryo J. de los Reyes
