Lawrence Fajardo's Raket ni Nanay (Creative Programs, Inc., Indiopendence, National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 2006) is the best film I have seen about the physical creation of art, and the painful bond between an artist and his muse. Mimosa (Sarsi Emmanuelle) arrives at Badong's studio where unpleasantries give way to a sense of nervous social obligation. The reminder of his artistic stasis makes Badong prickly toward Mimosa. He scraps a piece of paper before his drawing takes shape, even the pages look so abstract and nondescript that one wonders what exactly makes Mimosa so special to him. Badong also takes interest in Joy (Tess Jamias) though not in a particularly lustful way. Badong is played by Mark Gil whose eyes can bore through other actors. With his high forehead and sculpted profile, he looks intelligent but is a formidable, threatening intelligence. He never plays the fall-guy. He always knows the story. Sarsi Emmanuel is Mimosa, the woman who inspires him. Startingly beautiful with sensuous lips and deep eyes under arched brows. The artist will attempt to seduce her but he wants more than that. Badong wants to possess her. And he wants to draw from Mimosa's irritating willfulness the inspiration for his rebirth. He must have an abrasive to create. The great central passage of the film involves creation. Fajardo uses a static camera and long takes, he rarely cuts away. We see a blank sheet of paper and the drawing taking shape, his fingers and thumb smearing the washes into rough shapes.
Of the performances, there is nothing to be said about Mark Gil except that he communicates exactly what Badong needs from his art and doesn't need many words to do it. Sarsi Emmanuel has an ethereal beauty, but it is her talent that has made her a leading actress of her generation. We quickly feel, without any dialog or behavior to spell it out, Mimosa's nuisance quality. Tess Jamias finds the perfect and difficult note for Joy. Fajardo's use of long takes gives his actors the freedom to modulate their interactions, capturing the incremental steps by which people become more familiar with each other and give themselves over to more bold actions. Close-ups show Mimosa trembling from a combination of embarrassment and exhaustion. Yet it’s in her resistance, not compliance that Badong seems to get the most inspiration as he builds toward his intended masterpiece. Mimosa's willingness to confront the painter has the effect of gradually eroding the distinction between the creation of the painting and what it represents and the studio scenes correspondingly progress from the naturalistic to the impressionistic with Mimosa lit luminously against backgrounds that collapse the distance between the real woman and Badong’s sketches. That fusion of subject and form eventually expands to include the artist himself, most visibly in a scene where both Badong and Mimosa break down undermining the tacit power of artists over their models by placing them on even ground. It’s a direct, cathartic illustration of the film’s deconstruction of accepted artist and muse roles.
Directed By; Lawrence Fajardo
Screenplay: Jim Flores
Cinematography: Julius Salazar
Production Design: Alf Alacapa
Editors: Lawrence Fajardo, Jobin Ballesteros
Original Music: Rachelle Tesoro
Sound Engineer Tad Ermitaño
