Making a virtue of simplicity and a vice of melodrama, Imbisibol (Sinag Maynila, Solar Entertainment Corporation, Centerstage Productions, Pelikulaw 2015) is a well-intentioned low-income drama. This is a genre in which work - exhausting, repetitive, unreliable is the story's engine and the characters' sole means of survival. Holding on to a job or finding a better one takes precedence over anything life can throw at them. Without a doubt, Imbisibol forms Lawrence Fajardo’s most assured work, it owes a lot of its initial momentum to John Bedia and Herlyn Gail Alegre’s unhurried screenplay. The film doesn’t lack for integrity, educating the audience on the desperation of living as an illegal entirely from the perspective of its characters. Carefully buried in a wealth of gesture and speech, from Linda, (the perennially underutilized Ces Quesada) and Benjie's (Bernardo Bernardo) plaintiveness to Manuel (Allen Dizon) and Rodel's (JM de Guzman) wistfulness, the actors in Imbisibol are remarkable. De Guzman's superb slow simmer of a performance as a pleading, recessive man is a silent striver who embodies a humanity that is ultimately heartbreaking. Dizon brings crafty venality to his character that we suspect people must actually work in a trade such as his. Bernardo Bernardo conveys decency, enthusiasm and self-restraint. Quesada creates a character that is sensitive and vulnerable. Who can say that pragmatism is less virtuous than innocence? Jane Austen, Anton Chekhov are artists who come to mind when we confront a story told through such tactful revelations of temperament and states of mind. Fajardo often shows a room before people enter and lingers a second after they leave. Every single shot is intended to have a perfect composition of its own. If a character is speaking, he shows the entire speech. He is comfortable with silences, it’s as if every person has the right to be heard in full. In his other films, Fajardo deploys his distinctive techniques more playfully, but here he seems chiefly concerned with creating a quiet world in which his characters’ personalities can stand out. Sometimes they speak little and imply much.
An elegantly refined style places people in the foreground, Fajardo focuses on the nuances of everyday life. His is the most humanistic of styles, choosing to touch the viewer with feeling, not workshop storytelling technique. By having established the rhythm of his characters' lives with such precision, Fajardo’s presentation is not conventionally melodramatic or histrionic. From one part of the world to another, Imbisibol stirs with its torrents of feeling. Dramas about illegal immigrants have often focused on the journey, an odyssey pocked with exploitation and fear, but one that ends on a note of road-weary triumph. In Imbisibol, the focus is on the plight of undocumented immigrants who are already ensconced in Japan. How they live in constant fear of immigration officials who want to deport them even though a modern Western economy could not function without these shadow workers. Imbisibol walks a delicate line between visceral cinema and complex emotional trauma, yet it never seems to struggle at balancing the two and if my description of precisely why seems vague, that’s purely because it deserves to be experienced through unfamiliar eyes. The adroit Fajardo doesn't overemphasize the acrid, fetid atmosphere of hard working immigrants clambering from one job to the next. The spartan, bleary-eyed plainness of the urban landscape of immigrant Japan makes Imbisibol more arresting. Fajardo's low-key curiosity toward what drives outsiders is a crucial element that lubricates the tough, noir melodramatics of the narrative engine. As businesslike as the immigrants who work several jobs to stay afloat, Imbisibol grows more compelling as it builds a head of steam.
Directed By: Lawrence Fajardo
Screenplay: John Bedia, Herlyn Gail Alegre
Director of Photography: Boy Yniguez
Editor: Lawrence Fajardo
Production Designers: Lawrence Fajardo, Rolando Inocencio
Sound: Mike Idioma
Music: Jobin Ballesteros
