SARI-SARING SINENG PINOY

     It’s devastating the way director Jerry Lopez Sineneng depicted how the domino-effect destruction of Rita (Vivamax, 2024) came within milliseconds of never happening. Rita (Christine Bermas) could pick up and perish the idea of sleeping with her husband Ariel's (Victor Relosa) best friend, Royce (Josh Ivan Morales). Sineneng has never been much for subtlety, but he understands that the psychology of erotic fantasy has as much potential to obliterate as to titillate. Rita never arouses, judges or mounts a morality play: It’s a dark, delusional piece of sultry fantasia that doesn’t condemn or condone Ariel or Rita’s choices. It simply presents people surprised by the ease with which they transgress and allow little white lies to fester into tumorous deceptions. Sineneng pulls out all the stops to display his lovers' erotic trysts. Playing down his handsomeness, Relosa invests Ariel with such palpable hurt. It’s such an emotionally naked performance, couched in understatement. Other strong performances are offered by Morales whose character is both repulsive and mysterious (that is part of his allure). Royce's charm is a convincing temptation and an interesting choice for Rita's dalliance. Perhaps the most balanced character is Rita's younger brother Marlon, played sensitively by Gold Aceron. As the confused and guilt-stricken Rita, Bermas is asked to run the full spectrum of emotions, from unexpected joy to emptiness to heartbreak and every step is a performance of blistering intensity. 

     Darryl Yap treats love and loss with a disarming tenderness and a refusal of sentimentality that make his fifteenth feature, something of an anomaly among male identity flicks. Para Kang Papa Mo (Viva Films, Vincentiments, 2023) is about men and the male performances are terrific. In casting Mark Anthony Fernandez and Nikko Natividad, Yap not only chose two actors that actually look like they could be father and son but actors who fit into their roles with ease. Natividad is perfect, injecting Harry with subtlety abound, but it’s a deceptively restrained performance about a gradual development. Fernandez merrily falls into his role, capturing all the life apparent in this newly blissful way of living; fortunately, Yap never shows Fernandez as the absent father from Harry's childhood, allowing viewers to see him only as a new man. He brings Harry into his new life, giving him the chance to get to know and appreciate his father on a completely different level. Their relationship blossoms in ways that are emotionally authentic and satisfying. It's all about dropping their inhibitions to be sincere and silly with one another. Natividad and Fernandez say so much with their facial expressions and body language that the struggle and longing for human connection comes across loud and clear despite never being articulated. Ruby Ruiz gives a full-bodied performance as Tita Tita, a woman with her own issues but sweet and funny. She could have so easily been turned into a one-note role, but Ruiz brings her to life wondrously. The last component is Jao Mapa's Jose whose presence has many of the same qualities as Fernandez’s role, but with a particular charm. 

     We also get further insight into how Anton feels during these little scenes where Harry speaks in voiceover accompanied by a series of images on screen illustrating his point. Also, while most of the scenes are framed in a pretty yet straightforward way, the focal point, which in most films is usually somewhere on the side is quite often set dead-center resulting in a jolt to the senses. This is symbolic of the whole film, where the simplest things have the biggest impact. The story is triggered by illness and death, but in a simple turnaround, the film is not about these things. Instead, Yap uses Harry's death as a way to explore how Anton changes as a result of it—and not even the actual loss, as such, but in the recollection of lives lived with a purpose. There’s a warmth about Para Kang Papa Mo that you don’t feel in many films today. These are good characters, good people and Yap has made it easy to fall in love with them. Though the story involves a lot of highs and lows, going deep into grave material, the experience induces an instant smile that doesn’t fade for the duration perhaps because Harry and Anton try to remain outside of the commotion and therefore prevent the film’s mood from becoming severe. It’s never too much to bear, but also doesn’t let us get away without shedding a tear or having a few hearty laughs. That moment of sincere appreciation in the face of inevitable devastation is one that is repeated throughout the film. Para Kang Papa Mo is joyous in the places we're accustomed to misery. Yap has delivered a film whose idiosyncrasies are nothing short of charming and whose small story is eclipsed by its considerable heart.

Sound Design: Aian Louie Caro

Music By: Emerzon Texon

Editor: Vincent L. Asis

Editor: Arel Ebana

Production Designer: Gie Shock Jose

Written and Directed By: Darryl Yap

     Hindi Mo Ako Kayang Tapakan (V.H. Films, 1985) is one of those epic sagas that seem to have been made for television. The film by Maryo J. de los Reyes tells the rags-to-riches story of Doña Anastacia Hernandez Vda. de Tuazon. At nearly 80 years old, she heads one of the largest business conglomerations. Hindi Mo Ako Kayang Tapakan reflects on Tacing’s past and improbable rise to power from humble beginnings working her way to the top of a highly successful business empire. Revenge, ambition and power, complicated with an assortment of sexual entanglements - the formula is written in stone. Hindi Mo Ako Kayang Tapakan begins with a scene set for a flashback that takes up most of the film. Tacing's first appearance is one of the key moments in a film that resists being reduced to a handful of iconic images. Played with elegant authority by Charo Santos raging against her helplessness even while playing it up to manipulate others. With that much going for him, De Los Reyes does a first-rate job of establishing a solid sense of time and place. All of which makes Hindi Mo Ako Kayang Tapakan one of the more appealing examples of its special genre. Tacing works for Doña Consuelo Romero (Charito Solis) while her mother Josefina (Liza Lorena) leaves for Manila. She becomes romantically involved with Angelo (Albert Martinez). Tacing responds, ignoring the housekeeper's warning that You're stepping out of your class, and you'll get nothing but trouble. Which is precisely what she gets. Tacing swears vengeance for the wrongs inflicted on her. Be assured that before she is finished, Angelo will be begging for mercy and forgiveness. 

     Wanting to begin a new life for herself and her unborn child, Tacing moves to Manila aided by her best friend, Thelma (Chanda Romero). Poverty ridden, she is helped by Lt. Tom Baker (Michael de Mesa), a generous and equally ambitious American soldier and much later, Senator Ramon Tuazon (Robert Arevalo), who teaches her fundamentals of the trade. Tacing's business continues to expand and she goes into partnership with Ramon. Unfortunately, her private life doesn't run as smoothly. Of course, she must pay for her subsequent success. Tacing learns of a plot among her greedy children to oust her from control and seize her assets. Tacing tells them that she has changed her will, effectively cutting her own children out for their deceit and leaving everything to her grandchildren instead. Vivid impressions are retained of Dante Rivero’s work as trusted confidant, Atty. Teddy Velasco; Al Tantay as Nardo; Joel Torre as Rollan Tuazon and Gina Alajar as Josephine, Tacing’s eldest daughter who makes the most of her few appearances. There are literally scores of parts and bits, Rosemarie Gil is excellent as Monica, Ramon’s long suffering wife. Hindi Mo Ako Kayang Tapakan turns on the moment of Tacing’s first appearance and in an instant, her face freezes in dismay. De Los Reyes' film aches with regret, but its feelings are complicated by its protagonist through a quietly devastating final shot. His approach to the material is to, simply, not wrestle with it at all. Instead, he embraces its novelistic conceits. Hindi Mo Ako Kayang Tapakan all but weeps with a sense of emotional loss. 

Sound Engineer: Rudy Baldovino

Production Design: Butch Garcia, PDGP

Cinematography: Joe Batac, Jr., FSC

Music: Willy Cruz

Film Editor: Edgardo "Boy" Vinarao, FEGMP

Screenplay: Jake Tordesillas

Directed By: Maryo J. de los Reyes

     While Jose Abdel B. Langit's Mapanukso (Vivamax, LDG Production, 2024) maintains a light-hearted feel for the first 45 minutes or so, there comes a turning point near the end of the second act that hurtles the film into a vortex of “the dangers of the male stripping business” cliches that fly across the screen with all the subtlety of a Reefer Madness to the forehead, but with virtually no amount of self-awareness. The film’s downfall is the fact that it had to have a plot replete with paper-thin characters. Putting it quite bluntly, Angelo (Itan Rosales) is a massive douche. He’s highly unlikable, presented as charming, but comes off as arrogant. Angelo wanders through the world with a highly undeserved sense of entitlement and becomes petulant when he can’t have his way. Sean de Guzman is actually quite good lending Carlo a degree of authenticity that makes him at least relatable. You feel like you’ve known someone like him before and while you might (rightfully) think he’s arrogant, you can’t help but want to be around him. He has an air of accomplishment that’s completely unwarranted and entirely fabricated, but is held aloft by De Guzman’s presence and conviction. He’s also a dexterous dancer, his limbs are flexible and malleable as the dubstep baselines he dances to. The best parts of the film are, without a doubt the dance numbers, which almost make you forget the suffocating melodrama surrounding them. It’s a shame that the rest of the cast doesn’t make the same impact or investment. Rosales tries his best, but there’s only so much he or anybody else could do with Angelo, he never once seems believable as an adrift 18-year-old. Only Primo (Marco Gomez) gets anything like character development and that’s only when he’s stoned out. What makes the film so completely disappointing is its hoary, shopworn take on the world of stripping. 

     There isn’t a cautionary tale trope that screenwriter Quinn Carillo doesn’t love, making sure to throw in as many as she can. I’m not saying that Mapanukso can’t be genuinely dramatic in-between the crotch-thrusting on-stage antics of the young men. It flirts with the idea of how someone like Carlo doesn’t quite fit into the real world but that’s quickly abandoned for another scene of someone doing something lurid. The strip show elements are intended to be background setting. Granted, it’s hard to call it erotic, because it isn’t that at all. Male strip shows aren’t about eroticism, it's about cheap thrills. Violent pelvic thrusts are common choreography and the whole thing seems so overtly sexual that it actually becomes inert. Don’t tell that to the women in the audience, however, because they’re all going crazy for it since this is one of the only outlets women traditionally have. And this brings up another point: this film is strictly for the ladies. The film may have been marketed heavily to gay men, which makes total sense because if there’s one thing gay men love, it’s a full basket and an ass so tight you could bounce coins off of it. However, there’s nothing gay about the film. There are no bromances to speak of, not a single man in the audience and the idea that the men may end up occasionally entertaining other men is never even approached. It’s a heteronormative fantasy and one of the ways the film feels distinctly unreal. Everything is geared to appeal to a traditional female demographic to the point of absurdity. If you wanted to see Mon Mendoza or Calvin Reyes shake their stuff, don’t bother. You would be better off checking out their shirtless photos online, after all the pictures have about as much depth as the characters they portrayed.

Screenplay: Quinn Carillo

Director of Photography: T.M. Malones

Editor: Kurt Jimenez

Production Design: Jay Custodio

Music: Dek Margaja

Sound Mix: Paulo Estero

Directed By: Jose Abdel B. Langit

     For writers Ricky Lee and Shaira Mella-Salvador, May Nagmamahal sa Iyo (Star Cinema Productions, Inc., 1996) seems like an occasion to tweak familiar formulas, as they exhibit a compulsive need to distance themselves from the story’s intrinsic sentimentality. For director Marilou Diaz-Abaya, it’s a chance to play up that same sentimentality, underscoring emotional moments with excessive bathetic flourishes. Working at cross purposes, these two sides make for a fractious movie whose internal conflicts mirror those experienced by its lead. Lorna Tolentino stars as Louella, a woman who gave up her son for adoption. Years later, still wrestling with that part of her past, she has become curious about her son's whereabouts. Louella confides in Nestor (Ariel Rivera), who offers to help, as she begins the journey of discovery. Louella shows the strain of life in her face. Carved in tense gaze is the need to find her son and the redemption he holds. The screenplay allows each to share their feelings and Abaya brings us close enough for us to feel the world in their skins. She is able to treat her subject evenhandedly without letting the film turn bland.  

     May Nagmamahal sa Iyo features a deeply felt and gripping performance from Tolentino and a supporting performance from Jaclyn Jose, equally brilliant as Edith, that reminds us just how wonderful this actress has been throughout her career. Just a momentary gaze is enough to convey what many actors spend whole hours in a film not conveying. Jose brings such believable anguish to her part of the story that May Nagmamahal sa Iyo almost survives its biggest problem, which is the impossibility of a viable ending. While the movie sets up the plot catering to our need for nice, neat, and orderly boxes, the story weaves in and out of them, upending our conventional views and presenting us with more questions that drive us further into the narrative. This perfectly mirror's Louella's frustration as she encounters roadblocks in her journey. In fact, this arc is the one most powerfully portrayed in the film by Tolentino as she vacillates the pain she feels. It is the driving force for her search, and the means by which she finds resolution. The fact that we all have weaknesses and identify in the struggles, hopes and journeys of others is more indicative of the need for such stories so that we might find the strength to rise up and pursue life's greater aims. These are the film's broad strokes, and they are all true. They will make you angry, and tear your heart to pieces. 

Sound Engineer: Ramon Reyes

Production Design: Merlito "Len" Santos, P.D.G.P.

Editor: Jess Navarro, F.E.U.P.

Musical Director: Nonong Buencamino

Screenplay: Ricky Lee, Shaira Mella-Salvador

Directed By: Marilou Diaz-Abaya

     Roman Perez Jr.'s The Housemaid (Viva Films, 2021) takes place almost entirely within the enormous modern house of a very rich man and centers on the young woman he has hired as a nanny. It involves primarily William (Albert Martinez), his wife Roxanne (Louise delos Reyes), daughter Nami (Elia Ilano) and Martha (Jaclyn Jose), the woman who runs his household. That something disturbing will happen is a given. William is a man who expects all of his wishes to be met without question and in his hermetic household the introduction of the nanny Daisy (Kylie Verzosa) creates an imbalance. His wife, Roxanne, is pregnant with twinscontent to live in expensive idleness. Her focus is on these two latest acquisitions of her marriage. Things are not so smooth with head housekeeper Martha (a terrific Jaclyn Jose), who turns out to be a passive-aggressive catalyst of the melodrama that unfolds. She is no less bitter for understanding the rules of the economic game. Martha’s devil’s bargain ties her with Ester (Alma Moreno), her employer’s scheming mother-in-law. Daisy is efficient, submissive and very attractive. We learn little about her, except that she needs the job. Daisy is in awe of William, who comes home from his job as Master of the Universe and plays flawless classical piano while drinking rare vintages. Roxanne drifts through couture designs. Their daughter Nami is a mystery, much loved and cared for but not much needed. Daisy and Nami instinctively bond, because in this home they are the only two with affection to spend. We know it’s inevitable that William will attempt to seduce Daisy. And it surely is a seduction and coercion, even though she agrees and seems to appreciate it. Sex is a bad bargain if only one party is free to set the terms. Martha sees what is happening because she sees everything that happens. Eventually Daisy’s pregnancy becomes obvious.

     Silence speaks volumes in Iti Mapukpukaw (Cinemalaya Foundation, Inc., Project 8 Projects, 2023) the latest film from Carl Joseph E. Papa. The writer/director uses rotoscope animation as a tool hovering in the grey area of Eric's (Carlo Aquino) psyche, the look on his face as he hunts in his Uncle Rogelio's (voiced by Joshua Cabiladas) home almost shrieks with the pressure of repressed emotions in which silence may no longer quite have the upper hand. Papa asks us to listen carefully to that silence in order to catch the emotional echoes that lie within it. Iti Mapukpukaw unfolds Eric's narrative while simultaneously grappling with truths nestled within the family domain. The performances keep the momentum going. Aquino is the moral core of the film, the restlessness and righteous anger reflecting as much in his languorous body language as on his face. His Eric is someone you feel deeply for, grappling with angst as well as the actions of those he loves. Aquino, tersely affecting as an already wary, lonely young man shedding his last vestiges of trust in family. The film’s first half-hour keeps our emotional investment at bay as we work out the precise geometry of the characters. But there is gasping power to its reveals and a searching sadness to the emerging family portrait. Yet the effectiveness of the films' climax rests on the precise discipline of Papa’s filmmaking — here heavier on long-shadowed atmosphere, but not indulgently so. The recurring motif of silence reverberates through the narrative, alluding to the pervasive and endemic issue of child abuse, explored covertly within the film's framework. Iti Mapukpukaw not only captures the non-verbal reactions through Eric and Carlo's (Gio Gahol) actions but also manifests a verbal stance from Eric's mother Rosalinda (Dolly de Leon), most expressive in its wonder. The director utilizes the family as a fundamental societal unit to delve into a long-concealed secret and scrutinize the prevailing culture of silence and complacency. 

     One of the primary advantages of using the rotoscope method is its ability to capture the performances of the actors and in Iti Mapukpukaw, this is extremely important as the high level of realism preserves the details of each actor’s expressions, body language and mannerisms. The gestures, the sound, the human expressions all seem real, but this reality is then re-interpreted artistically. It becomes a kind of moving painting. This style of animation allows us to see a different state of reality. The balance of traditional art forms with the hyper-lucid clarity of digital film is a critical component of the world building existing at the heart of the film’s narrative framework and it’s the validity that keeps audiences caring. The result is a visual feast for the senses. The animations are incredibly lifelike in an uncanny sort of way. The characters feel alive and their emotions quite real. Animated characters played by Aquino, Gahol and De Leon glow with pastel softness. The subject matter is all the better for the unusual style of filming. Iti Mapukpukaw is a fascinating film. One can’t help but be intrigued by its subject matter and visual aesthetics. It will make us think the way in which we watch a movie. Technologies can help in our human desire to express ourselves, to communicate and share experiences. That's why Iti Mapukpukaw is more than just an interesting moment in film technology. The technology has allowed this particular story - a story that probably wouldn't have worked in any other form to be told.

Written and Directed By: Carl Joseph E. Papa

Director of Photography: Jethro Jamon

Editor: Benjamin Tolentino

Music: Teresa Barrozo

Sound Design: Lamberto Casas Jr., Alex Tomboc