Ask someone whether camp is best characterized by embarrassing, overwrought displays of joy or the schadenfreude of seeing society’s dregs either succumb to (or rise above) the constraints of their environment. You’ll find that it’s an easy question to answer: Both easily generate camp value, so long as the focus is on exaggeration. On the other hand, ask someone if it’s possible for the genre to convey a strong social message. Most will likely reason that the serious social message will be compromised by the strongly subversive antisocial camp value. Without dwelling on the question of whether camp value can be attributed to the intention of the filmmaker or a reaction by the viewer, suffice it to say that every postulation has its antithesis and for anyone who doubts that a film that’s soaked in camp can’t tackle a timely subject, here is Laruan (Falcon Pictures, 1983). Though suffused with guilty pleasures, director Emmanuel H. Borlaza’s film is also a devastating look at society’s unfair tendencies to make clear divisions between Madonna and whore labels. Carmi Martin is Joy, a beauty pageant aspirant who suffers a rape attack from photographer, William (played by Mark Gil, in another mannered performance). While there’s no shortage of similar tongue-in-cheek minstrelesqueries (Chanda Romero's Chelo chews some serious scenery as Joy's best friend), it’s also crystal clear that Borlaza buys wholesale into screenwriter Jose Javier Reyes' dissection of the fine line between image and reality. The message of Laruan, if I read it right, is less about the physical vulnerability of women than about the sexual hang-ups of eccentric young men.
Borlaza treats Martin very gingerly. There are times he seems to be protecting her by cutting away to other actors, when one would expect the camera to stay on her. Gil does as well as can be younger expected with the role of the rapist. The revelation of Laruan is Angela Perez who plays Flor, Martin's younger sister in the film. She has some difficult scenes and handles them like a veteran, she’s unaffected and convincing on camera and whether she knows it or not, she can act. Perez is interesting to watch. Poised to thoughtfully address the dual victimization women face in cases of sexual assault—the crime itself and later, the victim blaming —Laruan hoped to provoke the kind of cultural controversy and heated social conversations, but the only dialogue prompted was widespread criticism of what many saw as a tasteless attempt to exploit a serious issue by using social relevance as a smokescreen for a routine rape-and-revenge flick. By the time the melodrama has come to its conclusion, not even Joy herself is confident that her image as a sexual object doesn’t trump her emotional wreckage. In fact, Borlaza only seems to drive that point home by concentrating less on Joy’s inner torment and more on oblique angles of the mise-en-scène that mirrors the ’80s Philippine pageant world. But a last-act twist changes the whole tone of the movie, turning the enterprise into a popular (at the time) revenge flick at the cost of coherency. It's then that Laruan implodes. By the time Borlaza fastidiously ties up the loose threads other films in that vague decade would’ve left dangling. It’s clear that he doesn’t want the audience to dwell much on the specifics of the plot but, rather, translate the fundamental critiques of judgmental dependence on image tropes into their own experiences. That Borlaza hides this bitter message in camp—a genre that depends on its viewer acting on their image-reading, cynical impulses—is ballsy genius.
Sound Engineer: Vic Macamay
Production Designer: Ben Payumo
Cinematography By: Rosendo (Baby) Buenaseda
Film Editor: Ike Jarlego, Jr.
Music By: George Canseco
Screenplay: Jose Javier Reyes
Directed By: Emmanuel H. Borlaza
