FAINT SOUNDS OF HARMONY

Posted by Jojo Devera ,

 


     There's a a disarming playfulness to Roderick Cabrido's Purgatoryo (Purple Pig, Waning Crescent Arts, One Big Fight Productions, Monoxide Works, One Dash Zero, Quezon City Film Development Commission, 2016) that pulls you in, even (or especially) at its most grotesque moments. The pleasures are intellectual as well as visceral. Purgatoryo spends a fair amount of time unpacking its own premise keeping the exposition from sounding too much like exposition. Shadowy forces are waging war deterring anyone from embracing newfound possibilities. Funeral parlor owner Violet (Bernardo Bernardo) is tied up with local cop Jojo (Arnold Reyes), but it’s the immediacy of the storyline involving On-on (Kristoffer King) and Dyograd (Jess Mendoza) that makes it impossible to write off the film as a show of fan service. Cabrido makes brilliant use of Bernardo, there’s great tenderness in his performance. What Cabrido has to say lays on the line with few of the blandishments of popular movies and little of the aesthetic care of art-house ones. Cabrido and his production designer Steff Dereja are adept at telling their story visually. The plot contributes to the film’s general sense of weightlessness, as if the story itself is uncertain of how to evolve from one scene to the next and overwhelmed by the sheer wealth of possibilities. Sometimes this atmosphere of pervasive, never-fully-explained enigma feels rich with ambivalent meanings, other times it’s maddeningly vague. The last act, especially, is abruptly truncated. We never learn what happened to at least one major character, or the reason another met the fate he did. No matter, all of Cabrido’s subplots and asides are juicy with meaning.

     This high definition transfer is noticeably darker and burnished looking with an emphasis on almost yellow-orange tones that can give things a painterly air. The film's rather bracing stylistic quirks are nicely rendered here adding skewed perspectives and various hues basically drenching the frame with detail levels remarkably intact throughout. The material also has excellent contrast and detail levels, despite a somewhat psychedelic approach that can superimpose image on image and the like. There are a number of hallucinatory moments in Purgatoryo which probably don't have the same kind of wow factor that, say, a contemporary multilayered enterprise might offer, but there is still appealing immersion with both clear panning effects and discrete placement of individual effects in some of the visionary moments in particular. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Bryan Dumaguina's ethereal score in particular sounds beautifully full bodied and spacious. The ideas that Cabrido puts forth are powerful and poignant. It’s drama of a vision at the end of the line as he knew it. Even in death, Purgatoryo hears the faint sounds of harmony.


Directed By: Roderick Cabrido

Screenplay: Denise O'Hara, Joseph Israel Laban

Cinematographers: Mycko David, Cesca Lee

Production Designer: Steff Dereja

Editor: Mark Cyril Bautista

Sound Design: Yves G. Patron

Music: Bryan Dumaguina

AMBIGUOUS, POETIC MENACE

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     The chain-of-disaster form of Reroute (Viva Films, 2022) is, by now, a genre all its own — call it Rube Goldberg noir. Filmmaker Lawrence Fajardo infuses the genre with his dazzling gift for ambiguous poetic menace. The surprises in Reroute aren’t simply the plot twists, they’re the haunting flashes of dread, memory, and desire. Fajardo, working in the dense channel-surfing style of Amok (2011) and A Hard Day (2021), makes every shot a sliver of ominous perception. This is also the most radical departure Fajardo has ever made in terms of basic sensibilities. Using the already pitch-dark modern noir style as a starting point, Fajardo pushes his story into realms of surreal excess. The first two thirds of Reroute is a seductive head bender. But around the time it turns from day to night, the film begins to lose its tricky aura of borderline surreal mystery. It becomes a rigged, what-will-happen-next suspense game, and you begin to sense just how arbitrary the twists are. Reroute lives almost as dangerously as its characters, and gets away with it. Exceedingly raw, imaginative, and daring, this genre exercise is loaded with brazen amorality, subversive intent and surreal asides. Fajardo assembled a formidable cast that serves him well. John Arcilla rips out the inner torment that lives inside Gemo and dares us to not close our eyes. Cindy Miranda taps her inner resources deeper than ever before to play Trina. Sid Lucero is compelling as Dan, a man gradually falling apart through the course of the day and Nathalie Hart delivers a harrowing, convincing performance as Lala. The film borrows heavily from the noir genre, with intermittent dramatic lighting techniques and Arcilla’s face, so often shot in close up, conveys multitudes with just the curl of a lip or the raise of an eyebrow. This strong a cast is dominated by the atmospheric use of Joshua A. Reyles’s impressive photography. Fajardo was right to want to apply his gifts to a throwaway thriller. 

      Reroute features a gorgeous black-and-white presentation. Vivamax's release, sourced from an HD video shoot, reveals incredible detail throughout. Image clarity is striking and accuracy helps accentuate the finest facial and clothing textures, not to mention an abundance of beautiful, everyday elements throughout the film. Every scene springs to life with a beautiful natural accuracy that feels almost accentuated in black-and-white, allowing the viewer to focus more on objects rather than detail and color simultaneously. The black-and-white photography looks wonderful, with deep blacks and natural shades of gray gracing the screen. The image suffers from no perceptible banding, excess noise or blockiness. This is a fine, reference-quality transfer that will dazzle, even with the absence of color. The soundtrack offers a limited-range listen, but one that's nevertheless well-defined within those parameters. There's only simple sound effects lightly swooshing across the front with little more than a basic structural realism. A few other ambient effects play with a decent lifelike presence, at least as much as a track minus surround channels can create. Musical delivery is smooth and accurate, playing with neither shallowness nor aggressiveness, finding instead a firm, pleasing middle ground. Dialogue dominates the picture and plays with effective front-center presence and volume. The track delivers all that's required with ease. The stirring, impressive final stretch ensures that the whole thing finishes on an exceedingly compelling note, which ultimately confirms Reroute's place as a perpetually watchable thriller.


Directed By: Lawrence Fajardo

Screenplay: Byron Bryant

Director of Photography: Joshua A. Reyles

Production Design: Law Fajardo

Musical Scorer: Peter Legaste

Editing: Law Fajardo

Sound: Immanuel Verona


FIERY, INTENSE

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Roman Perez, Jr.'s Sitio Diablo (Viva Films, 2022) depresses, exhilarates and horrifies. An adolescent's criminal training begins at a more experienced gangster's knees. In one horrifying scene, a boy is told to kill the member of a rival gang. Goaded by Tonix (Benz Sangalang), he executes the victim in a rite of passage. In this semi-collapsed society, people are constricted by corruption and engulfed by criminality. As one of its major themes, Sitio Diablo painfully illustrates poverty's numerous privations: the few choices, the slim chances, the narrow and vicious minds. With little insight, life has never been sadder, never more visceral, never more violent. Here, the origin of poverty lies not much in diminished resources but with poor social behavior. We follow Aina (AJ Raval) and Bullet (Kiko Estrada) as they move from one troubled exploit to the next. Though he is often in a thick of dizzying morass, Bullet manages to avoid too many serious problems. He does, however, benefits from the criminality of his peers. The film focuses on Bullet's development contrasted with the easy promises and the dangerous pathos of youth gangs. Perez matches their energy with his vibrant cinematic techniques - capturing the rush of life in its precarious and capricious moments. Only occasionally does Sitio Diablo break from illustrating the fiery, intense work of crime to focus on life's smaller and quieter moments. But in this world even intimate moments explode. Perez's hectic style is not meant to merely excite. His intention is to develop an empathic understanding of these young criminals, because they take pride in hurting their enemies. 

     The film illustrates their frame of reference, so we can comprehend how they live, make decisions and target their victims. This empathic approach is meant to make us cringe at the fast-paced world in which they live and die. Clearly, Perez wants us to see things we are unable or, more likely, unwilling to see. So he comes to us with a powerful ferocity, assaulting our defenses to alter our critical perspectives. Consequently, Sitio Diablo has an implicit argument - that filmmakers must possess a social conscience. Art must intrude into and open up closed worlds. His is a kind of liberation aesthetic that sheds light on serious social matters. No doubt, Perez's pedagogy is based on strong impulse and conviction that life can persevere amid the most painful, shocking circumstances. His depiction subverts traditional conventions. Ordinarily, audiences approach fictive narratives by suspending their disbelief. Perez disrupts this willful suspension by drawing explicit attention to his techniques, so the audience can understand how his choices are as much a part of the narrative as the characters, settings and conflicts. With Perez, there is a burning desire for expression and this burning doesn't allow him to function as a detached expositor. Perez and writer Enrique Villasis place their protagonist in an unwelcoming world alive with deadly horrors and through Bullet, we understand the smell of the slums and the problems posed by roving, rootless masculine groups.


Directed By: Roman Perez, Jr.

Screenplay: Enrique S. Villasis

Production Designer: JC Catiggay

Director of Photography: Alex Espartero

Editor: Chrisel Desuasido

Musical Scorer: Francis de Veyra

Sound Engineer: Immanuel Verona, Fatima Nerikka Salim

TIME PASSING

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     The most immediate sensation conjured by Haplos (Mirick Films International, 1982) is that of time passing. Director Antonio Jose Perez's decision to shoot in a boxy 1.33:1 aspect ratio, enhances the film’s dreamlike tone. Haplos asks its viewers to experience and ponder rather than bouncing to beats that they're used to, while challenging and asking its audience to explore the space, mood and story being told. It wants you to feel rather than expect to be entertained or enlightened. For some, that will be too big a task, especially as the film's scant narrative ponders huge themes of fate, legacy and relationships rather than actually answering them. Perez's presence looms large, becoming more decisive as Haplos reaches the hour mark. Before then, he strikes up a particularly potent symmetry with Auring (Rio Locsin), using minimal movement or dialogue to create striking, resting images and allowing her the time to convey something that she does in a patient but affecting manner. Then, with half an hour left, Perez grabs a hold of the film and whiplashes it in a variety of directions that are, in the moment, perplexing. So much so that by the film's conclusion you know that you've felt something. You won't actually be able to fully explain what you experienced, but it definitely stays with you.

     There's really no discernible difference (that I could see, anyway) between the DVD and this high definition release. It's obvious that the transfer is darker with a much more clearly apparent grain field, but I now tend to think that the previous DVD may have some brightness boosting applied, since I'm considerably more pleased by the overall look of the palette on this new release, especially with regard to flesh tones. Those who have never seen Haplos in theaters or home video may be surprised at the texture that is clearly on display and while there's occasional chunkiness, compression regimen handles the frequently heavy grain rather well. There's a noticeable uptick in clarity in the most brightly lit outdoor sequences, notably some of the daytime scenes. Restoration efforts have delivered elements with no discernible damage. There are no signs of degraining and artificial sharpening. Haplos features a fine sounding 2.0 stereo track. Dialogue and effects are rendered cleanly and clearly and the wonderfully atmospheric score by Jun Latonio sounds excellent, if just a trifle bright at times. Fidelity and dynamic range are fairly wide, especially when considering some of the more hyperbolic moments. While Perez’s actual method of delivery may not be scary, Haplos is sure to haunt those who open themselves up to the experience.

Musical Director: Jun Latonuio
Production Design: Laida Lim Perez
Editors: Ike Jarlego Jr., Edgar Jarlego, George Jarlego
Sound Engineer: Rolly Ruta
Director of Photography: Romeo Vitug
Screenplay: Ricardo Lee
Direction: Antonio Jose Perez

PAST AND PRESENT

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Textured by the substance of humanity, Brutal (Bancom Audiovision Corporation, 1980) dwells on the inelegance of real-life interactions. Written by Ricardo Lee and directed by Marilou Diaz-Abaya, the film’s capacity for vulnerability bonds its audience to the material. Typically, filmmakers will segue into a flashback in an obvious way so that viewers can instantly make the distinction between past and present. In the case of Brutal, Abaya chose to use unannounced flashbacks. Amy Austria's interminable numbness draws dimension from flashbacks to Monica’s past. The film’s enduring tragedy that the director never washes over with some artificial, cathartic resolution. Austria carries her wounds under the surface, and in the face of the internalized performance, she manages to evoke incredible emotion through her walled exterior. Rare expressions accompany Monica’s long silences, lending a sense of hope that the character may still heal, but Abaya seems more interested in exploring the pain of someone fully broken. Gina Alajar's Cynthia eviscerates in her scenes, particularly during an unexpected reunion with Monica that shows the wounds both characters have been carrying around. Monica can barely speak and refuses to connect, while Cynthia falls apart from regret. It’s an exchange where almost nothing of substance is said between them; but both characters seem incapable of communicating their pain in any graceful way. So much is touched by the actors in this moment, feeling their way through what will become the film’s most memorable scene. 

     Clara (Charo Santos) brings the same degree of sympathy to Monica’s mother, Aling Charing working alongside a brief appearance by Perla Bautista. Jay Ilagan also delivers a strong turn as Monica's abusive husband Tato, though his scenes are mostly in flashback. Brutal is a movie that pays careful attention to detail: Note how Cynthia quickly registers as a very different kind of woman from Monica. And watch through Austria’s ravishingly honest performance, how Monica becomes a shadow in the flashback scenes, wanting to reach out, but unable to take that step. The observations, nuances, and revelations all add up to a masterful narrative structure. Rather than following characters through the day-to-day transactions, Brutal interrupts the flow with its flashback structure. These flashbacks are interestingly integrated with a visual consistency and sharp delineation of actors in middle-distance beautifully shot by Manolo R. Abaya. The associations that link the past and the present are controlled by Monica's distant stares. 

     There is not a monumental shift or dramatic enhancements on display here, but the image is still very good. Viewers will note moderately sharper elements -  faces, clothes, trinkets around interiors, building exteriors, but there is not a major leap forward for textural detail, tactile definition or overall elemental clarity. Such are in evidence, but this not one of those leaps-and-bounds superior type images. Still, it holds to a perfectly filmic image with a few shots here and there that look a little processed and smooth, but it's difficult to tell where photographic characteristics stop and digital manipulation begins. The color grading brings some tinkering and tweaking to the palette, offering the usual array of benefits, including deeper overall tones, more color authenticity and tonal subtlety, and at times a slightly grayer appearance. The image also benefits from general signs of improvement to whites (more brilliant) and blacks (deeper and more absorbing without crushing out details). Likely a victim of terribly uninteresting sound design, this soundtrack rarely leaves the comfort of the center channel. Dialogue is delivered adequately sometimes fighting with ambient noise that seems to come almost exclusively from the middle. Abaya keeps our minds constantly in gear by making us fill in the blanks she leaves behind. Brutal is the epitome of what makes film a unique medium: the ability to tell stories through moving pictures.


Screenplay: Ricardo Lee

Musical Director: George Canseco

Production Design: Don Escudero

Film Editors: Manolo R. Abaya, Mark Tarnate

Sound: Amang Sanchez

Director of Photography: Manolo R. Abaya

Directed By; Marilou Diaz-Abaya


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