IN THE MIDST OF APPARENT MADNESS

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Silip (Viking Films International, 1985), is undoubtedly the work of Elwood Perez's imagination. The violence is explicit and the nudity celebratory. In leaving little to the imagination, Perez asks us to confront the events of the film without mediation and approaches the material with musical verve. Perez's feeling for music translate well into his direction of actors. Sarsi Emmanuelle and Maria Isabel Lopez equally dominate the frame. They are the bodies in which the film turns and both give stunningly physical performances. Mark Joseph embraces his sensuality and is proud of his body. He is as charismatic and domineering here as he is anywhere else in his career.

     Perez’s imagery is a mash of surrealism and anachronism but underneath it is a fascination with the forces, external and internal, centered on sexual expression and the repression of religion. Tonya is gripped by religious fervor and frustrated sexuality that erupts in mass hysteria after Selda accuses her of possessing them. The eruption feels less like women being crazy and more like a society that strictly controls sexual desire and expression finally breaking down under the weight of undirected sexual energy. Ricardo Lee’s screenplay is an intelligent discussion about the nature of sex, desire and religiosity. Perez's style in itself gives the film a sense that we are watching things that are larger, wilder than real life. Emmanuelle and Lopez display their considerable talents to the extreme. Lopez finds sympathy and pathos in Tonya, a woman warped by her society and religion. Emmanuelle runs the gamut of emotions, but it is in Selda's quietest and most introspective moments that she finds greatest depth and meaning.

     Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Elwood Perez’s Silip arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Mondo Macabro. Upgrade in quality is significant. In some areas, the improved shadow definition and overall clarity are so big that details are now easy to see. Those with large screens will instantly recognize the vastly superior fluidity. Now, the entire film boasts solid organic visuals with plenty of striking nuances. There are no traces of problematic degraining or sharpening. The color palette promotes richer primaries. Needless to say, the overall balance is more convincing and image stability is excellent. There are no damage marks, cuts, scratches, stains or other conventional age-related imperfections. I viewed the entire film with the original Tagalog DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track and did not encounter any technical anomalies. Depth and overall balance remains pleasing. Dynamic intensity is excellent and at times pulls a few surprises with some terrific separation. This release also features a superior selection of bonus features. Silip is a serious film grappling with deeper theological concepts than it is perhaps given credit for in the midst of its apparent madness.


Sound Engineer: Vic Macamay

Production Designer: Aped Santos

Film Editor: Edgardo "Boy" Vinarao

Screenplay: Ricardo Lee

Music: Lutgardo Labad

Cinematography: Johnny Araojo

Directed By: Elwood Perez


POWERFULLY PERSUASIVE

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Lino Brocka, a tireless cinematic champion of the underdog has marched under this banner from the start. He plies his viewers with plenty of scenes in which characters debate the finer points of syndicalist strategy, but he also scatters petals of whimsy to nourish the senses. In Bayan Ko Kapit sa Patalim (Malaya Films, Stephan Films, 1984), there is a passionate discussion in which the laborers debate the pros of union membership. There are also several tense arguments about the conflicting demands of family security and worker solidarity. As if to balance these moments, there is also Phillip Salvador in the role of Arturo "Turing" Manalastas and Gina Alajar as his wife, Luz whose performances transform the film into a vital and complex piece of political art. Brocka maintains a humble respect for his characters and an unsentimental eye for the difficulties they face. While unequivocally on the side of the union, Brocka’s keen sense of contradiction and storytelling keeps his propagandistic impulses in check. As a result, the film makes a powerfully persuasive case and gives way to the gloom and frustration of summary firings and workplace abuse. 

     The new 4K restoration of Bayan Ko Kapit sa Patalim is simply fantastic. Detail and especially image depth are enormously impressive. The blockiness and sharpening have been replaced with flawless contrast and at times truly overwhelmingly beautiful blacks and whites. The problematic nighttime footage also looks excellent. Shadow definition and clarity are dramatically improved in every single sequence. Furthermore, there are absolutely no traces of problematic lab tinkering. Naturally, the high-quality grain scan is evenly distributed throughout the entire film. Color depth and saturation, especially where there is plenty of natural light are also terrific. There are absolutely no debris, scratches, cuts, warps or larger damage marks. I watched Bayan Ko Kapit sa Patalim with the Tagalog DTS-HD Mono Audio. The dialogue is crisp, clear, stable, better balanced and easy to follow. Le Chat qui Fume's restoration of Lino Brocka's Bayan Ko Kapit sa Patalim, one of Philippine Cinema's masterpieces is enormously impressive. Beautifully restored in 4K the film looks astonishingly good, the best it ever has.


Direction: Lino Brocka

Screenplay: Jose F. Lacaba

Director of Photography: Conrado Baltazar

Production Design: Joey Luna

Film Editor: George Jarlego

Music: Jess Santiago

Sound: Rudy Baldovino, Willie Islao

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

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