EVOCATIVE ROMANCE

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Marilou Diaz-Abaya's impressionistic, radiant and feverish romance Sensual (Regal Films, 1986), is anchored by the remarkable performances of the film’s two leads. At its heart is an incandescent performance by Barbra Benitez, who captures the mood swings of late adolescence with a wonderfully spontaneous fluency. She conveys not only the intelligence and will power of a young woman bursting out of her chrysalis like a butterfly, but also the vestigial shyness of a child in the throes of self-discovery, playing the character with honesty and restraint. Benitez brings a sweetness and naivety to Niña that makes her struggle more compelling. She is introduced in the first scene of the film with her best friend Elsa. In Lara Jacinto, Abaya finds a woman without many a facial feature to note, a blank canvas to paint with the story, the mise-en-scène and the management of her inevitably intelligent performance. This suggests that Sensual will be exploring an exotic subcultural space, but in fact Niña's story shares the most basic concerns of coming-of-age narratives, affirming burgeoning sexual identities, negotiating friendships and learning how to be in the world. It's also refreshing to see their stories take center stage. The girls' relationship moves from sisterly, to sexual and beyond, into the kind of all-consuming intimacy that makes everything else seem substantial. Curiosity quickly develops into an intoxicating infatuation after Niña visits Ariel (Lito Gruet). Abaya’s treatment of the love scene is refreshingly natural, free of any tinge of discomfort with sexuality - in many ways theirs could be an adult relationship. Ariel's seduction of Niña leads her to believe that she has at last found true love. 

     There is a vivid party scene that encapsulates some of the film’s strengths. Niña who is feeling her way through early adulthood and her first serious love affair. As the evening wears on, Abaya conveys Niña's awkwardness with painful subtlety. And yet the scene, which also marks a turning point in the central relationship that mirrors the director’s approach toward the representation of women. Ultimately, it is mainly the electrifying performances that Abaya presumably elicited from Benitez and Jacinto that make Sensual a memorable film. Abaya takes us deep inside Niña’s skin in the film’s more compelling final third and she is especially heartbreaking when she portrays the character’s attempts to move on with stunned dignity despite the crushing physical isolation she feels after the carnal relationship has run its course. It helps here that Abaya keeps the camera tightly focused on Benitez's face. This is the movie’s signature shot and the one it returns to most often. These close-ups are one way of looking and they could best be described as adoring. Perhaps it represents Abaya's gaze, mesmerized by the beauty and talent of her young actress. Perhaps it’s our gaze, especially if we feel similarly. Or perhaps it’s meant to represent Elsa’s point of view, her attitude toward Niña fluctuates throughout the movie. Although Abaya reimagines the love story as a tale of evocative romance, she stays true to its fleeting essence. Sensual closes on a bittersweet note, one that sees Niña transformed establishing herself not just bound by sexual identity, but by shared pain and hope. 


Production Design: Jay Sabrina Lozada

Music: Jaime Fabregas

Sound Supervision: Rudy Baldovino

Screenplay: Jose Javier Reyes

Film Editor: Marc Tarnate

Director of Photography: Conrado Baltazar

Directed By: Marilou Diaz-Abaya


DISRUPTIVE FORCE

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Sex is such a disruptive force that as you watch writer-director Crisanto B. Aquino's Relyebo (Viva Films, 2022) you realize the degree to which the film has succeeded in reducing screen sex to a fashion accessory. Its purpose is to embellish a story with enough discrete fillips of titillation and soft-core fantasy to quicken the pulse without causing palpitations. Relyebo crashes through the mold by acknowledging that adulterous sex can have catastrophic consequences. The lovemaking in Relyebo leaves deep emotional imprints. Sean de Guzman has the role of his career in Jimmy and his indelible (and ultimately sympathetic) performance is both archetypal and minutely detailed. He is the embodiment of a confident young man who seems to be in control of his life. It is precisely because he believes he can handle any situation that he foolishly surrenders to an erotic whim. But as his obsession intensifies, he becomes increasingly careless and distracted. You sense that putting the pieces of himself back together would still be extremely difficult. In portraying Jimmy's wife Amor, Christine Bermas' slow-burning performance charges the movie, her face, often shot in extreme close-up, is sensitive and vulnerable. Jela Cuenca brings real sizzle to Ms F. She is almost a parody of Amor's worst nightmare with all the confidence of being ridiculously attractive. There's a remarkable sequence in which Jimmy's emotional state, after his first encounter with Ms F is one anybody could recognize, though it's hard to put a name to it, suppressed exultation? Pained hysteria? Not every filmmaker can convey that physical sense. Aquino doesn't just show passion but somehow takes us inside it, so that we understand what it would be like to be Jimmy, to inhabit a body electric with nonstop longing. It's not an enviable state. It's more like a fever. Amor discovers his husband’s infidelity an hour into the film and the second half is devoted to how she deals with Jimmy’s dramatic actions. Relyebo has a taut screenplay that digs into its characters' marrow (and into the perfectly selected details of domestic life) without wasting a word. As director, Aquino knows how to emphasize what’s important without overdoing it. Small visual details are economically utilized to reflect larger point and cheap sentimentality about emotional loss is sidestepped. 

     Relyebo arrives on high definition with a remarkably filmic transfer that effortlessly renders the director's every intention (sometimes to a fault). Aquino's palette, warm and inviting one moment, cold and detached the next is brimming with attractive primaries, realistic skintones, and enveloping blacks. Contrast is spot on injecting reliable depth and dimensionality into the image regardless of any particular scene's lighting source and intensity. While it doesn't appear that Vivamax used any post-processing (like DNR), grain is less intrusive and more stable, source noise doesn't plague the darkest shots and artifacting has all but been eliminated. Best of all, detail is drastically improved. Textures are refined, on-screen text is crisp and legible and objects are well defined. The 2-channel track weaves the film's hushed conversations, sorrowful score and intense encounters into an immersive whole. Regardless of how quiet the soundscape becomes, dialogue remains sharp and evenly distributed across the front channels, pans flawlessly transition from speaker to speaker and directionality is remarkably precise and believable. Aggressive low-end pulses are relegated to a few intense scenes in the second act, but subtle LFE support is present throughout the film, foreground and background voices have genuine weight, moving objects exhibit natural heft and passing vehicles are often paired with the slightest of rumbles. Crisp ambience enhances the soundfield, interior acoustics have been perfectly replicated and city streets sound suitably crowded. For a film dedicated to the close observation of powerful urges and emotions, Relyebo has a relatively low pulse, a symptom underlined by the long pauses in the dialogue exchanges and the low-key turbulence of Decky Margaja's effective score.


Sound Supervision: Lamberto Casas, Jr., Alex Tomboc

Music By: Decky Margaja

Editor: Chrisel Desuasido

Production Designer: John Ronald Vicencio

Director of Photography: Alex Espartero

Written and Directed By: Crisanto B. Aquino

GLOSSY, FLAT

Posted by Jojo Devera ,

 


     While there’s no good reason to remake Celso Ad Castillo's Patayin Mo sa Sindak si Barbara (1974) it’s not an inherently terrible idea. A pity, then that Chito S. Roño's Patayin sa Sindak si Barbara  (Star Cinema, 1995) is such a slog. From the beginning, this version does what it can to distance itself from the original. By relaxing the focus on Barbara, the remake sacrifices the intense empathy which made the original version so potent. If there was anything to replace that loss, it wouldn’t be an issue, but none of the new material ever coheres into anything more than placeholder scenes, exchanges which tease at depth and history without ever following through. As for the performances, Antoinette Taus (Karen) manages to suggest a sort of knowing detachment and Dawn Zulueta (Ruth) is easily the most compelling. As the hapless Nick, Tonton Gutierrez is a nonentity, fading from memory whenever he’s off screen. Lorna Tolentino’s Barbara is stronger, but she’s ill-served by the screenplay. Her charismatic presence is undone by a character who is independent, passive, paranoid and naïve by turns, without any consistent through-line to explain her behavior beyond a need to sustain the plot. It’s doubtful any performance, no matter how well-judged, could save the film. Patayin sa Sindak si Barbara  is, at best, a glossy, flat reminder that there is a better version of this story. At worst, it’s just flat.

     This high definition transfer is sourced from a brand new 2K restoration. The film looks healthy and  vibrant that it can easily fool someone to believe that it was shot less than a year or so ago. I upscaled this release to 4K and was quite overwhelmed by how great it looked. The improvements in terms of depth and delineation are staggering and since there are plenty of darker footage with specific nuances there are also entire segments with ranges of detail that are basically missing from previous releases. Fluidity is also very impressive, especially on a bigger screen. Furthermore, it is easy to tell that the entire film has been carefully color-graded because there are solid ranges of excellent organic primaries and even better ranges of beautiful nuances. Image stability is great with no traces of any compromising digital tinkering. Grain exposure is stable and very consistent. Lastly, there are no traces of conventional age-related imperfections. The quality of the 2-channel track is hugely impressive. The dialog is crystal clear and the overall dynamic movement is as good as it can possibly be. This is a great presentation.


Production Design: Ernest Santiago

Sound Effects Engineer: Gino Cruz

Editor: Jess Navarro

Musical Director: Jessie Lasaten

Screenplay: Ricardo Lee

Director of Photography: Joe Batac, FSC

Directed By: Chito S. Roño


UNPREDICTABLY MOVING

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     What makes Gensan Punch (Max Original, Center Stage Productions, Gentle Underground Monkeys Co., Ltd., SC Film International, 2021) so unpredictably moving is that Brillante Ma Mendoza takes the go-for-it clichés and invests them with genuine feeling and individuality. Working in a broad-stroke genre enables Mendoza to tear into charged emotional subjects without hemming and hawing. He’s got a diviner’s sense for deriving palpable drama from what remains unseen beyond the frame or in the characters’ heads. One of the movie’s most memorable image is Rudy (Ronnie Lazaro) and Nao (Shogen) facing each other in a workout and swaying in synch, from the waist up. Lazaro has never been more powerful than he is here, but even when the movie dips into tear-jerking, Lazaro doesn’t give into sentimentality. Shogen's raw honesty and ardor set the stakes very high. Even when Gensan Punch threatens to fall into show-off virtuosity, Mendoza keeps his balance. The movie ends with a lovely coda. When Mendoza is in top gear, he pulls you into the action psychologically and viscerally. He choreographs Nao’s fight into a single shot, after the camera swerves to take in Rudy’s imprecations, it immediately swings back to show their impact on Nao. At moments like that, Mendoza's precocity takes our breath away.

     Gensan Punch looks fine on high definition with a few caveats. Source noise can spike with occasional bursts of thickness that reaches a level of annoyance, particularly in lower light scenes. Banding is a much smaller and barely noticeable concern. The digital video source is a little flat and edges of the frame occasionally appear smudgy rather than sharp. Flesh tones range from pasty to warm. That said, the image generally impresses. The digital shoot does allow for a fairly rich color palette, occasionally feeling a little dull and diluted but finds a more vibrantly sustained feel elsewhere, whether out on the streets of Gensan or in the boxing ring. Detail satisfies, with skin textures appearing nicely intimate and clothing textures sharp and naturally complex. Black levels hold deep and accurate. The lossless soundtrack is certainly not timid. It's very aggressive and loud, perhaps lacking finesse at its most vigorous but offering enough sonic activity to satisfy. Boxing matches are noticeably enthusiastic and complex with roaring crowds, heavy punches, microphone reverberations at introduction and chatter in the corners between rounds all vying for attention but with the most critical pieces always finding the right amount of prioritization above the din. Music is aggressive while tunes regularly spill into the back but always maintain a command of balance throughout. Dialogue is clear and front-center focused. Performances are exceptional and the fight scenes, very well composed and executed. HBO Max’s presentation of Gensan Punch delivers good video with very aggressive audio.


Directed By: Brillante Ma Mendoza

Screenplay: Honee Alipio

Director of Photography: Joshua A. Reyles

Production Designer: Dante Mendoza

Editors: Ysabelle Denoga, Armando Lao, Peter Arian Vito

Musical Director: Diwa de Leon

Sound: Mike Idioma, Alex Tomboc, Deo Van N. Fidelson

ON SOCIAL CONDITIONING

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     For a long time, 1980 has been perceived and commented upon as a kind of breakthrough moment of rule-flouting, a decade’s natural culmination by which time the tenets of independent cinema that defined the preceding 10 years were absorbed into the mainstream and audiences were allegedly more willing to accept the outré. In its bounty of homo-friendly studio-financed movies, the year did seem to mark some kind of shift. Looking back, however, it’s evident that this response was perhaps overzealous and not just because in the Marcos era, we were about to swing back into a conservative mode of de-sexualized filmmaking that we have yet to crawl out from under. Ishmael Bernal's Manila by Night (Regal Films, Inc.) offers a far more complex inquiry into questions around gay representation, and the way it functions as a sly, surreptitious condemnation of the inherent homophobia of audiences and filmmakers alike. Manila by Night becomes a fairly spot-on evocation of the personal and cultural derangement of the closet. The tortuous ways that boys, just like the film’s structure itself, play hide-and-seek with identity and eroticism is a commentary on social conditioning. Bernal’s film, as a mainstream studio product ostensibly preoccupied with people who fashion themselves as societal rule-breakers, is in no way a countercultural work, yet its characters are constantly negotiating public and private registers, journeying into the dangerous night to either hide or reveal their true selves. For Manay Sharon (Bernardo Bernardo) and Kano (Cherie Gil) this negotiation is particularly acute, everyone else seems to have erotic designs on sexual presumptions about them. What makes Manila by Night a satisfying yet poignant queer film is that even after they have revealed themselves, they both maintain their outsider status.

     This new digital transfer was created in 4K resolution from the 35mm positive film prints at Central Digital Lab. The restoration was undertaken by the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) and the Save Our Cinema Restoration Program of the Philippine Film Archive (PFA). The visuals have proper and solid density, the lack of compromising digital adjustments ensures an all-around stable organic appearance. The color grading is outstanding. There are nicely balanced and very healthy primaries, plus excellent ranges of supporting and equally healthy nuances. In terms of overall balance and fluidity this presentation is on an entirely different level, strengthening and preserving the film’s native organic qualities. There are no stability issues. Debris, damage marks, scratches, cuts, stains and all other distracting age-related imperfections have been completely removed. It’s an excellent restoration. The Vanishing Tribe's music effortlessly enhances the intended atmosphere and never disturbs the film's native dynamic balance. The dialog is clear, stable and very clean. There are no pops, audio dropouts or distortions. For decades of moviemaking, gayness has equaled coyness and that hasn’t changed even today. Yet there was one studio release from 1980 that directly and cleverly addressed the manner in which Filipino films deploy homosexual characters and more importantly, how audiences are instructed to engage or more often, disengage with them.


Screenplay: Ishmael Bernal

Music: Vanishing Tribe

Director of Photography: Sergio Lobo, FSC

Film Editor: Augusto Salvador

Sound Supervision: Vic Macamay

Production Design: Peque Gallaga

Directed By: Ishmael Bernal

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