STAGGERING POWER

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Himala (Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, 1982) directed by Ishmael Bernal is a powerful and successful experiment in minimalism. Ricardo Lee’s screenplay takes on a documentary aesthetic, following characters as nothing of consequence is happening. There is great emotional resonance to the film, particularly in a handful of immensely powerful key scenes. Nora Aunor's critics claimed that she did nothing and played a bland character. While these claims are utterly unfounded, it's not hard to see where they stem from. Elsa spends most of the film being swayed by the currents of other character's desires. She almost doesn't feel like a protagonist due to her passiveness. Yet Aunor plays Elsa with immense authenticity. Perhaps it's because of the similarities between actress and character. Her role is a perfect example of an actress not being given the credit she deserves because of passiveness. Aunor's acting is almost masked by her naturalness in the role. It is the best performance Bernal has ever directed. Elsa speaks more than a sentence or two at a time and says nothing at all about life in the village or her childhood. But Elsa remains a cipher, her interests and experiences, her inner life, inaccessible. The spoken word is not cinema's most powerful tool. As anyone in the field knows all too well, cinema developed originally as a mute medium, dependent on images and editing to convey meaning. Himala is entirely structured around Elsa's point of view and this is the narrative paradigm that drives the film. I therefore have a hard time accepting the view that it silences Elsa, despite her demeanor. Aunor's lack of pretense, the naturalism with which she embodies this character is astounding. Elsa is a stoic but complex woman who witnessed hardship largely silently, but when she speaks, she is resplendant. Her final monologue showed she's reflexive, more aware about her motives and mixed emotions than all the other characters. 

     I think it is fair to say that time has not been kind to Himala. It is also fair to say that there wasn't a whole lot the restoration team could do to have the film look better than it does. Clearly, there are a number of limitations with the existing master which they had to work with. Some close-ups look quite pleasing, but elsewhere the image is rather soft and textures are problematic. Clarity, however, is mostly adequate and with a few minor exceptions, contrast levels seem stable. Some extremely light grain has been retained, but it is quite inconsistent and mixed up with light noise. The good news is that there are no traces of serious post-production sharpening. Unsurprisingly, the film does have a pleasing organic look. It is often weak but nevertheless a preferable one. Finally, some small damage marks and tiny horizontal lines are occasionally present, but I assume they could not have been removed without dramatically affecting the integrity of the image. All in all, considering ABS-CBN Film Restoration's strong record and dedication to high quality presentations, I think it is fair to speculate that this is likely the best Himala could look at the moment. Generally speaking, the dialog is crisp, stable and easy to follow. The few sequences where the music becomes prominent are also convincing. There is, however, some light background noise that occasionally pops up here and there. It is definitely not distracting, but its presence is certainly felt. There are those who diminished the turn as a non-performance, but they are sorely mistaken. Aunor's work is of staggering power and it is without question, one of her best. 


Screenplay: Ricardo Lee

Music: Winston Raval

Director of Photography: Sergio Lobo

Production Designer: Raquel N. Villavicencio

Film Editor: Ike Jarlego, Jr.

Sound Supervision: Vic Macamay

Directed By: Ishmael Bernal

BITTERLY SENSUAL

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


      For a long spell, Law Fajardo’s Scorpio Nights 3 (Viva Films, Pelikulaw, 2022) emits a bitterly sensual charge. The film’s unexpected intrigue is partly a matter of context. In the 1980s, when Peque Gallaga was the purveyor of erotic dramas like Scorpio Nights and Unfaithful Wife, even Scorpio Nights 3’s strongest sections might have been taken for granted. But in 2022, with sex as a viable subject, the film initially feels dangerous, even personal. Gallaga’s ’80s cinema pushed everything, from the characters’ emotions to the filmmaker’s formalism in a manner that was fashionable to Philippine cinema at the time. In Scorpio Nights 3, however, Fajardo initially aims for a more strongly implicative aura in the key of a Claude Chabrol thriller, in which every line of dialogue is freighted with potential subtext, blurring our understanding of the rules of the game that we’re watching unfold. The plot is simple, even consciously reductive. This texture cuts to the heart of why Scorpio Nights 3 is initially so head-spinning, as its erotic-thriller stylization, the menacingly soft, feverish colors mesh unexpectedly with a specific and refreshingly adult examination of sexual relationship. Fajardo and screenwriter Roy Iglesias are willing to follow this relationship beyond the barriers of political correctness. Mark Anthony Fernandez (Drake) and Christine Bermas (Pinay) have suggestively conflicting ways of volleying their dialogue back and forth. Bermas, a rising ingenue looking to make her mark, wrings every line for every ounce of aggression it can yield, while Fernandez, a longtime survivor of the up-and-down fame game throws his lines away doing what he’s known for and lets Drake's anger simmer under the surface, barely allowing it to slip through until he is ready then that anger feels raw and almost feral. Ultimately, though, Scorpio Nights 3 is revealed to be Drake’s movie and there’s a suggestion of sexism to it. Astonishingly, Matthew (Gold Aceron), the upstairs neighbor doesn't intensify the relationship at the center of the film, as he appears to exist in his own orbit. Shots are more problematic that voyeurism comes into play. Frequently the camera settles on Pinay as she sleeps, vulnerable and unaware of its gaze. And there are Pinay's sex scenes, most curious for how clinical they are. The focus is almost anatomical, largely on what parts are where. For all their explicitness, they reveal nothing about the emotional or intellectual aspects of the sexuality on display. 

     These lengthy sequences also remove all the mystery from Drake and Pinay’s relationship. And it’s an irony of the movies that romances work best when we as viewers don’t experience everything between the couple on the screen. This is especially true when the sex scenes are at once extremely revealing (in terms of physicality) and yet wholly unenlightening (in terms of psychology or anything else). There is a shot that indicates Fajardo is aware of these complications. At one point a close-up pans along Pinay’s naked body and just as we’re about to write it off as another moment of exploitation, it’s a touch that speaks directly to the movie’s slippery sense of perspective. Fernandez and Bermas keep their characters' ultimate motivations and feelings close to the vest. The way they navigate those moments keep viewers on their toes, second-guessing their predictions through to the end. Because even when everything appears obvious, it is not long before you begin to realize, things may not be what they seem. This is what makes Fajardo's mystery work. That and the fact he enjoys making his characters and audience sit in the mess their actions have caused. He isn't simply content to have it cleared up in a one-minute dialogue, he would rather have everyone take stock in how they got to this point and what it means for the future. What is abundant in good erotic thrillers is the plunge into formal and narrative insanity that utilizes lurid tropes as symbols for ordinary romantic and sexual crises. Instead, Scorpio Nights 3 becomes crude in all the wrong ways. Pinay is forgotten by the filmmakers, while Drake is put through a series of impersonal genre-movie exertions. When the third act hits, it begins moving faster than necessary to wrap up the story. This leads to a break in the tension Fajardo had spent time building. This can be a bit jarring, but the interesting way it concludes feels less like a catharsis than a half-hearted gesture committed by a promising film that lost its way.

Directed By: Law Fajardo
Screenplay: Roy Iglesias
Director of Photography: Joshua Reyles
Production Design: Lawrence Fajardo, Ian Traifalgar
Editor: Lawrence Fajardo
Musical Scoring: Peter Legaste
Sound Design: Lamberto A. Casas, Jr., Alexis Tomboc

STARTLING, DEEPLY HUMANE

Posted by Jojo Devera ,

     What's extraordinary about Separada (Star Cinema, 1994) is that everyone in this story is right, based on their position in the situation. Melissa (Maricel Soriano) is right and Dodie (Edu Manzano) is right. And they are both hurting. Director Chito S. Roño has come about as close as you can get to telling a wrenching story with devastation but no villainy. Everything comes from that sad math. The arrangement in which both parents could be with each other and their kids has simply run out of time, it doesn't work anymore. What comes next will be awful for at least someone, if not for everyone. The meticulous fairness of Ricardo Lee and Tessie Tomas' script is remarkable. This relatively unadorned story could wind up feeling like a filmed play, but Roño's commitment to coming in close to faces, particularly Soriano's and Manzano's is sneakily effective. The tendency of conversations between Melissa and Dodie escalate from polite to tense to furious springs logically from their closely examined eyes and their tentative, layered expressions. Eddie Rodriguez as Melissa's father is wonderful in the way that parents observing marriages often can be. There's regrettably little for Sharmaine Arnaiz to do as Sandy, the other woman, but in an early scene critical to the progress of the separation, she introduces a lightness that recurs now and then, surprisingly, to let the viewer breathe. But in the end, Separada turns on the performances from Soriano and Manzano, both of whom are as good as they've ever been. She is kind with an earned edge, resentful but also empathetic. And Manzano gives Dodie a genuine commitment to doing the right thing and an unending hope that this doesn't have to be as bad as it is. He commits to moments when Dodie is awful and moments when he is extraordinarily tender and it's one of his best performances.

     The newly restored presentation does immensely well with Roño's visual style, capturing the pristine brightness of living spaces and the heaviness of restaurant visits. Primaries are clear, giving costuming a real presence with casual wear. Interior decoration is also vivid, surveying tasteful living spaces with flowery hues. Detail is sharp throughout, with excellent facial particulars that define the subtle emotional weight carried by the characters, while outfits are fibrous. Housing and office decoration are open for study, contrasting the lived-in feel of Melissa's world and Dodie's lifestyle. Delineation is satisfactory. Grain is heavier and film-like. The two-channel sound mix is a largely frontal listening event with dialogue exchanges precise, offering full, deep voices and crisp argumentative behavior. Scoring supports with a gentle orchestral sound. Room tone is present, along with more active urban environments. Low-end reaches about as far as it's meant to. Because Separada is about the process of separation, it would be easy to see in it a bleakness that would make it uninteresting. But the performances are so good and the story so complex that it is, in the end, startling and deeply humane.


Sound: Ramon Reyes

Production Designer: Ernest Santiago

Editor: Joe Solo

Musical Director: Nonong Buencamino

Director of Photography: Joe Batac

Screenplay: Ricardo Lee, Tessie Tomas

Directed By: Chito S. Roño

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

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)