SARI-SARING SINENG PINOY

     Directed by Ma-an L. Asuncion-Dagñalan, Home Service (Viva Films, 3:16 Media Network, 2023) follows nursing student/massage therapist Happy (Hershie de Leon) as she goes about her business over the course of a few ordinary days–with the film primarily detailing Happy's encounters with clients and friends alike. In cinematic terms, the stunt fails dismally. Once the novelty wears off, there's nothing to hold onto, no meaningful insight into either the character or De Leon herself. There are layers upon layers here-but it’s unclear whether De Leon is a face in search of an expression. That may be the point, or it may be just that De Leon doesn't know how to modulate her performance. Either way, she's a plank, which is not much to build a movie on. Whatever the film has to say is obscured by De Leon's uncommunicative performance. Her persona simply becomes redundant with her role leading to an echo chamber of empty referents. Dagñalan has, as anticipated, infused Home Service with a consistent visual sensibility that initially compensates for the film’s uneventful atmosphere, and there’s little doubt that the almost total lack of context or exposition is, for a little while, not quite as problematic as one might have feared. It does reach a point, however, at which the relentlessly meandering narrative becomes impossible to overlook, with the progressively less-than-enthralling vibe exacerbated by the central character’s underdeveloped nature–as screenwriter Michael Angelo Dagñalan is simply unable (or unwilling) to get inside Happy’s head to a satisfactory degree (i.e. what makes this girl tick? why does she do the things she does? etc). It’s subsequently rather difficult to work up any interest in Happy’s mundane exploits, and although the movie does boast an admittedly authentic feel, Home Service‘s few positive elements are inevitably rendered moot by its ongoing emphasis on small-talk-type conversations. It’s impossible not to wish that the director would pay as much attention to the story as she does to visuals and atmosphere.

     Home Service is ultimately timid and evasive. It relies far too much on its self-consciously oblique approach, which tends to take center stage, and far too little on genuine insight into the world it represents. The filmmaker’s mistake seems to be supposing that the awfulness of most of these people means there is no high drama to be extracted from their lives. Home Service's narrative merely distracts from its dead-end cynicism. Dagñalan's title refers to the services of working students which include whatever a client desires. It's no surprise, the physical contact comes off as cold, clammy, and mechanical. The topics of conversation invariably revolve around money or the ways in which Happy balances her professional life and personal desires, though Dagñalan investigates these subjects with hastiness, routinely linking every character’s behavior and emotion to cash concerns, but going no further. Although there’s hardly a plot to speak of, the tale eventually hinges on Happy’s decision to break her own rules. She finally lets her guard down and is punished accordingly, learning a lesson both she and we, at this point in the proceedings, already know: that there’s no such thing as real passion, only mutual satisfaction.Yet during this signature moment, when her protagonist actually dares to feel something, Dagñalan finds no way to make us invested in her gambit, she has kept everything at arm’s length. 

Screenplay: Michael Angelo Dagñalan

Director of Photography: T.M. Malones

Editor: Gilbert Obispo

Production Design: Jay Custodio

Music: Dek Margaja

Sound Design: Fatima Nerikka Salim

Directed by Ma-an L. Asuncion-Dagñalan

 

     

     Lawrence Fajardo's Raket ni Nanay (Creative Programs, Inc., Indiopendence, National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 2006) is the best film I have seen about the physical creation of art, and the painful bond between an artist and his muse. Mimosa (Sarsi Emmanuelle) arrives at Badong's studio where unpleasantries give way to a sense of nervous social obligation. The reminder of his artistic stasis makes Badong prickly toward Mimosa. He scraps a piece of paper before his drawing takes shape, even the pages look so abstract and nondescript that one wonders what exactly makes Mimosa so special to him. Badong also takes interest in Joy (Tess Jamias) though not in a particularly lustful way. Badong is played by Mark Gil whose eyes can bore through other actors. With his high forehead and sculpted profile, he looks intelligent but is a formidable, threatening intelligence. He never plays the fall-guy. He always knows the story. Sarsi Emmanuel is Mimosa, the woman who inspires him. Startingly beautiful with sensuous lips and deep eyes under arched brows. The artist will attempt to seduce her but he wants more than that. Badong wants to possess her. And he wants to draw from Mimosa's irritating willfulness the inspiration for his rebirth. He must have an abrasive to create. The great central passage of the film involves creation. Fajardo uses a static camera and long takes, he rarely cuts away. We see a blank sheet of paper and the drawing taking shape, his fingers and thumb smearing the washes into rough shapes. 

     Of the performances, there is nothing to be said about Mark Gil except that he communicates exactly what Badong needs from his art and doesn't need many words to do it. Sarsi Emmanuel has an ethereal beauty, but it is her talent that has made her a leading actress of her generation. We quickly feel, without any dialog or behavior to spell it out, Mimosa's nuisance quality. Tess Jamias finds the perfect and difficult note for Joy. Fajardo's use of long takes gives his actors the freedom to modulate their interactions, capturing the incremental steps by which people become more familiar with each other and give themselves over to more bold actions. Close-ups show Mimosa trembling from a combination of embarrassment and exhaustion. Yet it’s in her resistance, not compliance that Badong seems to get the most inspiration as he builds toward his intended masterpiece. Mimosa's willingness to confront the painter has the effect of gradually eroding the distinction between the creation of the painting and what it represents and the studio scenes correspondingly progress from the naturalistic to the impressionistic with Mimosa lit luminously against backgrounds that collapse the distance between the real woman and Badong’s sketches. That fusion of subject and form eventually expands to include the artist himself, most visibly in a scene where both Badong and Mimosa break down undermining the tacit power of artists over their models by placing them on even ground. It’s a direct, cathartic illustration of the film’s deconstruction of accepted artist and muse roles.

Directed By; Lawrence Fajardo

Screenplay: Jim Flores

Cinematography: Julius Salazar

Production Design: Alf Alacapa

Editors: Lawrence Fajardo, Jobin Ballesteros

Original Music: Rachelle Tesoro

Sound Engineer Tad Ermitaño

     It is the love Carmina (Dawn Zulueta) and Gabriel (Richard Gomez) share which builds the foundation for Hihintayin Kita sa Langit (Reyna Films, Inc., 1991), Carlos Siguion-Reyna's tale of broken promises made and revenge exacted. Carmina’s heart is broken and filled with sorrow. It has weakened her. She no longer has any will to live. Feeling the intense power of her love and pain, death is the only ending to quiet her longings and broken heart. It was her own doing, breaking Gabriel’s heart first, then abandoning him for propriety, to live in her virtuous life of dullness, leading her to marry Alan (Eric Quizon) and the abandonment of her soul when she leaves Gabriel behind. The life she chooses is one that is hollow. Her dreams with Gabriel were broken with her heart. When Gabriel returns several years later with a moderate fortune, he marries Alan’s sister, Sandra (Jackie Lou Blanco) for spite. Nearing the end for Carmina, Gabriel arrives at her death bed. They share a loving moment, as he holds her up, speaking softly with love in their voices just before she dies in his arms. Love is more important than any tangible riches or objects of wealth. Let the heart be filled with love. Live for life not for the shackles that destroy the soul. 

     Showing the destruction that comes from not following one’s heart, Hihintayin Kita sa Langit begins with the growing attraction of friendship and love between Carmina and Gabriel. It also shows the class struggle between Gabriel and Carmina’s brother Milo (Michael de Mesa). Their father, Don Joaquin (Jose Mari Avellana) found the young boy on his travels. He took him off the street, bringing him home to be part of their family. But Milo was not generous of spirit like his father and Carmina. He felt it was within his rights to degrade Gabriel whenever the hatred turned in him. He tried to whip Gabriel into submission, but it would never happen. Milo is a weakling, whereas Gabriel has inner fire. No one had the power to break him except Carmina. When Milo feels he has the right to lord it over Gabriel, as so many today feel they have been blessed with the power to rule over people, you know there will never be equality. The human race is too ingrained with prejudice, class superiority and inferiority, and the unjust. That really hasn’t changed. Carmina had the power. She had two separate worlds in which to choose where she wanted to be and with whom she wanted to be. Carmina thought she wanted the dress-up world with Alan, but she hid from herself as much as she longed for the Carmina who was wild with abandon and filled with love. It is what drove them apart. Her vanity and broken promises from childhood and Gabriel not being the perfect gentleman that Carmina desired him to be, instead he was the outcast and the reject, a stranger in a strange land. 

     This sparkling new 1080p transfer present the film in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio for the first time on home video, but the level of clarity, detail and texture on display here is like watching a brand new film. Depth is outstanding and the film's particular color palette is represented perfectly, while a natural layer of film grain is present to remind us that excessive digital noise reduction hasn't been performed. The image is smooth and extremely natural, which will undoubtedly please long-time fans, it's been said before, but it's likely that Hihintayin Kita sa Langit hasn't looked this good since its original theatrical run. I'd say it looks even better, but for now this absolutely flawless transfer is reason enough to revisit the movie. Audio rarely gets equal praise in comparison to a crisp visual upgrade after all, screen captures are easier to share. What we get here stays true to the source, with most of the action spread widely across the front channels. It's an effective presentation that really gives the film a lot of charm, as the crystal clear dialogue and effects are balanced nicely with occasional music cues that don't fight for attention. Hihintayin Kita sa Langit simply captures a specific period in Filipino film history that a sizable chunk of audiences will always remember fondly. There's a lot to live up to here and this brand new restoration absolutely steps up to the plate, delivering a landmark audio and video presentation. 

Production Design: Joey Luna

Sound Supervision: Gaudencio Barredo

Music: By: Ryan Cayabyab

Photographed By: Romy Vitug

Screenplay: Raquel Villavicencio

Directed By: Carlos Siguion-Reyna

     Not many movies can lay claim to being a cultural phenomenon. There are certainly hit movies—the ones that make a lot of money at the box office and stir a lot of initial interest—but even the biggest of those often slide from memory after a few years, replaced by the next big thing. True cultural phenomena ties multiple strands of popular and political culture and becoming symbols of an era. There aren’t many of these, but Maryo J. de los Reyes' Annie Batungbakal (NV Productions) is without doubt one of the most memorable. Released in 1979, it encapsulated the surface attitudes, fashions and musical stylings of the disco era. The rhythmic beats of The Hotdog’s hit songs is a thin veneer over the story’s fundamentally despondent nature; it is, after all, a work whose epilogue is minor salve for all the dreams and frustration that fills the rest of the narrative. The story revolves around Annie (Nora Aunor), a young woman working a dead-end job at a record store all week to help her Aunt Beatrice (Chichay). She befriends eccentric neighbor, Gilda Bermudez (Nida Blanca) who invites her to go dancing at the Banana. Annie is like a lot of other ’70s movie protagonists, she struggles to make it in life, but at night on the dance floor, she is the Queen. For now, Annie is content dancing her heart out at the disco. It would seem that the discord between the socially aware and largely despairing narrative and the dance sequences inside the disco would produce a film that is fundamentally at odds with itself, but De Los Reyes merges them quite seamlessly by emphasizing the neon space inside the Banana as a kind of fantasy world of escape. 

     The film functions very much like a traditional musical, with the musical sequences offering a fantastical alternative to the workaday world, even if characters don't break out into diegetic singing. In the movie’s most romantic dance number scored to The Hotdog’s version of Langit na Naman, Annie and Eric (Lloyd Samartino) comes off as a working class disco-era Astaire and Rogers. The number climaxes when the two hold each other’s hands and spin around and around. They’re like young lovers consummating their partnership. Annie’s saving grace is her dancing. To be clear, Aunor is not a great dancer. Unlike Nida Blanca, she lacks natural talent and grace. What distinguishes Aunor is that she’s a better actor. She acts like someone who loves to dance. This is apparent in the movie’s centerpiece dance number, filmed in an unbroken full-frame shot in order for us to see that Aunor is doing all the dancing. The song used for the sequence is the disco banger Bongga Ka Day. It has a propulsive energy that is matched by Aunor’s fluid dance moves. This is what made the sequence an instant classic. De Los Reyes proved that Annie Batungbakal is more than just the soundtrack, it’s a movie filled with rich performances that has both flair and subtlety. The music is everywhere, and when it kicks in, you know that Annie is entering the world in which she reigns, yet it offers no real advancement; her reign evaporates with the morning light. It’s not hard to see how kids in the late ’70s could separate the film’s two parts from each, ignoring the narrative and losing themselves in the disco music but it’s a much richer, more evocative film when those two halves are seen as fundamentally integrated, with the dance-floor as temporary respite from life’s realities.

Production Design and Art Direction: Fiel Zabat

Choreography: Geleen Eugenio

Film Editor: Edgardo "Boy" Vinarao

Musical Director: The Hotdog

Director of Photography: Joe Batac, Jr.

Screenplay: Jake Tordesillas

Directed By: Maryo J. de los Reyes

 

     Making a virtue of simplicity and a vice of melodrama, Imbisibol (Sinag Maynila, Solar Entertainment Corporation, Centerstage Productions, Pelikulaw 2015) is a well-intentioned low-income drama. This is a genre in which work - exhausting, repetitive, unreliable is the story's engine and the characters' sole means of survival. Holding on to a job or finding a better one takes precedence over anything life can throw at them. Without a doubt, Imbisibol forms Lawrence Fajardo’s most assured work, it owes a lot of its initial momentum to John Bedia and Herlyn Gail Alegre’s unhurried screenplay. The film doesn’t lack for integrity, educating the audience on the desperation of living as an illegal entirely from the perspective of its characters. Carefully buried in a wealth of gesture and speech, from Linda, (the perennially underutilized Ces Quesada) and Benjie's (Bernardo Bernardo) plaintiveness to Manuel (Allen Dizon) and Rodel's (JM de Guzman) wistfulness, the actors in Imbisibol are remarkable. De Guzman's superb slow simmer of a performance as a pleading, recessive man is a silent striver who embodies a humanity that is ultimately heartbreaking. Dizon brings crafty venality to his character that we suspect people must actually work in a trade such as his. Bernardo Bernardo conveys decency, enthusiasm and self-restraint. Quesada creates a character that is sensitive and vulnerable. Who can say that pragmatism is less virtuous than innocence? Jane Austen, Anton Chekhov are artists who come to mind when we confront a story told through such tactful revelations of temperament and states of mind. Fajardo often shows a room before people enter and lingers a second after they leave. Every single shot is intended to have a perfect composition of its own. If a character is speaking, he shows the entire speech. He is comfortable with silences, it’s as if every person has the right to be heard in full. In his other films, Fajardo deploys his distinctive techniques more playfully, but here he seems chiefly concerned with creating a quiet world in which his characters’ personalities can stand out. Sometimes they speak little and imply much. 

     An elegantly refined style places people in the foreground, Fajardo focuses on the nuances of everyday life. His is the most humanistic of styles, choosing to touch the viewer with feeling, not workshop storytelling technique. By having established the rhythm of his characters' lives with such precision, Fajardo’s presentation is not conventionally melodramatic or histrionic. From one part of the world to another, Imbisibol stirs with its torrents of feeling. Dramas about illegal immigrants have often focused on the journey, an odyssey pocked with exploitation and fear, but one that ends on a note of road-weary triumph. In Imbisibol, the focus is on the plight of undocumented immigrants who are already ensconced in Japan. How they live in constant fear of immigration officials who want to deport them even though a modern Western economy could not function without these shadow workers. Imbisibol walks a delicate line between visceral cinema and complex emotional trauma, yet it never seems to struggle at balancing the two and if my description of precisely why seems vague, that’s purely because it deserves to be experienced through unfamiliar eyes. The adroit Fajardo doesn't overemphasize the acrid, fetid atmosphere of hard working immigrants clambering from one job to the next. The spartan, bleary-eyed plainness of the urban landscape of immigrant Japan makes Imbisibol more arresting. Fajardo's low-key curiosity toward what drives outsiders is a crucial element that lubricates the tough, noir melodramatics of the narrative engine. As businesslike as the immigrants who work several jobs to stay afloat, Imbisibol grows more compelling as it builds a head of steam.

Directed By: Lawrence Fajardo

Screenplay: John Bedia, Herlyn Gail Alegre

Director of Photography: Boy Yniguez

Editor: Lawrence Fajardo

Production Designers: Lawrence Fajardo, Rolando Inocencio

Sound: Mike Idioma

Music: Jobin Ballesteros