SARI-SARING SINENG PINOY

     The luminescent tryst between Baby (Vilma Santos) and Roy (Phillip Salvador) in Baby Tsina (Viva Films, 1984) remains to be Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s most complex and revelatory examination of unfulfilled love. She doesn’t solely rely on the flashier aspects of her patented style to convey a character’s fated desires or failures. She positions individuals as pieces of a larger mosaic, one populated by burgeoning and disintegrating relationships that reach beyond the frame. This construct produces subtext-heavy conversations containing real conflict and tension at their core. As Baby Tsina turns into a masterful dissection of loyalty, Ricardo Lee's dialogue expresses the characters’ way of maneuvering around emotional responsibility, of circumventing the betrayals that are lingering in plain sight. This conflict builds for long sequences before erupting in stunning moments of physical violence. In this very banal-looking world, unfulfilled desire turns sour from all the repression and guilt. Baby and Roy's conversations grow shorter and more kinetic, jumping past the traditional banter. The unique ways emotional expression shifts mid-moment really distinguishes the film as an organic work, a morphing cinematic experience that changes with the years to fit our individual perspective of unrequited love. Unlike the showy emotional relationships in Abaya’s other films, the connection between Baby and Roy feels bonded in actual human emotion. Baby Tsina centers around the title character - played with gusto by an always illuminating Santos. Her tremendous poise, visible at once in the opening credit sequence introducing the tone and protagonist of this very different film. The precisely-edited sequence serves Santos exceedingly well. 

     Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and granted a 1080p transfer, Baby Tsina is sourced from an older master with some obvious limitations. As a result, the technical presentation is somewhat inconsistent. While most close-ups convey fairly decent depth the larger shots tend to look rather flat. During nighttime footage or elsewhere where light is intentionally restricted shadow definition also isn't as good as it should be; select segments are too dark and some detail is lost. Generally speaking colors are stable, but in two different scenes I noticed very light but short color pulsations. There are no traces of sharpening adjustments, but grain should be better exposed and resolved. During a couple of darker segments some light halo effects can be spotted as well. Overall image stability is good. Lastly, a few minor flecks pop up here and there, but there are no large cuts, damage marks, or torn frames. The film has what I consider to be a soundtrack that breathes much easier here than it does on previous video release. Generally speaking, dynamic intensity is more pronounced, but even during the more casual footage there are obvious improvements in terms of depth (these are very easy to hear during the action scenes). However, there is still room for improvement as some nuances in the mid- register appear a bit flat. Baby Tsina is perhaps one of the most successful protagonist Ricardo Lee has crafted. Her desires and motivations are clear, and her thought process is shown in full. And best of all, she feels real.

Screenplay: Ricardo Lee

Musical Director: Willie Cruz

Sound Supervision: Vic Macamay

Production Design: Fiel Zabat

Film Editor: Ike Jarlego, Jr.

Director of Photography: Manolo R. Abaya

Directed By: Marilou Diaz-Abaya

     The self-destructive nature of searching for meaning, for a partner has long fascinated Elwood Perez. In Lupe A Seaman's Wife (Viva Films, 2003), he strips bare that hopeless pursuit. In those diurnal moments, the unexceptional motions that make up a relationship, Perez disinters the pleasures (however brief) and pain of love. Lupe (Andrea del Rosario) is longing for love. Hers is a Sisyphean desperation. Lupe is a woman with a powerful erotic drive and an indefatigable penchant for verbalizing her emotions. We first find Lupe having energetic sex with her husband Manolo (Leandro Muñoz) humping away and one may wonder if this is a portrait of a liberated woman or a glimpse from the male gaze. Del Rosario is relaxed, nervy, alert and overtly sexy as I can remember seeing her. Perez finds the inexorable beauty (and sadness) in the most corrosive and fugacious of feelings. For Lupe, love is a toxic need. Perez isn’t known for letting his characters have traditionally happy endings and the tragedy here is how normal that feels, how futile love can be for the unlovable. 

     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