SARI-SARING SINENG PINOY

     Once upon a time long, long ago, fairytales were more than just imaginative flights of fancy. They weren't cute or cuddly, aligned with strategic marketing to create excellent cross promotion and/or marketing advantages. No, back when they were first formed, fairytales had more in common with urban legends than they did with wish fulfillment, ego integrity and lessons about sharing. If they were anything, a fairytale was a parable, a clear cautionary example of avoiding certain situations and individuals wrapped up in prosaic pomp and circumstance. They also stood as a manner of social redistribution, a chance for the commoner to laugh at the crown or sneer at the wealthy and privileged. Today, all that’s gone. In its place are politically correct platitudes and non-violent positivity. From the moment Tala (Felicity Kyle Napuli) discovers the Fairy's (Jasmine Curtis-Smith) lair, we witness the kind of vital visual splendor that has been missing from most productions. Thanks to Kenneth Dagatan’s wonderful combination of the sinister with the sublime, the whimsical elements become deep and rather disconcerting. Like the Brothers Grimm before him, here is a filmmaker who wants to give fairytales back their teeth. The journey at the center of the story is meant to symbolize the internal struggles that any young person must face when confronted by the grown-up world. Indeed, Dagatan argues that what Tala and her brother Bayani (James Mavie Estrella) faces is the temptation of choice and the confidence to decide direction for oneself. Courage is a key element in the narrative themes. We are supposed to see self-sacrifice and bravery parallel and surpass the brutal tactics resulting in a realization of what truly matters in a time of war. Take the relationship between Ligaya (Beauty Gonzalez) and her husband. In order to survive, she must trust her husband, Romualdo (Arnold Reyes) and it’s a price she’s willing to pay with her own expiring existence. 

     In Jay Altarejos' sharply simple The Last Resort (Goblin FIlms, 2023), Oliver Aquino and Erin Ocampo star as Robert and Emily, a struggling couple recovering from infidelity, whose marriage counselor recommends a getaway to get them back in sync. From the beginning, the movie points the viewer in the direction of uncomfortable truths. Most of the action takes place in a bucolic hideway where the unhappy couple goes to work on their relationship. The Last Resort employs endless restraint and builds chilling anticipation with its fraught, personal consideration of intimacy and philosophy. The set-up, reminiscent of some of Hitchcock's films, works like a well-oiled stopwatch: once the situation starts, it cannot be stopped. The film unfolds with a sense of inevitability and while the events are odd, they never lose their logic. The Last Resort is a romance, a thriller and a drama, with characters who are sketches approximating human beings, but played with sadness by the two lead actors. Not knowing the plot going in was part of the film's pleasure and it's enough to say that nothing is what it seems. There are no other guests, it's just Robert and Emily. Cinematographer Manu Garcellano fills the screen with strange points-of-view giving a horror-movie perspective. Are they being watched? On their retreat, Robert prepares a special dinner for Emily. They drink wine and loosen up. 

     The dynamic between Aquino and Ocampo is tense and sad, bringing relief and release, a sense that they are beginning to remember why they got together in the first place. That night, they rediscover a playfulness in their relationship. They even have sex. The entire film rests on the chemistry between Aquino and Ocampo. They create a very real relationship with a sense of shared joy in one another's company and myriad problems threatening to derail the entire thing. Robert and Emily are not extraordinary characters, but the situation in which they find themselves in is. The Last Resort is so concentrated on the characters that there is nowhere to hide. Paolo Paraiso is perfectly cast as Fred, the enigmatic resort owner and it is a treat to watch Rolando Inocencio’s caretaker, Bianong wear a very different skin. Even as the film tends to separate itself from its initial explorations of a marriage on the rocks for less esoteric waters, considering the circumstances, The Last Resort is exciting filmmaking. It expertly utilizes creative ideas and not at the expense of organic character development. While I can't divulge much else for the sake of keeping the plot a surprise, I will say that the resort has something unexpected in store for the young couple.

Production Designer: Jeric delos Angeles

Musical Scorer: Arbi Barbarona

Editor: Jay Altarejos

Director of Photography: Manu Garcellano

Screenplay: Memot Rivera, Jay Altarejos

Directed By: Jay Altarejos

     When Darna (Viva Films, 1991) goes for campy laughs, it falls flat on its face. That's a shame, because there's a place, I think, for a female superhero and Nanette Medved, who plays Darna, has the kind of freshness, high spirits and pluck that would be just right for the character. As it is, Medved is the best thing in the film. The movie starts to break down with the introduction of Pilar Pilapil as Valentina and the even less fortunate introduction of her sidekick Vibora, a bitchy snake puppet voiced by Ruby Rodriguez. We do not watch Darna movies to laugh condescendingly at the characters, which is what the screenwriter, director and even some of the actors have started to do. The gift of Vilma Santos in her best scenes and when the filmmakers allow it, is to play Darna without laughing, to take her seriously so that we can have some innocent escapist fun. Medved has the same gift, she shows super-athleticism when Darna needs to get someplace and throw down. But she also has an almost balletic manner when she is just having fun, Medved really shines. There is, of course, a lot of character moments that happen with Darna and Valentina in their own right, both individually and with their own supporting cast of characters. The film’s tone has been infected by the silly comedic approach employed in Darna at Ding (1980). The dialogue veers toward campiness and jokiness. Even during the climactic struggle, there’s nothing resembling suspense or tension. With a villain as over-the-top as Valentina, it’s impossible to accept that the stakes are high. Darna mostly suffers from lack of recognizable characters. It has been said many times that a hero is only as good as their villain and that is a very true statement. Pilar Pilapil is excellent as Valentina and probably gave the entire movie's best performance. Any potential melodrama and subsequent audience enjoyment in the interplay between Medved and Pilapil is undermined by the attempts to emote on the part of both actresses. It is rare for a superhero film to feature both a female protagonist and antagonist, but however inspired this conceit in characterization, the result is bland. Darna, in contrast, establishes its antagonist as a character who is invariably serious in her nefarious actions but it never reaches the depths of evil she strives towards. 

     To encapsulate Darna's loose, frustrating conception of camp, I must describe what is unquestionably the film’s piece de resistance, Darna’s love interest, George (Tonton Gutierrez). A  commotion ensues as he professes his love for Darna. Lamangan meant to create drama, effectively absorbing us in the adventures of a superhero flying in on the winds of the second wave of feminism. But his work lacks any playfulness or self-conscious humor. Lamangan doesn’t bother adding dimension to flat comic figures. It’s almost puzzling how the filmmakers could craft all of these fantastical conceits to fizzle out with such conspicuousness. Thrills are largely absent, clashes between good and evil are terrible (perhaps due to alternately inconsequential and frivolous motives) and notions of sacrifice, redemption and desperation are meaningless in the face of spontaneous and unexplained (and otherworldly) conflicts. If there’s one bright spot to be found, it’s Willy Cruz’s score. One of a small group of in-demand composers in the mid ‘80s, his work here is distinct yet musically linked. Entangled in the plot is a mess of magic, drama and countless unnecessary additions that only make the film less enjoyable. What’s more disappointing is that most of these decisions don’t necessarily move the plot forward. If anything, the film is halted in its tracks by the awkward jokes and choppy special effects. The oddest casting is two-fold. Edu Manzano plays Dominico Lipolico. He's fine in the part, but his talent is wasted as he plays it completely straight. Bing Loyzaga doesn't have anything going for her, but in a film like Darna, she is wasted because her character is not believable, making her Purita pointless.

Production Designer: Benjie de Guzman

Costume Designer: Ernest Santiago

Cinematographer: Ramon Marcelino

Sound Supervision: Rolly Ruta

Film Editor: Ike Jarlego, Jr.

Screenplay: Frank G. Rivera

Directed By: Joel Lamangan 

     The function of remembrance is an enigma in Yung Libro sa Napanood Ko (Viva Films, Whiskey Marmalade, 2023) which is small and domestic. Bela Padilla (credited as Bela) wisely expands the themes of personal memory to include collective memory as well, though it’s essentially a love story, Yung Libro sa Napanood Ko is grounded in the mechanics of human interaction, thought, repression, denial and acceptance. The film holds incredible promise for writer-director Padilla, evoking stylistic simplicity and emotional complexity. Normally an actress, she conveys a pondering despair. We see great concentration on the space between individuals and the emptiness left inside. Padilla's deceptively simple direction suggests her place resides behind the camera, even though her career thus far has been in front of it. Yung Libro sa Napanood Ko is not an all-out stylistic embrace, but rather a sleight influence in tone. Characters seem to converse and evoke delicate emotions with their silence. Padilla says something profound by hardly saying anything, but allowing us to see how devastating it is to forget so much about one’s self. As Lisa Villamor, a succesful book author and a K-Drama fan, Padilla can seem lost one moment but then, as an intention pierces through her cloud of unhappiness, becomes crisp and incisive. The fading of memory, the mixture of loyalty and selfishness, these are not subjects you would expect a young filmmaker to understand or even to take much interest in. Yet, Yung Libro sa Napanood Ko is a small-scale triumph that could herald a great career. In general, she works close to her actors and is confident enough to let scenes remain ambiguous—the meanings build slowly, by accretion. Apart from a few scenes, Padilla tells the story from Kim Gun Hoo's point of view in the person of Korean actor Min Gon Yoo. Gun Hoo loves Lisa, he finds a way for personal survival and a love for someone lost to flourish together. 

     Yung Libro sa Napanood Ko has the courage to simply observe the devastation of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). There are few great love stories replayed, few books written, flashbacks as enjoyable for the victim as they are for us. There are only the victims going far, far away as if they have fallen into a black hole. The performances here are carefully controlled, as they must be, so that we see no false awareness slipping out from behind the masks; no sense that Lisa is in touch with a more complete reality than, from day to day, she is. No sense that Gun Hoo is finally able to feel consolation, contrition or anything else but inescapable loss. No sense that Lisa's mother, Mary (Lorna Tolentino) deceives herself for a moment, that Pio (Boboy Garrovillo) understands his wife's behavior. The one aware character is Sandra Jeung as Omma, Gon Yoo's mother who gives her son practical advice. She has empathy and pity for him, and Jeung finds that precise note. Padilla clearly knows where to place the camera and how long to let a moment linger to produce maximum emotional impact without ever stooping to sentiment or melodrama. Bela Padilla still young, always until now an actress emerges here as a director who is in calm command of her material. The movie says as much for her strength of character as for her skills. If Padilla’s cunning complexity provides the film’s ethereality, then Gon Yoo’s unwavering love anchors it in place. It’s their connection, finely wrought by Padilla’s grace earns the film its final tears.

Sound Supervision: Aian Louie Caro

Music By: Kean Cipriano

Editor: Renard Torres

Production Designer: Ericson N. Navarro

Director of Photography: Rommel Andreo Sales

Written and Directed By: Bela

     Miss Rita Gomez, with an angry mouth and the steeliest of gazes brings so much energy to Gamitin Mo Ako (V.H. Films, Inc., 1985) because the movie badly needs a center of gravity. As directed by Ishmael Bernal, this is perhaps the most telling, economical image of Miss Gomez the movie has to offer, followed by a montage detailing Toyang's daily regimen that is equally sharp-edged. It appears as if the movie will concentrate on Miss Gomez's overweening drive and perhaps attempt an explanation of her eccentricities. But this doesn't happen nor does the film become the story of her daughter Josie (Stella Suarez Jr.). The movie is so shapeless and unfocused that it never decides whose story to tell. It offers disconnected glimpses of Toyang's life. There is nothing to string the episodes together into a coherent drama and no insight into the characters. If the movie opted clearly for Josie's point of view, then Toyang could successfully be presented as a cipher. But Josie is neither a match for her mother nor a well-defined character in her own right, so Miss Gomez's Toyang easily steals all the thunder. And as presented here, she handles everything with a desperate, perfectly unexamined intensity. Toyang reveals her true self in fits of rage and torrents of verbal, emotional and physical abuse to Josie. Her abandon in giving herself over to such emotions is accompanied by an air of calculation that is her most astonishing trait. She can switch gears in an instant, moving from tremendous sensuality if she thinks it will do her some good, to motherly love or even terrible anger. 

     Toyang copes with the overwhelming feelings of powerlessness and vulnerability by angrily and violently asserting control in the realm where she wields power and fury, her household. Suarez gives Josie a sullen cast, but Miss Gomez is an even better battle-ax later on. By the time Toyang seems to have softened toward Josie makes her final scene particularly bewildering. Toyang did need more humanity than Bernal allows her in order for Gamitin Mo Ako to have any claim to coherence or continuity. Even soap opera needs soul. A performance like Gomez’s isn’t something one will ever shake off and that it would become the filter through which her entire career would forevermore be viewed. Which is one major reason why Gamitin Mo Ako registers as questionable on camp value. And why anyone who ironically loves the film should still probably admit that the guilt in guilty pleasure resides within themselves and not the filmmakers. What could possibly be more insulting than to say that a work of art is so much a failure that it even fails at providing a sensibility that celebrates failure. Toyang is a monster and Josie is a pretty, long-suffering dope who might inspire more sympathy if she were not directed to be distant and veiled. The movie doesn't even make narrative sense. Success follows crisis without any pattern. Gamitin Mo Ako also offers few insights into Toyang's relationship with other characters. There’s Sammy (Al Tantay), her lover who's an enigma. Bernal and screenwriter Rolando S. Tinio fuse this formal schizophrenia with a cruelly episodic structure sneakily turning Toyang’s plight into an endless series of character sketches in some gruesome variety revue. Gamitin Mo Ako is a painful experience that drones on endlessly as Toyang's relationship with her daughter, Josie, disintegrates from cruelty through jealousy into pathos. It is unremittingly depressing, not to any purpose of drama or entertainment, but just to depress.

Production Designer: Elmer Manapul

Sound Supervision: Rudy Baldovino

Film Editor: Amang Sanchez

Musical Director: Willy Cruz

Director of Photography: Manolo R. Abaya

Screenplay: Rolando S. Tinio

Direction: Ishmael Bernal