UNBEARABLY TENSE

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Dahas (MAQ Productions Inc., 1995) with Maricel Soriano, has two things that separate it from the pack of thrillers on the shelves: It's almost unbearably tense and it has the biggest visceral kick, capable of inspiring bloodlust in otherwise peaceful viewers. Seeing this movie, about a woman on the run from an abusive husband, makes us want to see Soriano lay him out. To maintain that emotional pitch, it's not enough for a movie to simply show a man smacking a woman. Everything has to work and it does. Chito Roño's cunning direction squeezes every drop of suspense from every setup. Most of all, it's the screenplay by Roy C. Iglesias that transforms an arresting premise into a thriller of significance. Iglesias' most important inspiration was in the writing of Jake, the husband, who is not a routine psycho sprouting devil horns on his honeymoon. Jake (Richard Gomez), operates with an unlimited sense of personal entitlement. He enters the life of Luisa (Soriano), like a toxic Prince Charming, sweeps her off her feet and portrays himself as a rescuer. If Jake were the husband from hell, Dahas would be a monster movie. Instead he's a fellow we recognize, a kind of man we might know, one who prides himself on getting what he wants, whose self-conception is tied up with his willingness to go to any length to succeed. Jakes are everywhere and that alone gives Dahas a modest social importance. 

     Soriano, playing a damaged soul, conveys a sense of that pain and when Jake hits her for the first time, we feel her terror. Gomez is chillingly twisted and the film is poised to make an effective dramatic statement. Tonton Gutierrez brings an edge to Eric, Luisa's knight in shining armor. Dahas does it by the numbers, albeit with style and has the requisite chase scenes, escapes and near-escapes and a suspenseful finale. Roño uses the same structure, in which a man victimizes a woman for the first half of the film and turns the tables in an extended sequence of graphic violence. The movie, in time-honored horror movie tradition doesn't allow Jake to really be dead the first time. There is a plot twist showing that Luisa can't really kill him--she's the heroine, after all--and then he lurches back into action like the slasher in many an exploitation movie. Dahas has a certain internal logic. Its wife-battering scenes characterize the movie's head-banging aesthetic. Through stealthy camera movements and an abrasively jumpy soundtrack, Dahas does a better job than most movies of sustaining a mood of palpable physical menace, then confirming your worst fears. From this point on, Dahas becomes agonizingly suspenseful and nerve-racking.


Sound Engineering: Audio Post

Production Designer: Jeffrey Jeturian

Supervising Editor: Ever V. Ramos

Film Editor: Jaime B. Davila

Director of Photography: Charlie S. Peralta

Music Composed By: Jessie Lasaten

Screenplay: Roy C. Iglesias

Directed By: Chito Roño


BEYOND REDEMPTION

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     What Vilma Santos achieves in Maryo J. de los Reyes' Tagos ng Dugo (VH Films, 1987) isn't a performance but an embodiment. With courage, art and charity, she empathizes with Josepina Ramos Regala, a damaged woman who simply asks that we witness a woman's final desperate attempt to be a better person than her fate intended. The performance is so focused and intense that it becomes a fact of life. Observe the way Santos controls her eyes in the film; there is not a flicker of inattention, as she urgently communicates what she is feeling and thinking. There's the uncanny sensation that Santos has forgotten the camera and the screenplay and is directly channeling her ideas about Pina. She has made herself the instrument of this character. Her transformation into a street prostitute, where she strides into the shadows before stepping forward to talk with Cesar Garcia (Miguel Rodriguez), a handsome young man who has found her in a strip mall after dark. I was simply watching one of the most real people I had ever seen on the screen. Pina's initial kill is justifiable. Having been raped as a child, she uses the knife in self-defense. Pina’s victims become progressively more innocent, with one simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. With a dying conscience, she dispatches Edwin (Michael de Mesa) and seals her fate. De Los Reyes presents the killings in a straightforward manner. Although we understand Pina's reasoning, we neither sympathize nor empathize with her. 

      Tagos ng Dugo asks for a measure of comprehension, not identification. And it demands that we consider what role (if any) society may have played. That approach, more than any other, defuses charges of exploitation and moral indifference, making this a compelling, thought-provoking and unsettling drama. Movies like this are perfect when they get made, before they're grounded down by analysis. There is a certain tone in the voices of some critics that I detest. That superior way of explaining technique in order to destroy it. They imply that because they can explain how Santos did it, she didn't do it. But she does it. Pina's body language is frightening and fascinating. She doesn't know how to occupy her body. Watch Santos as she goes through a repertory of little arm straightenings, body adjustments and head tosses and hair touchings, as she nervously tries to shake out her nervousness and look at ease. And note that there is only one moment in the movie where she seems relaxed and at peace with herself; you will know the scene, and it will explain itself. Francis Arnaiz finds the correct note for Andy Mercado. Some critics have mistaken it for bad acting, when in fact it is sublime acting in its portrayal of a bad actor. We are told to hate the sin but not the sinner and as I watched Tagos ng Dugo, I began to see it as an exercise in the theological virtue of charity. It refuses to objectify Pina insisting instead on seeing her as someone worthy of our attention. She has been so cruelly twisted by life and is unequipped for this struggle. She is impulsive, reckless, angry and violent, and she devastates her victims and herself. There are no excuses for what she does, but there are reasons and the purpose of the movie is to make them visible. If life had given her anything at all to work with, we would feel no sympathy. But life has beaten her beyond redemption.


Director of Photography: Ely Cruz

Production Designed By: Cesar Hernando & Lea Locsin

Film Editing: Jess Navarro

Musical Director: Jaime Fabregas

Sound Engineer: Joe Climaco

Screenplay: Jake Tordesillas

Directed By: Maryo J. de los Reyes

DOMINO EFFECT

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     It’s devastating the way director Jerry Lopez Sineneng depicted how the domino-effect destruction of Rita (Vivamax, 2024) came within milliseconds of never happening. Rita (Christine Bermas) could pick up and perish the idea of sleeping with her husband Ariel's (Victor Relosa) best friend, Royce (Josh Ivan Morales). Sineneng has never been much for subtlety, but he understands that the psychology of erotic fantasy has as much potential to obliterate as to titillate. Rita never arouses, judges or mounts a morality play: It’s a dark, delusional piece of sultry fantasia that doesn’t condemn or condone Ariel or Rita’s choices. It simply presents people surprised by the ease with which they transgress and allow little white lies to fester into tumorous deceptions. Sineneng pulls out all the stops to display his lovers' erotic trysts. Playing down his handsomeness, Relosa invests Ariel with such palpable hurt. It’s such an emotionally naked performance, couched in understatement. Other strong performances are offered by Morales whose character is both repulsive and mysterious (that is part of his allure). Royce's charm is a convincing temptation and an interesting choice for Rita's dalliance. Perhaps the most balanced character is Rita's younger brother Marlon, played sensitively by Gold Aceron. As the confused and guilt-stricken Rita, Bermas is asked to run the full spectrum of emotions, from unexpected joy to emptiness to heartbreak and every step is a performance of blistering intensity. 

     Rita might be a richer take on female infidelity than usual, but like movie adulteresses before her, she faces repercussions. It’s success is due to the effectiveness of the performances and Ricky Lee's screenplay, delivering a storyline that escalates in a relatively plausible way. Rita has her reasons for straying outside a happy marriage. This is not necessarily a bad thing it is almost always more interesting to observe behavior than listening to reasons. Instead of pumping up the plot with recycled manufactured thrills, it's content to contemplate two reasonable adults who get themselves into an almost insoluble dilemma. Sineneng contemplates when he lingers on Relosa’s sex appeal but, in the end, the actor fights back with evocative blood-splatter. A skipping record is Sineneng’s transitional element between Rita’s comfort and fear, a haunting reminder of bringing and tearing lovers apart. Rita takes an unflinching and emotionally rattling look at the recklessness of infidelity and how it can destroy the lives of all parties involved, leaving no one satisfied. What follows in the movie’s Third Act is less satisfactory, but the ending redeems the picture and makes you appreciate just how odd it is for contemporary tastes: sex is not just a passing fancy, but profoundly disruptive, not life enhancing but life shattering.


Sound Designer: Norman Buena

Musical Scorer: Emerzon Texon

Editor: Froilan Francia

Production Designer: Kenneth Bernardino

Director of Photography: Rico Jacinto

Screenplay: Ricky Lee

Directed By: Jerry Lopez Sineneng

AUTHENTIC AND SATISFYING

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Darryl Yap treats love and loss with a disarming tenderness and a refusal of sentimentality that make his fifteenth feature, something of an anomaly among male identity flicks. Para Kang Papa Mo (Viva Films, Vincentiments, 2023) is about men and the male performances are terrific. In casting Mark Anthony Fernandez and Nikko Natividad, Yap not only chose two actors that actually look like they could be father and son but actors who fit into their roles with ease. Natividad is perfect, injecting Harry with subtlety abound, but it’s a deceptively restrained performance about a gradual development. Fernandez merrily falls into his role, capturing all the life apparent in this newly blissful way of living; fortunately, Yap never shows Fernandez as the absent father from Harry's childhood, allowing viewers to see him only as a new man. He brings Harry into his new life, giving him the chance to get to know and appreciate his father on a completely different level. Their relationship blossoms in ways that are emotionally authentic and satisfying. It's all about dropping their inhibitions to be sincere and silly with one another. Natividad and Fernandez say so much with their facial expressions and body language that the struggle and longing for human connection comes across loud and clear despite never being articulated. Ruby Ruiz gives a full-bodied performance as Tita Tita, a woman with her own issues but sweet and funny. She could have so easily been turned into a one-note role, but Ruiz brings her to life wondrously. The last component is Jao Mapa's Jose whose presence has many of the same qualities as Fernandez’s role, but with a particular charm. 

     We also get further insight into how Anton feels during these little scenes where Harry speaks in voiceover accompanied by a series of images on screen illustrating his point. Also, while most of the scenes are framed in a pretty yet straightforward way, the focal point, which in most films is usually somewhere on the side is quite often set dead-center resulting in a jolt to the senses. This is symbolic of the whole film, where the simplest things have the biggest impact. The story is triggered by illness and death, but in a simple turnaround, the film is not about these things. Instead, Yap uses Harry's death as a way to explore how Anton changes as a result of it—and not even the actual loss, as such, but in the recollection of lives lived with a purpose. There’s a warmth about Para Kang Papa Mo that you don’t feel in many films today. These are good characters, good people and Yap has made it easy to fall in love with them. Though the story involves a lot of highs and lows, going deep into grave material, the experience induces an instant smile that doesn’t fade for the duration perhaps because Harry and Anton try to remain outside of the commotion and therefore prevent the film’s mood from becoming severe. It’s never too much to bear, but also doesn’t let us get away without shedding a tear or having a few hearty laughs. That moment of sincere appreciation in the face of inevitable devastation is one that is repeated throughout the film. Para Kang Papa Mo is joyous in the places we're accustomed to misery. Yap has delivered a film whose idiosyncrasies are nothing short of charming and whose small story is eclipsed by its considerable heart.


Sound Design: Aian Louie Caro

Music By: Emerzon Texon

Editor: Vincent L. Asis

Editor: Arel Ebana

Production Designer: Gie Shock Jose

Written and Directed By: Darryl Yap


WRITTEN IN STONE

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Hindi Mo Ako Kayang Tapakan (V.H. Films, 1985) is one of those epic sagas that seem to have been made for television. The film by Maryo J. de los Reyes tells the rags-to-riches story of Doña Anastacia Hernandez Vda. de Tuazon. At nearly 80 years old, she heads one of the largest business conglomerations. Hindi Mo Ako Kayang Tapakan reflects on Tacing’s past and improbable rise to power from humble beginnings working her way to the top of a highly successful business empire. Revenge, ambition and power, complicated with an assortment of sexual entanglements - the formula is written in stone. Hindi Mo Ako Kayang Tapakan begins with a scene set for a flashback that takes up most of the film. Tacing's first appearance is one of the key moments in a film that resists being reduced to a handful of iconic images. Played with elegant authority by Charo Santos raging against her helplessness even while playing it up to manipulate others. With that much going for him, De Los Reyes does a first-rate job of establishing a solid sense of time and place. All of which makes Hindi Mo Ako Kayang Tapakan one of the more appealing examples of its special genre. Tacing works for Doña Consuelo Romero (Charito Solis) while her mother Josefina (Liza Lorena) leaves for Manila. She becomes romantically involved with Angelo (Albert Martinez). Tacing responds, ignoring the housekeeper's warning that You're stepping out of your class, and you'll get nothing but trouble. Which is precisely what she gets. Tacing swears vengeance for the wrongs inflicted on her. Be assured that before she is finished, Angelo will be begging for mercy and forgiveness. 

     Wanting to begin a new life for herself and her unborn child, Tacing moves to Manila aided by her best friend, Thelma (Chanda Romero). Poverty ridden, she is helped by Lt. Tom Baker (Michael de Mesa), a generous and equally ambitious American soldier and much later, Senator Ramon Tuazon (Robert Arevalo), who teaches her fundamentals of the trade. Tacing's business continues to expand and she goes into partnership with Ramon. Unfortunately, her private life doesn't run as smoothly. Of course, she must pay for her subsequent success. Tacing learns of a plot among her greedy children to oust her from control and seize her assets. Tacing tells them that she has changed her will, effectively cutting her own children out for their deceit and leaving everything to her grandchildren instead. Vivid impressions are retained of Dante Rivero’s work as trusted confidant, Atty. Teddy Velasco; Al Tantay as Nardo; Joel Torre as Rollan Tuazon and Gina Alajar as Josephine, Tacing’s eldest daughter who makes the most of her few appearances. There are literally scores of parts and bits, Rosemarie Gil is excellent as Monica, Ramon’s long suffering wife. Hindi Mo Ako Kayang Tapakan turns on the moment of Tacing’s first appearance and in an instant, her face freezes in dismay. De Los Reyes' film aches with regret, but its feelings are complicated by its protagonist through a quietly devastating final shot. His approach to the material is to, simply, not wrestle with it at all. Instead, he embraces its novelistic conceits. Hindi Mo Ako Kayang Tapakan all but weeps with a sense of emotional loss. 


Sound Engineer: Rudy Baldovino

Production Design: Butch Garcia, PDGP

Cinematography: Joe Batac, Jr., FSC

Music: Willy Cruz

Film Editor: Edgardo "Boy" Vinarao, FEGMP

Screenplay: Jake Tordesillas

Directed By: Maryo J. de los Reyes

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)