TIME PASSING

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     The most immediate sensation conjured by Haplos (Mirick Films International, 1982) is that of time passing. Director Antonio Jose Perez's decision to shoot in a boxy 1.33:1 aspect ratio, enhances the film’s dreamlike tone. Haplos asks its viewers to experience and ponder rather than bouncing to beats that they're used to, while challenging and asking its audience to explore the space, mood and story being told. It wants you to feel rather than expect to be entertained or enlightened. For some, that will be too big a task, especially as the film's scant narrative ponders huge themes of fate, legacy and relationships rather than actually answering them. Perez's presence looms large, becoming more decisive as Haplos reaches the hour mark. Before then, he strikes up a particularly potent symmetry with Auring (Rio Locsin), using minimal movement or dialogue to create striking, resting images and allowing her the time to convey something that she does in a patient but affecting manner. Then, with half an hour left, Perez grabs a hold of the film and whiplashes it in a variety of directions that are, in the moment, perplexing. So much so that by the film's conclusion you know that you've felt something. You won't actually be able to fully explain what you experienced, but it definitely stays with you.

     There's really no discernible difference (that I could see, anyway) between the DVD and this high definition release. It's obvious that the transfer is darker with a much more clearly apparent grain field, but I now tend to think that the previous DVD may have some brightness boosting applied, since I'm considerably more pleased by the overall look of the palette on this new release, especially with regard to flesh tones. Those who have never seen Haplos in theaters or home video may be surprised at the texture that is clearly on display and while there's occasional chunkiness, compression regimen handles the frequently heavy grain rather well. There's a noticeable uptick in clarity in the most brightly lit outdoor sequences, notably some of the daytime scenes. Restoration efforts have delivered elements with no discernible damage. There are no signs of degraining and artificial sharpening. Haplos features a fine sounding 2.0 stereo track. Dialogue and effects are rendered cleanly and clearly and the wonderfully atmospheric score by Jun Latonio sounds excellent, if just a trifle bright at times. Fidelity and dynamic range are fairly wide, especially when considering some of the more hyperbolic moments. While Perez’s actual method of delivery may not be scary, Haplos is sure to haunt those who open themselves up to the experience.

Musical Director: Jun Latonuio
Production Design: Laida Lim Perez
Editors: Ike Jarlego Jr., Edgar Jarlego, George Jarlego
Sound Engineer: Rolly Ruta
Director of Photography: Romeo Vitug
Screenplay: Ricardo Lee
Direction: Antonio Jose Perez

PAST AND PRESENT

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Textured by the substance of humanity, Brutal (Bancom Audiovision Corporation, 1980) dwells on the inelegance of real-life interactions. Written by Ricardo Lee and directed by Marilou Diaz-Abaya, the film’s capacity for vulnerability bonds its audience to the material. Typically, filmmakers will segue into a flashback in an obvious way so that viewers can instantly make the distinction between past and present. In the case of Brutal, Abaya chose to use unannounced flashbacks. Amy Austria's interminable numbness draws dimension from flashbacks to Monica’s past. The film’s enduring tragedy that the director never washes over with some artificial, cathartic resolution. Austria carries her wounds under the surface, and in the face of the internalized performance, she manages to evoke incredible emotion through her walled exterior. Rare expressions accompany Monica’s long silences, lending a sense of hope that the character may still heal, but Abaya seems more interested in exploring the pain of someone fully broken. Gina Alajar's Cynthia eviscerates in her scenes, particularly during an unexpected reunion with Monica that shows the wounds both characters have been carrying around. Monica can barely speak and refuses to connect, while Cynthia falls apart from regret. It’s an exchange where almost nothing of substance is said between them; but both characters seem incapable of communicating their pain in any graceful way. So much is touched by the actors in this moment, feeling their way through what will become the film’s most memorable scene. 

     Clara (Charo Santos) brings the same degree of sympathy to Monica’s mother, Aling Charing working alongside a brief appearance by Perla Bautista. Jay Ilagan also delivers a strong turn as Monica's abusive husband Tato, though his scenes are mostly in flashback. Brutal is a movie that pays careful attention to detail: Note how Cynthia quickly registers as a very different kind of woman from Monica. And watch through Austria’s ravishingly honest performance, how Monica becomes a shadow in the flashback scenes, wanting to reach out, but unable to take that step. The observations, nuances, and revelations all add up to a masterful narrative structure. Rather than following characters through the day-to-day transactions, Brutal interrupts the flow with its flashback structure. These flashbacks are interestingly integrated with a visual consistency and sharp delineation of actors in middle-distance beautifully shot by Manolo R. Abaya. The associations that link the past and the present are controlled by Monica's distant stares. 

     There is not a monumental shift or dramatic enhancements on display here, but the image is still very good. Viewers will note moderately sharper elements -  faces, clothes, trinkets around interiors, building exteriors, but there is not a major leap forward for textural detail, tactile definition or overall elemental clarity. Such are in evidence, but this not one of those leaps-and-bounds superior type images. Still, it holds to a perfectly filmic image with a few shots here and there that look a little processed and smooth, but it's difficult to tell where photographic characteristics stop and digital manipulation begins. The color grading brings some tinkering and tweaking to the palette, offering the usual array of benefits, including deeper overall tones, more color authenticity and tonal subtlety, and at times a slightly grayer appearance. The image also benefits from general signs of improvement to whites (more brilliant) and blacks (deeper and more absorbing without crushing out details). Likely a victim of terribly uninteresting sound design, this soundtrack rarely leaves the comfort of the center channel. Dialogue is delivered adequately sometimes fighting with ambient noise that seems to come almost exclusively from the middle. Abaya keeps our minds constantly in gear by making us fill in the blanks she leaves behind. Brutal is the epitome of what makes film a unique medium: the ability to tell stories through moving pictures.


Screenplay: Ricardo Lee

Musical Director: George Canseco

Production Design: Don Escudero

Film Editors: Manolo R. Abaya, Mark Tarnate

Sound: Amang Sanchez

Director of Photography: Manolo R. Abaya

Directed By; Marilou Diaz-Abaya


INTRACTABLE ATTRACTION

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     McArthur C. Alejandre's Silip sa Apoy (Viva Films, 2022) knows how much we enjoy seeing a character work boldly outside the rules. We keep waiting for the movie to lose its nerve and it never does. Working with Viva Films, which also produced My Husband, My Lover the year before, Alejandre cast Angeli Khang, who scuttled around various projects most notably as Alexa in Lawrence Fajardo’s Mahjong Nights. In a marvelous opening punctuated by Khang's face, Emma is an obstinate seductress of classic noir displaced in an erotic thriller. She's adept at thinking on her feet, weaponizing sexuality and manipulating simple-minded men. However, throughout the story, the motive for this woman's life-changing evasion is traced back to her husband Ben's (Sid Lucero) violence. He hits her, she acts shocked and hurt, but the surprise quickly melts into performative quiet. Khang keeps us at a distance, letting us guess how much the domestic altercation's indignancy shook the character. In any case, her following actions are swift and oriented around a straightforward impulse. It's difficult to parse out what actions are organic and what behaviors are calculated measures. 

     Emma makes love for Ben's horny amusement. She's in a moment of intimate pause that's only for us, the camera and the audience. There's no similar instant for contemplation in the ensuing narrative, seeing as Emma is constantly on the alert, seducing and setting the pieces on her mental chessboard that will result in a most astonishing checkmate. For her part, Khang is brilliant at this kind of opaque character construction. That's what attracts men in the film to her Emma. She feels impenetrable, a challenging impossibility that harkens back to how audiences regarded bigger-than-life movie stars. She's out of this world, but instead of alienation, this personal quality produces intractable attraction. Consider the seduction of her lover, Alfred (Paolo Gumabao). Cocksure and touched by a hint of self-aggrandizing intoxication, he never quite catches on to the full depth of Emma's deception. The way she does it is effortless, she tosses off her commands, aloof but never completely uninvested. The femme fatale never hides her contempt for the lesser creatures at her feet, becoming all the more eager to get a sign of unachievable approval. All that, and there's the way she moves. Khang embodies a physical demeanor characterized by great confidence that it's difficult to regard her as a sexual object. Alejandre deserves plenty of plaudits too. Ricky Lee’s screenplay is taut and gripping revealing devastating surprises along the way.


Sound Engineer: Immanuel Veroba

Musical Director: Von de Guzman

Production Designer: Ericson Navarro

Editor: Benjo Ferrer

Director of Photography: Daniel "Toto" Uy

Screenplay: Ricky Lee

Directed By: MacArthur C. Alejandre

FRONT AND CENTER

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Loneliness and independence aren't opposites but twins, gemini states of being that can give even the shyest among us, courage to stride forth. Yet Maryo J. delos Reyes and Nora Aunor, paired as director and lead actor for Naglalayag (Angora Films International, 2004), capture this not-really-a paradox in a cerebral pas de deux, as if each has found an unspoken understanding in each other. Their seemingly disparate sensibilities - Delos Reyes's attention to craft and sense of decorum, Aunor's fortright crispiness, which serves as a fortress for her eggshell fragility - merge in this odd-couple picture. Naglalayag is about how fear of living is more paralyzing than fear of death. Its ending should seem sad, yet it's piercingly jubilant, like a celebratory cocktail with a complex, bittersweet finish. Delos Reyes heightens the film's tragedy by actively empathizing with all of his subjects, especially Dorinda, whose mild restlessness is treated with profound sensitivity. Aunor beautifully imbues Dorinda with a recognizable sense of discontent (she's not unhappy, per se, but she's quietly weary of middle-aged life doldrums), and Delos Reyes supports her performance with warm compositions and delicate close-ups, placing her perspective front and center. Aunor's eyes always seem to be giving her feelings away, and so every time she widens, lowers or shifts them there is a great deal of suspense.

     Naglalayag is a romance between Dorinda and Noah (Yul Servo), two people in search of an unnameable connection, and we warm to the way they find solace in each other. But the fleeting nature of this affair is its most golden element; it is romantic precisely because it can't last. In the end, Naglalayag is really a romance of the self, a celebration of the person you can become when someone else touches you deeply. We're all souvenirs of our own experiences, and what we take away from love affairs is sometimes of more value than what we gain when we try to wrest them into some ill-fitting frame of permanence. A kept memento is a sad thing, but a memory remains alive and supple forever. It's the flower you don't catch, the one you never crush by pressing it into a book. Dorinda's triumph in Naglalayag isn't a conquering of loneliness - some form of that will always be with her. Dorinda's victory is that she has said yes - not just to a younger man but to herself. Loneliness can't be cured, but it can change shape. What appealed to me in the idea of Naglalayag? Loneliness - a more common emotion than love, but we speak less about it. We are ashamed of it. We think perhaps that it shows a deficiency in ourselves. That if we were more attractive, more entertaining, and less ordinary, we would not be lonely.


Sound Engineers: Nestor Arvin Mutia, Angie Reyes

Editor: Jesus Navarro

Music: Gardy Labad

Production Designer: Randy Gamier

Director of Photography: Odyssey 'Odie' Flores

Screenplay: Irma Dimaranan

Directed By: Maryo J. delos Reyes

SLICK AND SILVERY

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     A hit-and-run lands a detective in more trouble than he could have ever imagined in A Hard Day (Viva Films, Inc., 2021), a thriller that finds director Law Fajardo handling a taut yet elaborately plotted narrative with control and near-faultless technical execution. Edmund Villon's (Dingdog Dantes) resourcefulness and resistance to intimidation makes us root for him, despite his professional conduct, and lack of moral fiber. In a morbid example of necessity being the mother of invention, Villon  hits upon a novel way of disposing the body in an extraordinary stunt sequence. With increased freneticism, Fajardo moves Villon relentlessly forward in the face of an obstacle course filled with pop-up hurdles and an occasional kick in the gut. Dantes’s disciplined performance ties all of A Hard Day’s inventions together, investing the film with visceral panic. He plays Villon as a henpecked nice guy, this delusion serving as a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

     Just about the time it seems Fajardo should soon be running on empty, he introduces a new threat, Lieutenant Ace Franco. Played by a spectacular John Arcilla adding a bespoke dash to the villainous picture, he slides into the story and soon engulfs it. Arcilla has a face that can freeze into a stone-cold slab of pure malice. Fajardo keeps the chaos moving at a breathless tempo. He's a remarkably fluid orchestrator of action kinetics, always springing his surprises a beat faster than one expects only to occasionally slow things down to prevent the viewer from acclimating to his quicksilver timing. An explosion is timed with nightmarish precision perhaps because Fajardo caps a phenomenal, self-consciously Hitchcockian set piece with an unexpected commonplace payoff. Throughout, the images are sleek and silvery informing the debauchery with an aura of impersonality. A Hard Day is ultimately a parody of self-entitlement, though the carnage dramatically registers. The filmmakers walks as many tightropes as Villon does, and one gratefully submits to their dexterity.


Directed By: Law Fajardo

Screenplay: Arlene Tamayo

Production Designer: Mark Sabas

Director of Photography: Rodolfo Aves Jr.

Edited By: Law Fajardo

Musical Score: Peter Legaste, Rephael Catap

Sound Engineers: Alex J. Tomboc, Pietro Marco S. Javier




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