For a long spell, Law Fajardo’s Scorpio Nights 3 (Viva Films, Pelikulaw, 2022) emits a bitterly sensual charge. The film’s unexpected intrigue is partly a matter of context. In the 1980s, when Peque Gallaga was the purveyor of erotic dramas like Scorpio Nights and Unfaithful Wife, even Scorpio Nights 3’s strongest sections might have been taken for granted. But in 2022, with sex as a viable subject, the film initially feels dangerous, even personal. Gallaga’s ’80s cinema pushed everything, from the characters’ emotions to the filmmaker’s formalism in a manner that was fashionable to Philippine cinema at the time. In Scorpio Nights 3, however, Fajardo initially aims for a more strongly implicative aura in the key of a Claude Chabrol thriller, in which every line of dialogue is freighted with potential subtext, blurring our understanding of the rules of the game that we’re watching unfold. The plot is simple, even consciously reductive. This texture cuts to the heart of why Scorpio Nights 3 is initially so head-spinning, as its erotic-thriller stylization, the menacingly soft, feverish colors mesh unexpectedly with a specific and refreshingly adult examination of sexual relationship. Fajardo and screenwriter Roy Iglesias are willing to follow this relationship beyond the barriers of political correctness. Mark Anthony Fernandez (Drake) and Christine Bermas (Pinay) have suggestively conflicting ways of volleying their dialogue back and forth. Bermas, a rising ingenue looking to make her mark, wrings every line for every ounce of aggression it can yield, while Fernandez, a longtime survivor of the up-and-down fame game throws his lines away doing what he’s known for and lets Drake's anger simmer under the surface, barely allowing it to slip through until he is ready then that anger feels raw and almost feral. Ultimately, though, Scorpio Nights 3 is revealed to be Drake’s movie and there’s a suggestion of sexism to it. Astonishingly, Matthew (Gold Aceron), the upstairs neighbor doesn't intensify the relationship at the center of the film, as he appears to exist in his own orbit. Shots are more problematic that voyeurism comes into play. Frequently the camera settles on Pinay as she sleeps, vulnerable and unaware of its gaze. And there are Pinay's sex scenes, most curious for how clinical they are. The focus is almost anatomical, largely on what parts are where. For all their explicitness, they reveal nothing about the emotional or intellectual aspects of the sexuality on display.
These lengthy sequences also remove all the mystery from Drake and Pinay’s relationship. And it’s an irony of the movies that romances work best when we as viewers don’t experience everything between the couple on the screen. This is especially true when the sex scenes are at once extremely revealing (in terms of physicality) and yet wholly unenlightening (in terms of psychology or anything else). There is a shot that indicates Fajardo is aware of these complications. At one point a close-up pans along Pinay’s naked body and just as we’re about to write it off as another moment of exploitation, it’s a touch that speaks directly to the movie’s slippery sense of perspective. Fernandez and Bermas keep their characters' ultimate motivations and feelings close to the vest. The way they navigate those moments keep viewers on their toes, second-guessing their predictions through to the end. Because even when everything appears obvious, it is not long before you begin to realize, things may not be what they seem. This is what makes Fajardo's mystery work. That and the fact he enjoys making his characters and audience sit in the mess their actions have caused. He isn't simply content to have it cleared up in a one-minute dialogue, he would rather have everyone take stock in how they got to this point and what it means for the future. What is abundant in good erotic thrillers is the plunge into formal and narrative insanity that utilizes lurid tropes as symbols for ordinary romantic and sexual crises. Instead, Scorpio Nights 3 becomes crude in all the wrong ways. Pinay is forgotten by the filmmakers, while Drake is put through a series of impersonal genre-movie exertions. When the third act hits, it begins moving faster than necessary to wrap up the story. This leads to a break in the tension Fajardo had spent time building. This can be a bit jarring, but the interesting way it concludes feels less like a catharsis than a half-hearted gesture committed by a promising film that lost its way.
Directed By: Law Fajardo
Screenplay: Roy Iglesias
Director of Photography: Joshua Reyles
Production Design: Lawrence Fajardo, Ian Traifalgar
Editor: Lawrence Fajardo
Musical Scoring: Peter Legaste
Sound Design: Lamberto A. Casas, Jr., Alexis Tomboc
