SARI-SARING SINENG PINOY

     The astute new thriller Kamadora (Viva Films, 2023) is one of those rare movies that reinforce their themes with an insinuating, sustained tone. Its atmosphere becomes a stylistic precondition for the impulse to surrender. As a rule, filmmaker Roman Perez, Jr.'s control is so unerring that the occasional miscalculations seem unusually disruptive. A director skillful enough to impose a style can also lull you into a false sense of security. Caught up in the unfolding narrative, you forget that everyone is subject to lapses of judgment and concentration. Moreover, it's clear that sexual heat fuels the plot, inspiring a breakdown of inhibitions that transcends mere fornication. In this context, Perez would probably be justified in wallowing much more graphically in sex acts than he chooses to. He prefers to make his points incisively. Perez employs a narrative device that allows Ica to share her confessions with the audience. Kamadora is filled with a number of unusually well written characters, superbly performed by a cast of comparatively new actors. Tiffany Grey's entrance announces that Ica is the film's center of power. Grey is an intriguing original. Slender, with hair down to her shoulders, the pitch in her voice gives a playful edge to the challenging dialogue. Even in Perez's devious scheme of things it would be preferable if Ica were encountered more often in situations with other characters. I don't think there's any aspect, sincere or treacherous that Grey couldn't embody if asked to. Her slight physical assertion and urgency are scarcely reassuring to begin with. She obviously means trouble, but how much trouble?

     In retrospect, you understand why Perez feels impelled to play Ica's motives close to the vest. Still, it's a sneaky necessity that probably costs him a satisfying denouement and a certain amount of good will, particularly when viewers begin reflecting on the plot and discusses the twists and subterfuges. Perez can't achieve the emotional identification with Ica that comes naturally when dealing with Dave and other male characters. Victor Relosa is a man with certain arrogance to his speech, as if amused by his own intelligence. He successfully mixes both laconicism and innocence. Relosa’s got an impressive command of seemingly involuntary movement in his facial muscles that appears to reveal unguarded yearning and apprehension. He also has the working actor's versatility. His Dave is a straight leading man with a character actor's particularity. Kamadora has proved an absorbing, tangy entertainment. One may feel a trifle had, but there's little cause for rejection. Moreover, the virtues linger along with the nagging questions: cunning lines of dialogue; evocative setting and crisp, supple imagery; consistently sharp supporting roles and performances. Jun Jun Quintana is startingly effective as Roman, Ica's abusive policeman lover. Angie Castrence plays Aling Adeng who watches over Ica with a cheery but detached curiosity. Elora Españo's Monica is not on long, but what she does is very good. Perez falls short of a foolproof plot, nevertheless, he's got a lot to offer beginning with an intuitive appreciation of the look and atmosphere appropriate to an effective genre thriller.  More important than any of these individual contributions is Perez's easy command of his work as director. There's not a decision in the film that betrays that command, it doesn't look like a director's idea imposed on the characters. Instead it's a revelation of the way Ica sees herself and Dave and the outrageous situation they have feverishly worked themselves into.

Sound Engineer: Aian Louie Caro

Musical Director: Emerzon Texon

Editor: Aymer Alquinto

Screenplay: Ronald Perez

Production Designer: JC Catiggay

Director of Photography: Dino S. Placino

Directed By: Roman Perez, Jr.

     Jason Paul Laxamana's Baby Boy Baby Girl (Viva Films, Ninuno Media, 2023) retains a stylish reserve that would not seem conducive to strong passions. However, the unexpected element here is humor and Laxamana's film has a lot of measured wit. The pathos surrounding Josie (Kylie Verzosa) is in the least bit obscured by Laxamana's predilection for understatement. Baby Boy Baby Girl bottles Josie's inter-personal tensions and slowly simmers them to boil, escalating each situation by just the right amount until the film’s ultimate crescendo and final punchline. The result is a painfully funny comedy that feels universally relatable in its depiction of awkward dynamics very specific to Josie’s experience. Laxamana's approach would have not been nearly as effective were it not for Verzosa’s exquisite performance. Every piercing stare, facial muscle twitch and heightened voice conveys outrage hidden behind her feigned smile. Josie’s interactions with Seb (Marco Gumabao) have its own rhythm and emotional arc. With Seb, there’s a slow suspense of whether or not they will continue their arrangement. Seb needles Josie in front of others and cutting through her facade with direct questions. Their run-ins feel like the highs to their lows, an unsettling roller coaster ride that’s set to crash before long.  

     Baby Boy Baby Girl is a tightly wound movie, with almost every minute dedicated to some kind of moment of strife. The screenplay is packed with several rounds of fast-talking in-fighting, but that rapid fire pacing feeds the contrast between those scenes and the movie’s moments of awkward silence, which become even more painful to watch. As a team, Verzosa and Gumabao share a spot-on sense of comedic timing, knowing just when to throw in the next cutting remark, eye roll, or fake smile. They hit the bullseye each and every time, all the way to the end. Laxamana piles on the complications with the clockwork precision of a Rube Goldberg machine, but never at the service of genuine emotions. When Josie surrenders to the sheer helplessness of being completely overwhelmed, a moment that perhaps lands with more impact after collective isolation. Baby Boy Baby Girl knows that feeling and another important one besides: that in the midst of nonstop stress and distraction, a moment of quiet, unprompted tenderness can make all the difference. The whirling energy surrounding Josie in her hour of panic is what makes the film so engaging. She is the eye of the hurricane, albeit not a calm one by any means.

Sound Engineer: Aian Louie Caro 

Musical Director: Pau Protacio

Editor: Chrisel Desuasido

Production Designer: Lara Mustiola Magbanua

Director of Photography: Rommel Andreo Sales

Written and Directed by: Jason Paul Laxamana

     A thriller conjured out of suppressed fears, Joselito Altarejos' Pamilya sa Dilim (ADCC Productions, 2076 Kolektib, 2023) is a concentration of ecstasy and violence devised in a perfect union of ideological paradox and existential instability. Through a combination of headstrong ambition and opportunistic abandon, Altarejos managed to tap this mother lode of disquietude. The basic premise is so thunderously resonant that it’s easy to overlook the skill with which Altarejos has gotten to its dramatic turning point. With simmering tensions and fractured psyches, Altarejos presented an ideal platform for his cast to deliver some of the finest work of their careers. Allen Dizon is fascinating, yet vulnerable as Eddie Boy, but it’s Laurice Guillen’s complex portrayal of Mamang Anita, the matriarch of the Medialdea family, that remains to be the film’s most captivating element. Her ability to mine gravitas may have brought her closer to the core of the movie than her celebrated co-stars could reach. Guillen's showcase scene and the film’s, comes when she recalls how her husband met his fate then all of a sudden the figures in her story appear and begin speaking their parts. From watching her past unfold Mamang Anita exits the shot and then joins the ghostly tableau, she has come unstuck in time. Memory is a selection of images, some elusive, others imprinted indelibly on the brain. In this spectral pageant, Mamang Anita shows us the pain of her memories and misfortune. This moment of attenuated stillness is pure cinema, and so is the eruption that follows. 

     Inday (Boo Originals, EpicMedia, 2018) is a scary movie with teeth, not just blood and entrails -- a gripping piece of work that jangles your nerves without leaving your brain hanging. And so, for a change, you emerge feeling energized and exhilarated rather than enervated or merely queasy. Recently faddish torture-and-gore pictures zero in on anatomical violation at the expense of more resonant archetypal terrors, those things that go bump in the long, dark night. Inday is a breathless descent into chaos and madness. What follows is a sensationally entertaining escalation of frights, the kind that make you wiggle and squirm as you marvel at the filmmaker's cunning and craft. What helps make Inday one of the better horror entertainment is how director Lawrence Fajardo and screenwriter John Bedia mess with our heads long before the monster does simply by tapping into our most primitive fears. Working with resourceful cinematographer Albert Banzon, Fajardo carves out an increasingly unsettling and claustrophobic world by keeping the lights down. The ingenious palette adds to the spooky beauty of the otherworldly setting. The scream of a high-pitched voice poised to believe, as we have so many times before, that this female cry is one of terror. 

     The sound, used to both reaffirm and then immediately invert our sense of social gender norms, provides a starting point to an ultimately blood-soaked film where we get to be petrified. Almost immediately in a moment of induced panic, hysteria festers among hacienda worker Berto (Milton Dionzon), his wife Almira (Renne Posecion) and son Kiko (Neil Bagasi). Yet, unlike many horror films where the victims are passive or weak, they can only turn toward themselves. And while Berto is scared (and rightly so), he desperately attempts to face the oppressive atmosphere enveloping them. A run in the woods is reminiscent of Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991), its very nature is suggestive of what is to come later. Fajardo's characters do panic and make foolish choices after the first attack by the flesh-eating Master, their frenzy is trapped and overcome. We see reflections, variations, and gradations of ourselves in Inday. While it’s somewhat surprising that Fajardo’s film still feels startlingly fresh due to its cast of relative unknowns, one can only hope that directors and producers increasingly capitalize on these talented actors—in all their glory.

Directed By: Lawrence Fajardo

Screenplay: John Bedia

Director of Photography: Albert Banzon

Editor: Lawrence Fajardo

Musical Scorer: Peter Legaste

Sound Engineer: Alex Tomboc, Aian Caro

     Filmmaker Roman Perez Jr. is a genuine obsessive who directs like an avant-garde butcher. His films play off a central juxtaposition: At the same time his characters are behaving like pigs, his style is one of luxuriously controlled aestheticism. On one level you can describe the movie simply in terms of the characters and the lustful and unspeakable things they do to one another. On another level, there is no end to the ideas stirred up by this movie. Between, there lies a simple tale of adultery, jealousy and revenge. The artifice is a great part of the work's effectiveness. Perez's stroke of genius is to create a self-consciously false world peopled with character types who slowly become real enough to evoke pain and sadness. The dark comic moments in Litsoneras (Viva Films, 2023) are rare, but they do sneak in at unexpected times. Things take a turn for the worse when Minerva (Jamilla Obispo), with uncoy vigor, takes a lover right under her husband Eloy's (Joko DIaz) nose. Jonas (Victor Relosa) exhanges glances with Minerva and soon, her daughter Elria (Yen Durano) catches them making love. Their unabashedly revealed sexual adventure continues. Elria gains her revenge by having sex with Jonas. Eloy gets wind of the affair and the battle lines are drawn. If Litsoneras were any less explicit, that moral battle would certainly have been diminished.