IMPORTANT AND ABSORBING

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Most movies succeed or fail because of the way they tell their stories and develop their characters. Balota (Cinemalaya, GMA Pictures, GMA Entertainment Group, 2024) does introduce remarkably three-dimensional characters, but it tells their story in an awfully off-hand sort of way. People who view movies only on this level and ask questions, are cutting themselves off from the unique experience offered by Balota. Loose ends in the plot would be important if the film depended on telling a story. It does not. The new experimental films and several of the unconventional, recent feature films don’t always make their points this simply. Instead, they draw the audience into a series of seemingly unrelated events and make their point by the way these events butt up against one another. The thread running through is that they’re events happening at the same time as the events in the plot. They establish a climate for the story. Emmy's (Marian Rivera) acts do not take place simply because they are invented. Writer/Director Kip F. Oebanda makes it clear they take place because they’re the sort of acts that are in the air. Almost all movies could take place anytime and nearly anywhere. A series of faceless heroes and heroines have their crisis, solve it, move on. There is a vague romantic subplot that surrounds Balota, but Oebanda leaves the details of the relationship up to interpretation. He isn’t concerned with plot mechanics, other than the central theme of Emmy's social conscience. He saw her as a human being manipulated and influenced by events.  

     Oebanda's camera ended up getting caught in the maelstrom of violence and what’s surprising is that his approach is so rare. Perhaps all directors secretly enjoy playing God, controlling events, dipping down into the screenplay. They don’t like their movies to give the impression they’re not running things. Oebanda's directorial posture in Balota is, however, frankly that of an observer. He is as surprised by the events in it as we are and he’s at pains to make them seem as random. He doesn’t immediately supply us with connections, but rather makes us work to piece them together and it isn’t until more than half an hour into the film that we realize how these characters’ lives will begin to intersect and create a narrative we can follow. Instead, he uses his opening scenes to establish a climate within which the movie will take place. This sort of direction requires more work from the audience and can offer greater rewards. In the conventional story framework of most movies, the audience can be completely passive, allowing events to unfold as if they made sense. Oebanda's film is one of several movies that knows these things about the movie audience. To understand the way Balota is put together is to understand something about the way events get transferred onto film. Conventional movie plots telegraph themselves because we know all the basic genres and typical characters. Rivera, maintaining her character, rushes through the chaos of the actual conflict, delivering a natural and phenomenal performance as Emmy. The violence becomes part of the story, yet it exists outside of it, as well. That’s Balota's message on the level of story. It can also be seen as Oebanda’s message on the level of technique. Balota is important and absorbing because of the way Oebanda weaves all the elements together. 


Sound Engineer: Albert Michael M. Idioma, Nicole Rosacay

Musical Composer: Emerzon Texon

Editor: Chuck Gutierrez

Production Designer: Eero Yves S. Francisco, PDCP

Director of Photography: Tey Clamor, LPS

Written and Directed By: Kip F. Oebanda

SILLY, CLASSY, ENJOYABLE

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Nympha (Regal Films, Inc., 1980) is a silly, classy, enjoyable erotic film that was an all-time box-office success. It’s not remotely significant enough to deserve that honor, but in terms of its genre, it’s very well done, filled with attractive and intriguing people, and scored with brittle, teasing music. It’s a relief to see a movie that returns to a certain amount of sexy sophistication. This tale of a young woman discovering herself was a headline-grabbing sensation when sex in films had gone mainstream. Its characters inhabit a world of wicker furniture, soft pastels, vaguely Victorian lingerie, backlighting, forests of potted plants and lots of diaphanous draperies shifting in the breeze. It’s a world totally devoid of any real content, of course and Nympha (Alma Moreno) is right at home in it. She’s the eldest daughter of Don Bernardo Monteverde (Johnny Wilson), a shipping magnate allegedly raped by one hundred young men. This experience propels her into a dizzying series of sexual encounters that range from the merely kinky to the truly bizarre. The screenplay from Toto Belano brought some class to the continuous bumping and grinding while Joey Gosiengfiao's direction shone the spotlight on the female star that gave the film much of its success. Nympha is executed with a patina of respectability. The cinematography takes advantage of the scenery, the dialogue is polished to the point of pretentiousness and there’s tact to the film’s atmosphere that definitely sets it apart from crasser approaches. This being said, much of the material feels ridiculous, offensive or hopelessly naïve by today’s standards, lending the film a veneer of sophistication, which if you looked a little closer doesn't ring true. If we were to be grown up about sex, then we must be as liberated as Nympha. 

     Gosiengfiao correctly understands that gymnastics and heavy breathing do not an erotic movie make. Carefully deployed clothing can, indeed, be more erotic than plain nudity. Gosiengfiao is a master of establishing situations. Nympha's rape, for example, is all the more effective because of its forbidden nature. And her encounter with Albert (Ricky Belmonte) is given a rather startling voyeuristic touch. The movie’s first hour or so is largely given over to the erotic awakening plot, but then Nympha comes under Marcial's (Alfie Anido) influence. She is intrigued at first, but with assurance comes experience and does it ever. Marcial delivers himself of several profoundly meaningless generalizations about finding oneself and attaining true freedom and then he introduces her to a series of photogenic situations. Marcial’s philosophy is frankly foolish, but Anido delivers it with obsessed conviction that the scenes become a parody and Nympha‘s comic undertones are preserved. What also makes the film work is Moreno's performance as Nympha. She projects a certain vulnerability that makes several of the scenes work. The performers in most skin flicks seem so impervious to ordinary mortal failings, so blasé in the face of the most outrageous sexual invention, that finally they just become cartoon characters. Moreno actually seems to be present in the film and as absorbed in its revelations as we are. She carries the film and at times almost seems like a visitor from another planet. Moreno is always shot with soft light and soft focus giving her a very tender appearance and it's not difficult at all to see why everyone in the film longs for her. It’s a relief, during a time of cynicism in which sex is supposed to sell anything, to find a skin flick that’s a lot better than it probably had to be.


Screenplay: Toto Belano

Director of Photography: Caloy Jacinto

Film Editor: Rogelio Salvador

Music: Jun Latonio

Production Designer: Danny Evangelista

Sound Supervision: Luis Reyes, Ramon Reyes

Directed By: Joey Gosiengfiao

HOOK AND FLAW

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     The concept of Boy Kaldag (VMX, BLVK Films, Pelikula Indiopendent, 2024) is undeniably clever. Size is both the film's hook and flaw, an amiable but ambling comedy that collapses under extended exposure. Thankfully, there is more to Boy Kaldag than just its one-dirty-joke premise. A prodigiously endowed young man builds a reputation around his singular natural talent. People will always want sex and a man with a giant penis might not think it’s that crazy to try and make some money with it. Benz Sangalang is well-cast and interesting as Dax. He has an easy-going, casual style that fits the material. If Boy Kaldag is more often touching than salacious, it's because Sangalang imbues his character with such a palpable sense of yearning and regret, you end up rooting for him. Dax, in a voice-over explains what didn’t need to be explained. As he talks about the way things used to be, the tediousness of Dax’s interior monologue becomes funny. He winks at his failure to recognize how good he actually has it, making the viewer respond more tenderly toward him. The secondary characters include Jayner Santos as Gorgeous in a lovely comic performance filled with world-weariness that I found refreshing and largely believable. A farce with sensibility both mordant and whimsical, Boy Kaldag delights in its phallic symbols. So exuberant as to be unafraid of looking juvenile, it revels in illustrating the pathetic circumstances of Dax, whose only solace is being well endowed. 

     In fact, Boy Kaldag is less interested in its conceit than it is with what drove Dax to prostitution, the emotional baggage and the questions of morality that accompany the profession, which makes it far more interesting than one about a guy with a tripod plowing his way through lonely and horny women. Dax, faintly reminiscent of Dirk Diggler, Mark Wahlberg's porn star from Boogie Nights (1997), a big, slightly confused man without the slightest trace of self-doubt on board, a temperament that not coincidentally, is absolutely imperative in the man-whore trade. Because, let's face it, most regular, thoughtful men, men of ideas, men with flaws, would have more than a little trouble getting it up and keeping it up. Boy Kaldag gets a lot of elements right, including the baby steps it takes into Dax's new side. It's rather a rueful look at the lengths to which one guy will go to capture a life that has gradually slipped away from him. Director Roman Perez Jr.'s interplay, his willingness to let the story gradually unfold and its disarming sensitivity helps elevate Boy Kaldag well above its gimmicky title.That something, unsurprisingly and as unsubtle as you might expect from Boy Kaldag, is sex. Dax is the meat and potatoes and it’s fascinating to watch him deal with different women. And that’s exactly where Boy Kaldag succeeds; when it stops pretending to be something more than it is, it gets back to guiltlessly pleasuring its audience.


Sound Design: Lamberto Casas Jr., Alex Tomboc

Music: Derek Margaja

Editor: Mai Calapardo

Production Designer: Mikey Red

Director of Photography: Rommel Sales, LPS

Screenplay: Ronald Perez

Directed By: Roman Perez Jr.

EVERYBODY HUSTLES

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     Everybody hustles, but in Monti Puno Parungao's The Escort (Lexuality Entertainment, Treemount Pictures, 2011) hustling (in the hard core sense of selling your body for sex) is a way of life. For all its depiction of lurid subject matter, The Escort also balances its heavy drama with a strong dose of romance. It's a precarious and potentially disastrous juggling act and one that The Escort pulls off with genuine flair. There was a time when most people didn't know men sold sex and didn't want to know. The Escort dramatizes the lifestyle at the same time it tells a cautionary tale. The viewer gets to meet the escorts while keeping a safe distance. The world of The Escort seems terribly real,  it even smells that way. Parungao does a good job of capturing the unsprung rhythm of the street. The characters form a loose-knit community at the mercy of strangers. They may spend hours together and not see one another for a week. Parungao shows Karlo’s encounters, one is an old man with peculiar tastes. Miko Pasamonte finds the right note for Karlo. He has plans and dreams, but vague ones and he's often sort of detached, maybe because his life is on hold in between tricks. Karlo has fallen into a lifestyle that offers him up during every waking moment for any stranger. He does it for money, but it pays so badly, he can't save up enough to pay his rent. 

      The basic thing that happens to Karlo is that he meets Yuri (Danniel Derramyo), a person entirely outside his experience. Yuri has a measure of humanity, so does Karlo. They come together because there is no other way to turn. Karlo and Yuri are castaways. The two young men have obvious affinities, but their banter also establishes some important differences. They go their own way, live their own lives, become two of the permanent inhabitants of our imagination. They exist apart from the movie, outside of it. The Escort is about their mutual self-discovery, about the process that took place as they learned to know each other. Karlo's  journey toward actual love—tenderness, encouragement—gives the film its wrenching climax. Parungao's work with his cast is matched by an assured visual sense benefiting enormously from the richly textured images achieved on a low-budget, location-heavy shoot. The Escort largely builds from its personality and atmosphere to effectively establish characters through the portrayal of emotion and the human condition, which are physically reflected in their settings. Colliding hope with despair as the intersecting crossroads of Karlo and Yuri coexist in a contemporary world of excess and absurdity normalized amidst the chaos of it all while dismantling social boundaries. Luring the viewer with its seductive mixture of ambiguity, realism and gritty subtext while rendering a deeply sympathetic view of wayward lives, the film delivers a lingering perspective on the impact of meaningful relationships in the ever-alienating experience of human existence.


Production Designer: Vicente Mendoza

Cinematography: Ruel Galero, Moni Puno Parungao

Edited By: Monti Puno Parungao

Musical Scoring: Monti Puno Parungao

Screenplay: Lex Bonife

Directed By: Monti Puno Parungao

FOREBODING DREAD

Posted by Jojo Devera ,


     A film driven by atmosphere and a sense of foreboding dread, Pasahero (Viva Films, JPHILX, 2024)  proves that even though you may think you are done with the past, the past isn’t always necessarily done with you. There’s very little surprise to the movie, as Juvy Galamiton’s screenplay pretty much lays out just who is stalking the six passengers on the last trip of an MMR train and what the apparition’s ultimate intent is rather early on. Instead, director Roman Perez Jr. makes this an affair that’s a bit more about creating a palpable mood filled with tension and dreamlike uncertainty, where viewers are never quite sure just what is fantasy and what is reality. The film’s ensemble of actors all do a wondrous job bringing a sense of gravitas to the picture. Bea Binene (Angel) and Louise delos Reyes (Michelle) give intriguing performances, especially the former, who plays her role with an indescribable, transcendental quality. The mystery driving the haunting is so cold-blooded and practical that you won’t even think twice about its motivation. The movie is told with style. It goes without saying that style is the most important single element in every ghost story, since without it even the most ominous events disintegrate into silliness. And Pasahero, is aware that if characters talk too much they disperse the tension, adopting a very economical story-telling approach. Dialogue comes in straightforward sentences. Background is provided without distracting from the story. Characters are established with quick, subtle strokes. 

     Pasahero adds an extra layer through it’s sense of melancholy. Angel’s personal grief gives a stronger emotional link between her and the spirit - she sympathizes with the dead by trying to help solve their issues so they can be at peace. In lesser films, the heroine simply gets frightened and wants to stop the ghost in order to save her own skin. There’s a sense of wrongness throughout Perez’s film. It feels like a race against time as Angel tries to expose the crime before becoming the next victim. While real life violence provides the aura of dread that pervades the movie, the restraint shown by Perez is just as responsible for the effectiveness of the tale. Instead of inundating us with over-the-top hijinks, he bides his time before introducing the ghostly happenings - a weird noise here, a horrifying vision there - which provides a satisfyingly ominous atmosphere. Perez shot Pasahero in a manner that puts the viewer constantly on edge, with lots of odd angles, perspectives and sound design. Extremely stylish in execution, it’s convincing in a way that few ghost stories are — not in the least because the crime at the bottom of the haunting is particularly nasty. The images we create in our heads to explain bumps in the night as well as everything else horrifying are far more frightening than anything a director can put on screen. Even stripped of the ethereal elements, Pasahero would have made for a compelling murder-mystery, but the supernatural sheen only adds to its power and unexpected poignancy. 


Sound Designer: Lamberto Casas Jr., Alex Tomboc

Musical Director: Dek Margaja

Editor: Aaron Alegre

Production Design: JC Catiggay

Director of Photography: Neil Bion

Screenplay: Juvy Galamiton

Directed By: Roman Perez, Jr.


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