REVIEW: ‘Transit’: Not just another OFW movie

By Randy Renier I. Espinoza

A discussion on the representation of Filipino migrant workers in film is not complete without referencing Anak, probably the quintessential OFW movie. Other films like Caregiver, A Mother’s Story, and The Flor Contemplacion Story are also worth mentioning. Along comes Transit, a courageous film trudging a new trail on an already-familiar terrain:  the Filipino diaspora.

Helmed by young filmmaker Hannah Espia, Transit takes its viewers to Israel and tells the stories of five Filipinos living in constant agitation and anxiety. Janet (Irma Adlawan) and Moises (Ping Medina) are siblings with expired working visas. Yael (Jasmine Curtis) is Janet’s daughter sired by a former Israeli lover. Joshua (Marc Justine Alvarez) is Moises’ son with a former Pinay girlfriend who left them to marry an Israeli. Joshua stays with Janet and Yael in a cramped apartment while Moises works as a stay-in caregiver. Tina (Mercedes Cabral) is a newcomer who stays with them temporarily while she

tries to find employment. Janet is always watchful, making sure Joshua is hidden from authorities, be it with a shawl or in the safety of their abode. She forbids Yael from straying away from the apartment and tells her that she’s not Israeli and that new laws might result in her deportation. Meanwhile, the government has passed a new law that will deport children of foreign laborers who are less than 5 years old. Tension rises when Joshua gets caught and ordered for deportation.

Nothing seems extraordinary about the story, but the way it is told deviates from the formula that informs most OFW movies. Unlike the latter that tends to focus on one protagonist, usually the lead star, the film treats the stories of the five characters with equal importance and then weaves them into a coherent narrative. It repeats some scenes from the five sub-stories and inserts and interlaces them into each sub-story, apparently serving as threads that hold these individual stories together, thus forming a quilt of related and convergent stories. Cinematography is resplendent, capturing the distinct atmosphere of the locale. Music is appropriate, evoking the pathos whenever needed. Not overly scored to elicit melodrama, but just right to heighten the somber mood.

There are one or two scenes where Janet goes ballistic and resorts to hysterics, but overall the film is quiet, relying on the lighting and the music to set the mood and tempo. There are many crying scenes, but not staged in a grand manner that mainstream productions would usually opt for. Conflicts unravel not through noisy confrontations, but through conversations and actions. Their woes are shown not through inflictions, but are narrated and etched on their faces and implied by their movements. There is no vilification of Israel, the Jews and their laws, but just an acceptance of the status quo:  that their unstable life in Israel is better off than a miserable existence back home. Children like Joshua and Yael may get deported, but their heart will remain in Israel. Yael may be half-Filipino, as what her mother constantly instills in her, but her allegiance is with the land where she was born and the people she grew up with. The final scene, the interminable waiting at the airport’s luggage area, highlights and punctuates the film’s message.

Irma Adlawan’s overall performance is compelling, although she has the tendency to lose restraint in some heavy scenes that require her character to raise her voice. Ping Media is in fine form, and Jasmine Curtis’s subtle and controlled acting will put to shame some of ABS-CBN’s and GMA’s female young stars. Mercedes Cabral’s presence here is a notch different from most of her undertakings. There’s a certain sincerity to her characterization. Marc Justine Alvarez delivers a performance that is natural and endearing. All the actors, except for Cabral, have Hebrew speaking lines, especially Alvarez and Curtis, who mainly use Hebrew. The flair with which they are able to deliver their lines in a foreign language deserves commendation.

Israel may not be as familiar to Filipinos as Hong Kong, Singapore, and the U.S. are, but Transit seeks to give voices to Filipinos who toil on this side of the world. And it does so by way of a grand narrative, narrated from the perspectives of five individuals whose tales share the same motif: that of survival and hope. The story may be a plea to the Israeli government to be more lenient with their immigration laws, but it also resonates a message of concern to the Philippine government:  what gives rise to the Filipino diaspora, why many Filipinos are leaving their homeland. But the film’s achievement does not consist in telling its story and putting its message across, for many OFW movies before have equally done so. Its success lies, apart from its technical excellence, in its storytelling, the way it describes the plight of seemingly ordinary people in a manner that is not contrived and clichéd.

Winner of many awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, in its category at the 2013 Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival, Transit has just been chosen by a special committee of the Film Academy of the Philippines as the country’s official entry to the Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Language Film category. With the maturity and the polish with which she created her first full-length feature film, Espia ranks as one of the few young talented filmmakers that is expected to make a dent on Philippine Indie Cinema.

RATING:  9.5/10

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