Sineng Pambansa 2013: Veterans, politics, sex (Part 1)

By Randy Renier I. Espinoza

Sineng Pambansa 2013 set out to be an auspicious film festival that gathered some of the big-named directors in the country, hence its subtitle “All Masters Edition.” Whether the project turned out to be a success is a subject of another discussion. What matters for now is the Filipino moviegoers got treated to an eclectic lineup of celluloid offerings from the country’s seasoned filmmakers, especially those who have been away from the limelight for a long time.

The National Film Festival dished out a buffet of varying themes, genres, and styles. Love, in all its forms and varieties, permeates most of the films. Lihis exalts homosexual love. Bamboo Flowers explores love in its different forms:  filial, platonic, romantic. Tinik talks about a love that sacrifices and a love that grows. Badil essays a dutiful love for a father and family "honor," while Sonata trumpets renewed love for life. Love can also degenerate into its earthly permutation:  sex. It’s showcased in Otso. And it takes a perverted form in Lihis and Tinik, where a male straddles between heterosexual and homosexual intercourses. A three-way or a four-way affair is in order:  A man shared by a woman and another man in Lihis and Tinik; then a woman shared by three men and a man shared by two women in Otso.

Politics is also a subject that some of the filmmakers touch upon, if not focus on. Otso perfunctorily employs local elections in Manila as a social backdrop. Most of Lihis is situated in the Martial Law era, amid armed struggle of the guerilla forces against the government. Badil begins and ends with the elections in the countryside as its milieu. The festival is not complete without tackling homosexuality, a theme that has attracted much interest in recent years. Lihis and Tinik offer parallel narratives. Both depict ménage a trios, but while homosexual love is consummated in the former film, it is only discovered after the loved one has passed away in the latter.

Veteran actors figure in this motley of themes, as patriarchs, matriarchs, divas, and whatnot. Dick Israel’s patriarch in Badil commandeers viewers’ attention. Rustica Carpio turns in a poignant portrayal in Ano Ang Kulay ng mga Nakalimutang Pangarap? Cherie Gil shines as a fallen opera star in Sonata. Raquel Villavicencio’s low-key performance stands out amid the excesses of Lihis. Anita Linda and Vangie Labalan compensate for Otso’s deficiencies. The innate talent of actors Bembol Roco and Spanky Manikan, however, are not enough to uplift Tinik and Bamboo Flowers, respectively.

Bamboo Flowers

Director:  Mario J. Delos Reyes

Cast:  Mylene Dizon, Irma Adlawan, Ruhu Madrid, Max Collins, Orlando Sol, Spanky Manikan

Set in Bohol, the film tells the stories of disparate characters: a boy hoping for a better life for his grandfather and his mother; a girl who works as a chambermaid in a resort, hoping to find luck abroad; a man who’s not bright enough to finish his studies and returns to his family to tend to their farm; a widowed mother and her child who relocate from Manila. The grandfather dies at the end, but everybody gets their happy endings:  the boy’s singing talent gets discovered; the girl abandons her worldly ambitions and settles with a simple farm life with her true love; the mother comes to grips with the loss of her husband and her son slowly gets settled in and finds new friends.

Nothing wrong with happy endings, but it’s just too optimistic and too good to be true. The screenplay is, at best, too cutesy; and at worst, too melodramatic. The biggest “OA” part is where the student-turned-farmer, after getting into a heated confrontation with his sister who belittles him, gets hysterical and goes berserk, runs into the banana grove, and hits and trounces the bamboo plants, while repeatedly yelling he deserves to die. Another thing, the chambermaid girl is miscast. She has the features of an “it girl,” a total package, who speaks fluent English, which renders unrealistic the proposition that a girl this good will not be successful and will just be content being a housewife to his farmer boyfriend.

The film’s inherent weaknesses and the lackluster performance of the rest of the cast fail to bring out the best  in the otherwise talented Mylene Dizon, Irma Adlawan, and Spanky Manikan.

RATING: 5.5/10

Lihis

Director: Joel Lamangan

Cast: Jake Cuenca, Joem Bascon, Lovi Poe, Isabelle Daza, Glorida Diaz

Set in the Martial Law era, this is a tale of homosexual love between two guerilla fighters that endure the odds:  a spoiled woman who seeks to tear them apart and the society that forbids the kind of love that they have. Together, they fight for their love and for the liberation of the people from tyranny. Love and war. Homosexuality and revolution. Powerful themes that make a great movie. When a movie aspires to be the Filipino Brokeback Mountain and a political film at the same time, a tight script should warrant commingling such themes. Contrivances in the movie, however, relegate political struggle to just a mere backdrop against which to situate a gay story, apparently with the hope of lending social relevance to it.

The film is plagued with second-rate production design and a script that defies logic and common sense. The setting is Martial Law and you get a faucet that’s made of plastic. On their first meeting, the two gay protagonists already show dislike of each other, a bad blood that dissipates when Cesar (Cuenca) kisses Ador (Bascom) and they, after some fistfight, end up having sex. When Cecilia (Poe) joins the rebels, she gets introduced to Ador first of all and she hastily shows her liking for the latter. The two boys indulge in steamy sex with wild abandon in the wide expanse of a river, not mindful of getting caught by passersby. Cecilia actually sees them, and when the boys return to the rebel camp, she kisses Ador, pulls him into a hut and lures him into engaging in intercourse, all this after she has just caught Ador having sex with Cesar minutes ago. And then there’s a scene where Cecilia drops off a tricycle, she enters her home (during her short-lived marriage with Ador) and hears moans emanating from their room, she pushes the door ajar and she sees her husband and Cesar having sex, who apparently haven’t heard of the tricycle’s revving engine. These are just some of the forced elements that stretch the limit for suspension of disbelief.

There’s no problem with aspiring for a great story, but when elements get forced to the point of going against nature and reality, that’s when a well-intentioned work fails.

RATING:  5.5/10

Otso

Director: Elwood Perez

Cast: Vincent M. Tañada, Anita Linda, Vangie Labalan

The film follows a writer’s search for his dream indie script, which leads him to a make-believe story involving characters that populate and surround the apartment complex he’s staying at. Beginning in color for the first few minutes and shifting to black-and-white thereafter, the filmmaker’s artistic aspirations become evident. The narrative reaffirms this. It attempts at postmodernism, with its haphazard way of questioning truth and reality. The film is said to be a tribute to Anita Linda, but it fails to establish that and, if anything, just inserts Linda as an afterthought.

Perez deserves admiration for his attempt at avant-gardism. His concept is promising, but the execution seems lacking. He needs more talented people to realize his vision of an art film, foremost of which is a set of actors that will breathe life to his characters. His main actor fails in the film medium. He doesn’t command attention and elicit feeling. And the blurring/enhancing of his face sometimes distracts the audience from what’s happening. Support appearances from Anita Linda, Vangie Labanan, and Jun Urbano will not make up for the bland ensemble acting. With better actors in place, a tightened script could have made this a “fully realized art film.”

RATING:  6/10

Tinik

Director:  Romy Suzara

Cast:  Ricardo Cepeda, Lemuel Pelayo

A story about a gay couturier (Cepeda) who finds new love. The former takes the latter under his wing. A special relationship develops until the man begins a tryst with his gay lover’s favorite female model. It is too late when the man realizes his love for his benefactor, who has loved him dearly.

It is clear from the opening scenes what the movie will be:  an epic fail. The direction by Suzara, who had a long hiatus from showbiz, seems amateurish. The script, to begin with, is mediocre. The cringe-worthy dialogues and sequences are akin to those of the subpar sexy movies produced by Seiko Films, just a notch better. Imagine the young gay protagonist being told by his father, pontificating about why a young man gets circumcised, “Anak, ang ari ng lalake ay isang sandata na nakapagpapaligaya sa mga babae,” as the boy's mother (Angeli Bayani) serves their meal and waits on them, with an embarrassed and bewildered look on her face. Even veteran actor Bembol Rocco gets weighed down by his vapid speaking lines. Production design is even worse. Imagine a scene set in 1975 in Nueva Ecija, where the father is in the river, cleaning his jeep that looks like the modern variety that plies today’s streets, and is using a pail and a dipper made of plastic. In the ‘70s, the jeeps looked different and people in the provinces used recycled containers of biscuits and crude oil as pails and dippers.

Cepeda fails to effectively internalize his gay role, thus producing a one-dimensional character, devoid of depth and believability. He just doesn't look, act, and sound gay in many scenes. His not-so-gayish interpretation makes for an inconsistency in characterization, as the young protaganist is portrayed as openly effeminate. The others don’t help much in the acting department, save a brief appearance by Bayani.

RATING:  3/10

(NOTE:  This review does not include Eman, Lauriana, and Isang Tag-araw ni Twinkle.)


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