I was immediately hooked when I saw the trailer to Peque Gallaga's first movie in six years. It featured a classic action sequence almost unique to Filipino Action movies: the bad guy and the good guy, played by Eddie Garcia and Ricky Davao. I laughed when I saw the obvious parody to the cheesy action films I had grown up with in my youth. In an interesting variation, they spin around wirework-style, and land together, with Garcia exclaiming that this isn't a normal Filipino Movie. Such is the tagline of Pinoy Blonde. After beating myself to a bloody pulp for not being able to see Mark Meily's La Visa Loca earlier this year, I had to see this film, at the very least as an act of contrition. Heh.Remember, that was just the trailer...
Does the movie with a tagline like that, accompanied by the familiar strains of Radioactive Sago Project's Astro live up to its promise? Is it really a movie unlike any other Filipino Movie?
In a way, yes. Pinoy Blonde is a strange movie, and for one it is definitely hard to conclusively classify. It's comedy, action, parody, romance, social commentary all mashed together into a strange concoction (that's the second time I've use that word this week!.) To describe this movie would be the same as describing the taste of an alien dish when you have a congested nose: you just can't- unless you say it tastes like chicken.
Real life uncle and nephew team Epi and Boy2 Quizon pair up as Andrew and Conrad Cunanan, two cousins who are ordered by their uncle (with over the top dramatic flair, no less!) to deliver a package in exchange for a bag. Both cousins are diehard fans of cinema in general; no less than five minutes into the movie and our two main protagonists are spewing quotes from popular mainstream cinema. One of them is a fan of Ishmael Bernal, the other, of Lino Brocka. Once they get underway, things start getting really weird.
Really weird.
...And the duo comes to know that they've bitten more than they could chew.
While they undertake this little journey of theirs, their active imaginations run wild and they enact scenes from their favorite movies, little cinematic fantasies swimming around in their impressionable heads. As the inevitable conclusion grows closer, things take a turn into the absurd as the finale tries to top off everything it has established.
Pinoy Blonde is so unconventional that it threatens to border unto the postmodern. Curiously, in emulating the mainstream films that it pays tribute to, either through didactic stretches of dialogue or through parody, it becomes something entirely different. From the standpoint of the Average Filipino Movie, the roles of the central characters are different. For example, Epi's character is certainly not the sort of person we would associate with a "hero" archetype (at least, on the surface:) we see none of the typical innocent naivete or the typical headstrong black and white idealism that we see in conventional Filipino male leads. Instead, we come to see a brash antihero with a penchant for fooling around with the ladies. There is, however, the idea that at heart, he really means well, and he's not really that unlikeable a guy.
Beneath the surface, however, these concepts are shown further within his character: his naivete when it comes to cinema is exposed when he confronts Ricky Davao's character. Also, his idealism on making the film of his dreams shines through to the end of the movie. He's a man who appreciates sentimentality. It's probably why he likes Brocka. It's like the old stuff in a different, fresh flavor, and it somehow works in this context.
The characters in this film, as amalgamated as they may seem, can also be seen as symbols or devices to get the film's point across. What the film's ultimate point is, however, is debatable - and that may be its greatest failing. However, one could argue that it could be that the point of the movie is the movie itself; indeed, Pinoy Blonde is self referential, with various alludes to Filipino Culture. I honestly can't see foreign audiences getting as much from this film as we could - it's flavor is still distinctly Filipino.
Most notably, Filipino Cinema fans would likely get the meaning of two scenes in the film that were made to look like old Filipino films from film festivals from other countries, something that I thought was a clever touch. How sad it is that our best movies, movies from the Filipino golden age of cinema - back in the 60s, 70s and early 80s, movies with excellent relevant social commentary or movies that challenged societal issues, exist only as faded prints in other countries, categorically forgotten by our own people.
Perhaps that is what the movie tried to convey - a reflection on how our once noble film industry crumbled to dust in less than twenty years - how our films devolved from these great films from the eighties to heightening melodrama in the nineties to soft porn to today's increasingly slick, "high-production" fluff that, despite having lavish budgets, ends up being ultimately superficial and hollow. (For the record, this movie was made with a budget of only 1 million pesos ($50,000) which is by Philippine movie standards not that expensive at all.)
Then again, I may just be reading into it too much.
Now to the technical aspects of the film. I'm not sure if the print that I saw was a bad print, because the editing, especially in the first half or so of the film, seemed forced or choppy, which detracted from the overall feel. I'll have to see the video version to be sure. The soundtrack at times seemed to emulate some of the sythesizer sounds of the 80's and 90's. The recorded songs by local bands was fairly good, but I expected more Radioactive Sago Project - I like their style. The CGI is decent for a Filipino film, and considering it's a parody, I don't really mind.
The second quarter of the movie suffers from a bit of pacing issues, when the imaginative flashbacks occur one time too many. From a relatively upbeat and fast opening quarter, the succeeding part of the film dragged the film enough for me to want to reach out and fast forward the film a little bit - and this comes from a guy whose seen his share of slow paced art films - Hong Sang-soo, anyone? The action picks up nicely enough in the 50-75% mark of the film, and it pays off.
Of course, there is the (almost compulsory in a Filipino Movie) blatant product placement scene: this time it's Globe, and it's no wonder considering Boy2 Quizon is that guy in the Globe commercials. You know, July? The assortment of accessory, cameo, or bit actors in this film is quite surprising - Richard Gomez, Boots Anson-Roa, Ara Mina, G Toengi, Richard Gutierrez and Ian Veneracion to name a few - proving that even after a six-year hiatus Peque Gallaga still has some considerable clout.
In closing, Pinoy Blonde is far from a masterpiece - yet among recent Filipino releases, it ends up as a mishmashed, intelligent, quirky little film, probably one of the best of the year, so far. It ultimately feels like Peque Gallaga's love song for Philippine Cinema, one that treats its subject matter in the Filipino way - that of hallowed reverence with a little bit of that trademark Filipino humor sprinkled in. Watch it. You may come out of it with something you never expected.
(note: this review is in the context of the fact that I've yet to see what may be another great Filipino Film this year - the digital filmAng Aking Pagkagising Mula sa Kamulatan, a film I've had two opportunities to see, but regrettably couldn't for various reasons.)
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