Cinemanila Diaries 2: The King, Tuli, Ala Verde Ala Pobre

Day 2 of my Cinemanila exploits: M1 Garands, Circumcision, and railroad tracks.

Oh, and I think I'm going to use the word dichotomy. Watch out for it. Be warned, spoilers abound!

The King (2005)

This feature film starts with a young man, Elvis (Gael Garcia Bernal, in one of his few English-speaking roles) who, after leaving the Navy, seeks out his biological father. His father, David Sandow (William Hurt), has now become a preacher in conservative Southern America, and has a family now, with a son and a daughter. Soon Elvis begins to interfere with the family's affairs, actions that increase in intensity and destroy the Sandow family dynamic until the film's nihilistic finale.

Early on we see the dichotomy between Elvis' life and the life of his half-brother Paul: Elvis with his old car and seedy apartment, with no future in sight, and Paul with his comfy room, brand new SUV and bright future. The latter half of the film sees events go into a downward spiral as Elvis usurps Paul's place in the Sandow family in true biblical fashion; throughout the film I thought of the number of comparisons this movie had to some biblical stories. However, although we see the implications of Elvis' destructive actions, we never see what motivates him to do these things. Is it left ambiguous? Or is it an allusion to it being the will of a Higher Being, a test?

Bernal portrays Elvis ambiguously; an enigma that is never explained. Kind of like an semi-antithesis to the titular character of Takashi Miike's Visitor Q: where the visitor in that movie would passively influence the family to its eventual relative benefit, Elvis directly influences his family to its eventual destruction.

By the way, he speaks English perfectly, with no trace of Spanish accent whatsoever, something that surprised me quite a bit.

The King is a hard movie to get through. It is disturbing and quite unsettling as things come towards the inevitable climax. Whether it is effective in delivering whatever message it was intended to convey, I leave to you.

Tuli (2005)

Aureus Solito may be a familiar name to some Philippine Cinephiles; he was responsible for the indie film Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros. His entry to the digital film competition, Tuli, is also a coming of age film; and it sorta involves circumcision (Tuli is a verb that means to circumcise in Filipino.)

Daisy (Desiree del Valle) is a girl who lives in a quiet, sylvan barrio, whose isolated locale promotes the impression of a world closed to everything else around them (and perhaps, modernity?) The people there possess traditional beliefs and are deeply religious (in fact part of the movie takes place during holy week.) After a lot of bad juju with the barrio's male population, she swears never to fall victim to the wiles of a man again. In short? She becomes a lesbian.

This does not make the residents very happy, and Daisy and her lover, also betrayed by men, must stick together and persevere.

The main problem is that the above doesn't really happen until the last third of the film - more than half of the film is reserved for exposition, which bogs down the film a lot. It also made the film quite hard to understand for the casual viewer - until things get into gear. It's the awkward pacing that turned me off from this film a bit.

No complaints about music of visuals - visually the cinematographer takes advantage of the naturally dark look of DV and exploits light to make the impression of a barrio that is isolated from the rest of the world, shrouded in strange, hazy, almost supernatural, forces.

Desiree del Valle does a decent job as Daisy, although the angst in her character does project a little too powerfully for my taste. The rest of the actors involved also do a decent job and don't enter the 'theatrical' category.

This film, despite what I see is its obvious faults, is nevertheless an interesting exploration of sexual discovery. I look forward to seeing more of this in the future.

Ala Verde Ala Pobre (2005)

Briccio Santos is a name I haven't heard of before, but when I asked my mother, she knew he had made films before. Upon looking at the paper describing the movie outside the theater, I found that he has been out of the limelight for a long time.

If you want a short review, here it is: out of the eight films participating in the digital cinema category, this is my favorite.

Here's the long review: Ana Capri is Jessica, a former Japan entertainer who lives with his ex-NPA husband (Ebong Joson.) Together they live in the houses built beside the railroad tracks somewhere in Manila, and try to survive.

The opening sequence is kinetic, and at once we see the first thing I like about this film - it's bright, unlike all the other entries I saw. Somehow Santos' cinematographer has circumvented the effect of having a darker picture naturally shown in DV and given us a light-infused vision of the houses by the train tracks. Even darker scenes are given light, perhaps by effects and clever lighting. This is an irony, because the film and the themes it deals with are very dark. There are no corny comedic moments like we see in other films. The world our two protagonists live in is a world anyone would get out of. The thing is they have no choice, and they have to live with their wits and skill to survive. More often than not, however, they find that the world outside their own may not be as good as they thought, and more often than not they find the elements of society exploiting them.

The music is pounding, sometimes darkly elegant and apropos - as simple as it may be. There are some short noticeable moments of silence, and they complement the film's tone as well.

The fact that Ana Capri and Ebong Joson can pull off great acting performances (in many levels - I won't spoil it for you) is one of the high points of the film. Their acting is more or less natural, non-theatrical (a pitfall for most productions) and is a refreshing departure from what I've seen these days.

That's all I can say about that. Well, next time, more Cinemanila goodness, plus a little bit of something else. Watch out for it...