It's been too long since my last post, mostly because of real life getting in the way, but it's time for some short reviews!
Sinag Maynila is a new film festival featuring five feature films by well regarded and up and coming directors. I've been able to view two of them today, and the results are pretty mixed.
Swap
Directed by Remton Siega Zuasola
Based on true events, Swap is about a kidnapped baby, and the family's efforts to get him back. It's also set during Martial Law, when people disappear, but for other reasons. While the story is quite simple, the way it was executed is quite refreshing. The entirety of the movie is filmed in one take; with seamless transitions from one scene to another, sometimes between different time frames. While it is decidedly low budget the planning and execution of some of the scenes are quite impressive. Most notable are several scenes where two people are juxtaposed in the same frame despite being in different physical spaces story wise.
It's a curious blend of cinema and theater while eschewing an exaggerated theater acting style. Zuasola's cinematographer deftly uses the camera to use closeups to emphasize chaos, or emphasize emotion - tools that theater simply does not have.
While the acting is great all around, some stand out more than others. Matt Daclan, fresh from his stint in Zuasola's Soap Opera, gives a fantastic performance as the father of the kidnapped child. His range of emotions - from worried to nervous to desperate - feels almost effortless on screen, no doubt helped by the expert cinematography, but still remarkable on its own.
As an allegory or reference to the atrocities during Martial Law, I felt that some elements felt more tacked on than seamlessly integrated. If not for the occasional reference to Marcos and the activists who died under military or police torture, this could have taken place in any contemporary time frame. I personally chalk it up to the limitations of how the story was executed.
The film isn't without it's share of flaws. For some reason there was a clearly noticeable dubbing problem in some of the earlier scenes. Some lines are spoken but lips do not move; in other cases the opposite happens. The presence of some of the guns seem to be anachronistic, but I may be wrong; in this case, it's a minor nitpick and not very important in the greater scheme of things.
This film is very ambitious, and while it has a few flaws, I commend it for at least trying, something a lot of cinematic works tend to avoid lately.
Ninja Party
Directed by Jim Libiran
This particular film piqued my interest because of the trailer and the fact that there are two cuts of the film; the R-16 cut I saw in cinemas, and an uncut version for international distribution. After having seen Ninja Party, however, I was left a little underwhelmed by the final result. I do wonder if the uncut version adds anything of substance to the film aside from a little more titillation.
The film follows the exploits of four teenage girls as they go through the motions of their last few months in their catholic all girls high school. (Just saying it feels so cliche, but there you have it.) Among the end-of-year activities is a soiree being organized by the girls as well as a play - which happens to be the Greek comedy Lysistrata. Quite a strange choice for a high school play given the subject, but quite appropriate for the film's context.
The four girls go through your usual teenage problems and at times they seem to be more exaggerated archetypes than real people (some are prudish to a fault, and some are the other way around.) Two of the girls, Alexa and Sasha, are part of this sexual extreme - they take part in the titular Ninja Parties, where they engage in all sorts of sexual acts with boys - more or less it's an orgy with ski masks (I guess "ISIS party" or "Bank Robber Party" doesn't have the same bite.)
Like the Greek women of Lysistrata (barring Lysistrata herself) most of the girls concern themselves with the primest of pleasures, rushing headlong into a sexual world of which they are only newly aware. With parents present only at the periphery they lack guidance, that is, a Lysistrata of their own.
The overall effect of the film, however, seems wanting. The opening sequence is cut awkwardly, and I took this to mean that this was part of a far longer sequence that establishes these girls' characters even more than what was implied. As a story about sexual awakening, this story felt exaggerated as well. My female friend, who liked the film less than I did, felt that the way the movie treated the sexual awakening of some of these people seemed too fast or convenient to be believable. I agree with this sentiment.
I have to give props to Odette Khan and Annicka Dolonius' acting chops, as they helped bring some of the more exaggerated aspects of the film back down to earth for me. As far as daring scenes go, this movie was quite tame compared to the bomba films of the late nineties and early 2000s, and nothing near the cinema of the seventies and early eighties. But then again, this is the cut version.
The movie ends on a similar notion as Libiran's earlier film Tribu (2007) showing the cyclical pattern of human nature. But while it was violence that was trapped in a cycle in Tribu, it is lust manifesting as curiosity that cycles in this film. Eventually, the proverbial Ouroboros eats its own tail. Unfortunately, the ending was too rushed to make this point as effective as it might have been.
I have to reserve my full opinion on this movie until I see the longer cut. Until then, Ninja Party lies in the middle of the road, an effort that ended up fizzling out near the end of the film.
No comments:
Post a Comment