Ralston Jover's follow up to Da Dog Show is also a tale about the marginalized in society. Hamog is officially translated to Haze for the purposes of this film, which refers to the "batang hamog," juvenile delinquents who live on the street, committing petty crimes.
Hamog tells the story of four such street kids, ho make a living stealing money and materials from hapless motorists. Each one has different backgrounds and different stories to tell, although the film mainly focuses on two: Rashid, who rejects a relatively comfortable life with his father to live in the streets, and Jinky, a fiery young girl who has an unusual encounter with one of her victims.
These kids are not necessarily poor or orphaned, some, like Rashid, have the choice of an otherwise comfortable life, but choose to live the life of the streets anyway, thanks to personal demons and a slew of family problems problems. Others come from very dysfunctional families and broken homes. They treat the street life as a means of escape, a means of freedom in a very restricting world.
And sometimes escape is not enough. One character seeks refuge through a phantom that he envisions might save him from his rut; only to realize that such things are delusion, and the real world has no superheroes.
Haze in another context gives these children invisibility; the police often encounter these children, and social services do exist to give them structure, but the ideal is far from reality. The law is either inept or inadequate to serve them or their families. One such case where Jinky is brought to a DSWD office shows that the usual method of counseling can't solve all these problems. In one scene a character grieves over another as he lays him to rest; but the scene shows that many of these children are children without a god, perhaps desperately searching for one.
The film also makes us ask ourselves if these children should still be treated as such in the eyes of the law, or in the context of crime. Something in these kids has died in the course of their hard life. Maybe you could call it their innocence, but the truth is far more complex. These are kids who are victims of a society who does not have the means or the will to take care of them. Their complex motivations put some of their dialogue into question; one of Jinky's monologues in the end seems straightforward, but in this context, I couldn't help but doubt the truth of her words.
The film benefits from a stellar child cast, of course Teri Malvar and Zaijan Jaranilla deserve accolades for their performance in this film. True to its social realist roots the film uses handheld footage and a palette filled with apathetic gray and light brown tones.
The film's ending is a bit ambiguous, but my personal interpretation hints at a bit of redemption for at least one of the characters. However, despite that, life in the streets holds its own seductive allure, and for many of the other characters in the film, such a life is an inescapable one.
P.S. Rappler had an interesting look into these kids' lives here, if anyone is interested.
I enjoyed watching The Comeback. It feels relatively light, and it's funny in many places to boot. It, however, hides behind its glossy veneer a deeper story of a woman struggling to find the meaning in her life.
Angela Velasco (Kaye Abad) used to be a popular actress. However, her irascible nature has made her undesirable for directors both indie and mainstream, casting directors and producers alike. Down to the last of her finances, she decides to kill herself, but the arrival of a mysterious urn turns her life upside down.
Angela then encounters a range of colorful characters as she tries to investigate the urn. Their interactions are mostly played for laughs. There are moments of comedy, horror and drama put into a mix.
That said, the plot is all over the place. It even feels bipolar for some reason. There are jarring shifts in tone in some places in the film; one such instance has a very dramatic scene (with an exceptional performance by Maria Isabel Lopez) followed by... a party scene. We are left with little time to process our feelings from the last sequence as we are ushered into a completely different sequence with a completely different tone.
The urn is more or less a MacGuffin; the real story is with Angela and her relationship with herself and others, especially her loyal assistant who serves as her emotional core (whether she knows it or not.) The Comeback tries to make a conversation about people in the throes of depression, but I felt that the film was stopping short of making that conversation. It ultimately hesitates to confront this (admittedly sensitive) subject matter and instead buries that conversation behind comedy, which I felt undermined its ultimate thesis.
Kaye Abad carries this movie from start to finish; I am not very familiar with her body of acting work but I was seriously impressed by her performance here. She'd make a fine contrabida in a TV series (and maybe she is, but I just don't know about it.) A lot of the dialogue in this film was adlibbed, and it was a treat to see the noise and wit here.
First movies are often the most personal, and I really felt it in the treatment for this film. The plot may be a bit of a mess, but The Comeback is otherwise light, entertaining fare.
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