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| Obligatory poster. Yep. |
I arrive at SM Manila and it's already 6pm. Slivers of sunlight still try to inch their way out from the horizon, but night's too powerful to fight alone, kids. That's how it goes in Manila. SM Manila is usually a celluloid purgatory, a place where tired old films, unwatched and unloved, go to die and be reborn for a 50 peso ticket. Mang Kepweng is showing at Cinema 10. The cycle of life and death continues.
The ground's barely wet from yesterday's deluge, even though it rained cats and dogs yesterday.
Things change.
I'm here to watch Dito Lang Ako, a film by Roderick Lindayag. Lindayag's the kind of guy who directs TV instead of film, and that's what the IMDB says about him, anyways. He also had cameo roles in several films, most recently in the late Wenn Deramas' Who's That Girl? (2011). Life is capricious like that. In my mind's eye, I'm sipping a whiskey in a dingy moviehouse somewhere in New York, cigarette smoke rising slowly to the roof, killing me one cell at a time. But of course, this is SM, you can't smoke or drink, and I'm buying two Shawarma for 89 pesos instead. What a goddam deal.
"Do you want extra cheese, sir?" the lady at the counter asks me.
"Yeah." I like me some cheese. Pile it on, why don't ya.
"And make it spicy."
Just how I like my films, too.
***
The film begins with an old woman (Boots Anson-Roa) sitting beside a Blade center somewhere in Timog. Blade's an auto accessories shop, and let's face it, the movie is a 90 minute commercial for Blade. But I still wonder why this movie exists. My family buys from Blade. Hell, I buy from Blade whenever the old Tawasilmobile needs some orangey air freshener. A movie isn't going to change my goddam mind. But it's their money, so it's not like I have a say.
The old woman's name is Nelia, and she's waiting for a man named Delfin. Her mind is failing her, and she seems like she has advanced dementia. She's there with her son and grandson, so you have to feel for old grandpa, you know, the man Nelia married and had children with. I guess first love never dies. Or first sex, like that time you slept with that prostitute in a dingy apartment complex in a foreign land and you don't know if you got an STD or not. It lingers. You wait for the burning sensation in your penis, a sensation that never really comes.
The film flashes back to the 1970's. I know this, because the plate numbers on the cars say '77, so the film takes place at least in 1977. Back then, there was also a Blade store in Timog - I'm assuming it's the same store. I don't know how long Blade has existed as a company, so OK I guess. Turns out Nelia used to be an employee at Blade. Looking inside the store, the products look distinctly 2018. My suspicions start to take shape. One of the products on the shelves, a bottle of what looks like motor oil or lubricant, has a price of Php 159.75, and the label looks like it was printed on a computer. In 1977 money 160 pesos can buy you several bags of groceries or a full tank of gas. I know this, because I asked my mother, and she sent me a 30 text-long lecture about how life was in the seventies, a lecture that lasted long after the movie had finished. She has unlimited texts, I don't mind. In any case, that's one fucking expensive luxury-ass bottle of motor oil. That's the kind of motor oil rich Arabian sheiks pour on themselves if they have such a fetish. Real top dollar shit.
I can only form one conclusion from this: this Blade branch is travelling through time. It traveled from 2018 to the 1970's, selling cheap (or at least reasonably priced in 2018 prices) but technologically advanced auto accessories to 1970's Filipinos as luxury items, so that they can gain millions of pesos in profit. Well played, time travelling Blade of the future.
Also, one more thing.
Thanks to the activities of the time travelling Blade branch, this movie takes place in an alternate version of 1970's Philippines, where technological advancement has occurred due to scientists reverse engineering the products that Blade is selling. Hell, maybe in this timeline thanks to the butterfly effect Marcos never became president or something. This will become clear later. In any case, wrapping my head around this felt like snorting tawas off a hooker's back in a black market casino. The best tawas has to be pure, goddamit.
((Past)) Nelia is played by Michelle Vito, and she's quite the looker. The best aspect of the film is the hair, makeup and costuming, and Michelle Vito looks like the kind of pretty, respectable gal you would encounter... in the fifties or sixties.
Like I said, alternate history.
"Jesus Christ on a Swizzle stick," I say to myself, "this girl is beautiful." And the film agrees. ((Past)) Delfin (Jon Lucas) is smitten, though he has a penchant for disappearing on Nelia and that pisses her off. He makes amends through Hopia, which is Delfin's personal cinematic motif. Nelia also has another suitor, Victor (Akihiro Blanco,) who happens to be the boss' son. Victor's cinematic motif is Siopao. I'd like to be a suitor too, if I had the chance. But I'm just a dude eating spicy shawarma for 89 pesos in a dimly lit cinema. Like, who the fuck am I?
***
Hopia vs. Siopao: Dawn of Justice continues with the two suitors vying for Nelia's attention. Nelia, Delfin and Victor talk to each other and to others in a very old fashioned way. It's probably like how people would talk in the seventies. The 1870's, that is. This is dialogue that wouldn't feel out of place in a movie like Heneral Luna, or Goyo.
Alternate history, folks.
Delfin ups the ante by singing a harana to Nelia in front of the time travelling Blade branch. We don't really hear him singing anyway; the film overlays the film's theme song over Delfin's singing. Blade employees abandon their jobs to run outside and form a circle around the two lovers, because why not. Neila and Delfin begin to dance. Somewhere in the periphery, Victor is distraught, probably stacking car freshener or something. I feel you, mate.
I finish my first shawarma.
***
Mid-dance, Delfin faints. There seems to be a problem. In the hospital, we learn that he's rich and he has leukemia. Let me put my doctor glasses on and tell you that in the 1970's, people were just getting started with using multiple agent chemotherapies and survival rates were down in the doldrums, like a drunk, homeless man swimming with mermaids at the bottom of a well. People could relapse after a number of years. Things are not looking good for Delfin.
Nelia convinces Delfin to seek treatment in America, where the quality of treatment is (probably) better than in the Philippines.There's a sound of a ventilator, even though there's no ventilator in the room. There's also the sound of a heart monitor, even though there's no heart monitor in the room either. Apparently the time travelling Blade's time excursion has advanced medical technology to the point where medical equipment can enter stealth mode.
Delfin agrees, and leaves her for the long haul. Before he leaves, he sings he a song during their last picnic. We don't hear him sing here, either - another song is overlaid over his voice.
The filmmakers really don't want to hear him sing, do they?
Years pass, and Nelia pines for her lost love. Sometimes she gets a letter from Delfin. In one of them, Delfin talks about having an operation. For leukemia. Operations aren't usually done for leukemia patients, but what do I know - I'm just a doctor who works with tumors and cancer.
As a form of remembrance, Nelia looks longingly at a pair of hopia whenever she wants to remember Delfin. She doesn't eat them or anything, she just looks at them. I'm assuming these are the same two hopia that Delfin gave her years ago. They look like they're in good shape. So even food preservation technology was vastly improved by the time travelling Blade branch. Amazing.
***
Nelia is visited by Delfin's mom. It's not good news. Nelia's beloved hopia has kicked the bucket into the eternal void. He has become an un-person. I guess at this point technology hasn't caught up fast enough. "That's how things go," I say, as I take a drag out of my imaginary cigarette, "one day you're dancing, the next day, things go to shit."
An elderly person from the back tries to shush me.
***
Back to the present, and old Nelia is tired of waiting at this futuristic Blade branch with TARDIS like powers. She leaves with her grandson on a jeep, leaving her hopia behind. No, this is not the same hopia that Delfin left for her forty years ago - her grandson bought her the pair. Or so he says. Who knows what alternate 2018 technology is capable of doing.
Just as she leaves, a car arrives and it's old Delfin (Freddie Webb.) So medical technology has advanced after all, thanks to Blade's time travelling shenanigans. He purposely lied to Nelia so that she could let him go, a notion that reeks of thoughtcatalogue-y feelings, of estrogen and broken promises.
They meet in the end, because Nelia wants to get back the hopia that she lost. And she does, literally and figuratively. Her dementia miraculously begins to subside. A crowd begins to form. In order to see what all the fuss is about, one employee abandons her customer, who happens to be James Deakin, blogger of all things cars, shotgun-rider with wannabe dictators. No doubt he will make a note of this customer dissatisfaction on his blog.
The film ends just as I finish my second shawarma. Its beefy, spicy goodness fills my stomach - for now, at least. The film's credits start to play over a music video, and I get to stare at Michelle Vito one more time, for the road.
I enjoyed this film. I wouldn't say it was good, or that it justified its existence, but the science fiction time travelling alternate history aspect really got me by the balls. Also, Michelle Vito is worth the price of admission. I guess I have a crush now. I know I will find myself once again in SM Manila whenever a film like this decides to make itself known. "All these things have happened, and probably they will happen again."
Indeed, words to live by, Hunter.
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