Although Malamaya shares similarities with fellow competition film Belle Douleur in that both are films about May-December romances, Malamaya takes a different, artful approach compared to Belle Douleur's conventional route. It's also a film about artistry, originality and how pain translates to art.
The story itself is pretty straightforward. There's an older, beautiful woman and a hunky younger man. The woman looks young for her age, but she feels stagnant, held in place by her own biases. When they meet and sparks fly, sexual energies consume them both. Ideologies of old and new start to clash. Three films in, contemporary Philippine cougar cinema is starting to form its own tropes.
But the movie adds layers to the simple story, making this also a generational divide between artistic schools of thought, the old guard taking inspiration from the new, and vice versa. It challenges ideas of appropriation, which is itself incompatible with the idea of remix culture. Art does not need to be created de novo, it can be molded from other things to create something new and meaningful. In this film's case, art can be created by filling in deep wounds, weaving in pain and turning it into beauty, filling its boundaries with the color of ash - the ashes of a relationship that once was.
Thop Nazareno seems to have mastered the art of simple, grounded stories that prove bittersweet at the end. In the Philippines, patients are not the only people admitted into hospitals; they bring with them a bantay - a family member or helper that helps with miscellaneous things, buys equipment or medicines, and helps the overburdened medical staff do their thing. It's an experience I know all too well, having served as a bantay myself, and having worked in hospital wards much like the one in the film.
The heart of Edward is a sweet and simple story. Its titular character is a prepubescent boy who spends his time in the hospital messing around with friends, watching patient drama in the ER and morgue, and so on, while his father is admitted for an as-yet unknown disease. He then encounters Agnes, a new patient in the ER who is just his age, and forms a friendship with the girl.
Edward's story is a coming of age story, in that he learns a lot of lessons about family, friendship and life. It's poignant and some of it is quite emotionally affecting. Granted, the ending could have been paced out a little bit more (and certain aspects of the ending may not be to everyone's taste) but it it works out as it is.
And when one looks at the bigger picture, Edward the film shines the spotlight on several other things that contribute to the struggles of Edward the character: an ongoing shortage of medical personnel, a brain drain where medical professionals are lured abroad, lack of adequate laboratory equipment leading to outsourcing, crowded wards full of patients, intrahospital corruption and illegal practices.
Edward is a film with a very human core, where the full spectrum of the human experience is laid out before us: happiness, joy, sorrow, filial and romantic love, grief. It's a definite standout and a film to watch out for.
note: Medical nitpick: A Sputum AFB usually takes a day, but a Sputum Culture can take weeks.
Note: Spoilers for this film are present.
Speaking of the plight of medical workers, Sheryl Andes' Pandanggo sa Hukay shines its spotlight on our nation's midwives, unsung heroes who help bring new life into the world every day. While it starts strongly, a sudden shift in tone in the film's second half negatively affects the rest of the film.
The film follows a midwife (Iza Calzado) as she prepares for an upcoming interview in order to leave the country and better provide for her young son. The first half of the film is a light comedy. Like fellow competition entry Edward, the film uses the comedy to look at various systemic problems plaguing our country's overall reproductive health: lack of knowledge, making children beyond one's means, the exodus of health workers due to dwindling domestic prospects.
The second half of the film does a complete 180 and transforms the movie into a kidnap thriller. It's jarring and although it has some comedic elements, the results are pretty disturbing and off-putting. Sexual assault also figures into the script which felt contrived and unnecessary, making most of the film's antagonists into cartoonishly evil villains instead of people. There was an opportunity here to further shine a spotlight on the plight of our midwives, but the film takes the most garish option available in the service of an ending that tries to say "these people have gone through so much for their families, how noble." Perhaps we should stop using sexual assault as character development like this, guys and gals.
And that's what the second half of this film felt like: a setup for an ending that felt like it was written before everything else. It's supposed to be serious and/or profound, but it ends up being ridiculous.
That's not to say the film was great before that: it's well acted, well shot, and held a lot of promise. But one rotten apple really does spoil the bunch.
Let's now move on temporarily from the competition entries and look at Adolfo Alix's Misterio de la Noche, a horror fantasy film starring Solenn Heussaff. The film tells the story of the first Aswang and ties it in with ideas of colonialism, sexual power and even feminist ideas. The film's central legend has been done before with films like Corazon: Ang Unang Aswang (2012), but while that film took place during the Japanese Occupation, this film uses the Spanish occupation as its backdrop.
This time, the film is about a woman (Mercedes Cabral) whose rape by a member of the clergy drives her insane. She is captured and brought to the forest, where she gives birth to a child. Said child is then raised by spirits of the forest. The child, now an adult (Solenn Heussaff) encounters Domingo (Benjamin Alves), the son of the mayor who banished her mother previously, and the two of them form an intense relationship.
Their encounters are charged and sexual, though the man predictably leaves her for the forest. The film becomes allegory: for the destruction of wildlife and indigenous cultures by western powers, for the usurpation of the female role as equal with a western patriarchal equivalent. It is notable that the depiction of women as the embodiment of traditional-non western ideals is a trope that is repeatedly seen in many Filipino films. In this particular case, the woman wreaks supernatural revenge on the man and his ilustrado family, a rejection of western influence. The Aswang in this film is not evil per se, but driven both by feelings of desire and betrayal.
The film does have a few imperfections. It ends up a bit silly at times, it feels stretched out, and the story is predictable to a fault. It's balanced by wildly imaginative shadow play, decent, committed performances by both Heusaff and Alves, and impressive CGI and practical effects work. The film embodies Alix's trademark weirdness and Alix manages to create something interesting out of it.
WE WANT SHORT SHORTS SHORT SHORTS B REVIEWS
Hele ng Maharlika is inspired by the Marawi Siege. In it, a child soldier encounters another child in a now dilapidated house. It's largely symbolic, but it manages to show us that deep down, without all the labels of religion and nationality, we are all children of God.
I saw Don Senoc's Sa Among Agwat when it was a thesis film at UPFI last year. Even now it proves to be emotionally resonant, even though the story is well worn. It's proof that with the right director, cast and crew, simple stories can be elevated into something greater.
To the T'boli, threads are everything. They serve as lines from the world of the living to the world of spirits. In Tembong, a T'boli is haunted by dreams after his mother's death, and challenges the gender norms of his own tribe by using those dreams to weave a T'nalak, a sacred cloth whose creation is reserved only to women. It's conceptually rich, well made, and it shows how threads between mother and son are stronger than the threads that bind one to societal expectations.
In Kontrolado ni Girly ang Buhay N'ya, Girly just wants to work to provide for his family. However, discrimination and sexual harrassment gets in the way. It's heartbreaking and a little hard to watch, but if it lets viewers experience, in even a small way, how members of the LGBTQ+ community are oppressed every day, then the film has done its job.
The excellent Shorts B ends with Sheron Dayoc's The Shoemaker, a cute and lovely tale about an old shoemaker (Sherry Lara) reconnecting with her first love (Soliman Cruz.) It's funny, crowd-pleasing and packs an emotional punch at the end.
Three competition films left. See you later at the movies!
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