Isa Pa With Feelings

Prime Cruz has previously explored the concept of loneliness and how people connect in films like Sleepless (2015) or Ang Manananggal sa Unit 23B (2016). In the latter film, he used pet turtles as a motif to depict this particular connection. In his latest film, Isa Pa With Feelings, he uses fish in aquariums to depict how people become isolated and othered, made to live in their own worlds or communities, and often not by choice.

Mara (Maine Mendoza) experiences this first hand when she fails to pass the Architecture board exam. It's a peculiar feeling that not many people will get to experience in their lives, but failing such a major exam isolates you from your friends. There's a modicum of self-pity and shame involved as your colleagues now feel like they inhabit another world, while you're stuck in limbo. She then finds solace with Gali (Carlo Aquino), a deaf teacher with dreams and aspirations of his own. In different ways, they've been othered by the world or by their own insecurities. She soon falls for him, but is the difference between them too large to overcome?

The film is a visual and aural marvel. It manages to capture the perspective of a deaf person by putting us in their shoes, through both sound and sight. We then become frustrated when hearing folk do not understand the deaf characters, because we know what they are going through. The film emanates empathy and gives dignity to the people that we empathize with. In a culture (film or otherwise) where people with disabilities are treated with apprehension or ridicule, the depiction here in Isa Pa With Feelings deserves merit.

And how do we empathize and connect? The film shows us that it is through language, both spoken and unspoken. While the translations of sign language have gaps in them at first, they fill out as Mara learns more of it. Dance figures heavily in the film, and dance in itself is a form of expression. Gali and Mara find their connection with each other, even though it means some level of compromise - because that's what love is, isn't it? The themes all culminate in two fantastic dance sequences where our main characters express their feelings wordlessly, their bodies moving in sync with the music and with each other, two hearts beating in tandem. In a year full of great local cinematic moments, this ranks among the best of them.

Isa Pa With Feelings is probably one of my favorite films of the year. It is perhaps not the best, and the film is not perfect, but it doesn't really matter. It's a film that shows that the spaces between people can be bridged - fish leaving the confines of their small aquariums and gaining access to the wide open world in front of them.