Two local documentaries that are part of the DocQC section are very personal glimpses into their respective filmmaker's lives. The first one, Aleia Garcia's Spring by the Sea, uses home video footage, taken either by Garcia or her father, to chronicle the goings-on of the Garcia family as they live in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia. Much like Wena Sanchez's All Grown Up, it's a level of intimacy that makes one feel as if he or she were a good family friend, watching old home videos along with everyone else.
Some might say that the proceedings will feel a bit slight, inconsequential, even. But that seems to be the point of such slices of life: these events may be mundane to some, but they are deeply profound to the people who made them and to people with OFW parents, whose desire to provide a better life for their families leads to fragmentation, at least in terms of physical distances. In that sense, the heart of Spring by the Sea is the fact that home is wherever the heart is, and a family, no matter wherever they are in the world, stays together through invisible bonds that transcend such distances.
A large QR code shows up during the first few minutes of Jet Leyco's For My Alien Friend. It is a silent challenge to the viewer to pull out their phones to find out what the code means (and look like a film pirate in the process) or stay put and let the mystery linger unsolved. Such playfulness is characteristic of For My Alien Friend, which mixes home video footage, personal experiences and experimental imagery to create one of the most fascinating films of the year.
The documentary features the same level of intimacy as Spring by the Sea, but this time it feels as if we are surreptitiously intercepting a message that we aren't supposed to listen to. This would normally put us at an emotional distance from the work, but the film's playful cues to engage with the work counters that notion. It's also a film that feels profound, but has enough self awareness that it doesn't take itself seriously that much.
The film releases its information in bits and pieces, stories and anecdotes, chunks of information that are being transmitted to us - memetic transference in the original sense of the word. This also reflects Leyco's introspection as a filmmaker: in 'transmitting' this film to the void, he as a filmmaker tries to reach out with his stories even though there might be no one on the other end. For My Alien Friend also feels hopeful: there is also the hope of most artists to connect with others through their work, that someday, somehow, someone would see their art and feel something.
A neo-noir through and through, Corneliu Porumboiu's The Whistlers is a fun, at times funnily absurdist crime thriller with a number of twists and turns that will leave audiences reeling.
Its protagonist shares the name of the protagonist of Porumboiu's Police, Adjective (2009), both cops who deal with ethical dilemmas, but this time our protagonists's motives are grayer than normal. Cristi (Vlad Ivanov) is roped in to help release a businessman from a Spanish town. But in order to do that, he has to learn Silbo Gomero, a whistling language used by the local populace to communicate discreetly over vast distances.
Porumboiu continues his examination of language and words. While in Police, Adjective, there was an emphasis on meaning, here there is also an exploration of language as a tool for communication. Meaning also plays a role in The Whistlers, a tale about a man who plays double (or even triple) agent with the people he works with. While not the best film coming out of the Romanian New Wave, The Whistlers is a fine addition to it.
While Midi Z's Nina Wu inevitably draws comparisons to films like Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue (1997), that film has a specificity to it in terms of idol culture that this film does not have. In a lot of ways, the film reminds me more of Jerrold Tarog's Bliss (2017) which also dealt with the cutthroat nature of the showbiz industry.
The fractured narrative and reality breaking sequences are great, as we see Nina (Wu Ke-xi) unravel while trying to piece together what happened to her one night when she auditioned for a major, starmaking film. In the face of #MeToo and given the numerous related easter eggs presented by the film, the outcome isn't hard to guess, but it's still shocking in all its barefaced horror.
This is where the film will divide viewers: the film is written by Wu herself, based on her personal experiences working in the industry. It's been said that sometimes, films that depict such traumas are testimonies. But at the same time, how would it elevate the discourse, and where should the line be drawn when delineating between depiction and exploitation?
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